It is my contention that the broad libertarian consensus has largely concluded that Democracy is incompatible over time with the fruits of capitalism, which have brought unimaginable prosperity to the masses of the world.
Why is this?
v.1.0
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of governement. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." -- Alexis de Tocqueville
v.2.0
"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%." -- Thomas Jefferson (disputed) -- good statement regardless authenticity.
v.3.0
When it is cheaper to buy political favors than to compete in the marketplace, the rational actor will do so -- general Public Choice theory
v.4.0
An uninformed populace will often vote against measures that benefit the majority. (Largely due to economic ignorance) -- Bryan Caplan
v.5.0
"To a first approximation, democracy in Britain is fake. The real power lies with the civil service" -- AMcGinn
and
"the postwar Western system has assigned almost all actual decision-making power to its civil servants and judges, who are "apolitical" and "nonpartisan," ie, nondemocratic." -- Menicus Moldbug
Essentially, the claim is that Democracy in any real sense is necessarily bad for any goals of actually improving happiness over time.
There is a dispute over whether some other system (formalism, charter cities, free state project, seasteading, monarchy, disentangled republic) is likely to be any better. However, at least as far as I've been able to tell...the idea that with public choice theory + the civil service + stupid voters, there's not a shot in hell for democracy to move in libertarian directions. The only thing that can happen is for the government to continue to expand.
There are naysayers. As far as I can tell, Will Wilkinson and some others (perhaps Brink Lindsey) either disagree with the analysis or recognizes some advantages among the creeping filth of political control.
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4 comments:
From my perspective the primary purpose of any government is to stave off civil war. Because the only thing worse than bad government is a civil war on the way to another bad government. By this standard our democracy has only had one hiccup. Its not a very high standard.
P.S Why do you think this about Blake? (I presume you have not listened to the audio I sent you)
I'd said that about Brink because of prior memories of interacting with Mr. Lindsey.
Audio/video doesn't do well with me. I read much faster than folks talk, and I don't multitask well at all. If I am doing anything else while listening, I miss the presentation, or I am thoroughly unsuccessful at what I am doing.
And, though I may have been reading Brink wrong, a quick jaunt through his website places him very close ideologically to Will Wilkinson (or Megan McArdle for that matter), slightly to the left of the standard institutionalist libertarian position.
Once on a peruse of the left-lib site, I found an article attacking the extremists (with whom I find myself ideologically inclined).
The best takeaway line from whatever article it was went something like:
But you've got your history wrong. All historically successful changes have come about when some moderate elites take part of the radical platform of the agitating extremists and adopt it themselves, thereby occupying power themselves and cutting the appeal of the radicals. If you don't have the radicals, you don't get the change. Moderation alone doesn't get you anywhere.
Democracy = Mob Rule
Why would anyone assume that the mob would make better decisions than any other form of government.
Fundamentally, as long as you can keep the government small, starving, and harmless, it doesn't matter that much how decisions are made.
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