Great point. And dear God youre right about the globo-corps which is scary that the argument logically holds up. I hope WEF never sees your comment to fuel their fire
>multinational corporations are *more* democratic than governments when it comes to actions with a global impact because they are accountable to shareholders, employees, customers, and business partners around the world
Redefining 'democratic' as a measure of the geographic distribution of the individuals who have the capital to influence corporate decision making departs from common usage only slightly more than suggesting that current era multinationals are in any meaningful way 'accountable' to the vast majority of their customers. If your preference is corporate governance, you don't have mutilate existing terminology in order to argue in favor of it. Unless of course your goal is to make those preferences seem more socially palatable by masking them in disingenuous language.
Well, most countries are more democratic in this sense than global corporations, as they are depending on a working economy which is in turn depending on good external trade and good international relations. The big problem arises from big power imbalances when the powerful doesn't have to care if the small peers suffer as long he doesn't make most of them upset at the same time. This is true for economic actors as for states or criminal gangs.
But belonging to the strongest group lets you easily forget or oversee this. So I'm very much in favor of a multi-polar world without a single hegemony as much as I'm against any single person or group getting too rich and powerful.
Some people have been criticizing the conflation of "democracy" and "liberty" for decades. Mostly "extreme" (read as: "") libertarians, but also plenty of Tea Party Republicans.
As an extreme (even 'by read as "" standard') libertarian, yep, I do that.
As a cynic, I might go a little further, and observe that the only difference between the various things you can put in front of -cracy is who gets to wear the jackboots; as long as it's any kind of -cracy, someone's wearing them, that part of the word coming from the ancient Greek term meaning, approximately, "the beatings will continue until you obey".
I'd be inclined to argue that the link between liberty and democracy is almost purely correlative, not causative; the countries everyone usually cites as an example tend to be ones which have strong constitutional, traditional, or both, restraints on what any government is allowed to do, and as those erode over time, we get to see more of the violence (and totalitarianism) inherent in the system.
And, for myself, I applaud people who use "democratic" in the sense implying that the most democratic society is one in which every tiny decision down to what to eat for breakfast is subject to vote. Not for themselves - because they're usually terrible people - but rather because they do us the favor of laying bare that once you establish the principle that population makes right, you don't have really anywhere to stop but an endless series of special pleadings.
Good point... in the long run, when everyone understands that words like "democracy", "justice", and even "liberal" aren't just synonyms for "good". But I'm tempted to take Scott's view for now, as it seems tactically better in present circumstances.
Sadly, I think the right answer to a lot of real-world questions is that principles are kind of useful but they don't hold in general, so special pleadings are unavoidable.
The special pleading happens when one interest group says of something, generally the common way things are done, "That's undemocratic (because our tiny minority doesn't get its way)" and then make appeals based on the good associations the general public has with "democracy".
That the basic meaning of democracy is "the majority gets to decide", and hence too bad 1% special interest group, you don't get your way, is what is not accepted. Instead of saying "we want/need accommodation or special treatment", it's presented as "we live in a democracy and hence our voices should be heard!"
It should be noted that in the original example I had in mind, such special pleadings include "please don't kill, rob, and/or enslave us". Because if you really, *really* believe in the principle of democracy, that's all fair game for the 51%.
A lynch mob, after all, is a perfectly democratic institution.
Civilization is actually built up around the government having a monopoly on legal violence. Not doing this is actively bad and leads to sky-high homicide rates and much worse outcomes. This is one of the fundamental reasons why libertarianism does not work.
This is why pluralistic democracy with codified bills of rights work far better than other forms of government, because it gives a public level of accountability for what the government is doing and lets people make adjustments while simultaneously making certain rights much more difficult to get rid of.
Indeed, the US government is deliberately set up to prevent a so-called "tyranny of the majority", where a majority can simply trample over everyone else's rights.
Of course, this only works so long as the public agrees that the status quo is worth preserving. It would be interesting to see just how resilient the structure really is, now that both the left and the right in the US increasingly proclaim that true democracy can't be achieved until the outgroup is utterly crushed.
This is precisely why populists constantly lie about how everything is awful forever - because the truth (that things have been getting better and better) means that they're wrong. This is why you see the far left and far right claim that society is going down the drain.
On the former, firstly, you are conflating libertarianism with unplanned anarchy, and secondly, since the three states of affairs which cover almost the entirety of historical experience are (a) no controls on violence, (b) warlords competing to own the monopoly on legal violence, and (c) the victor of (b) having said monopoly, this looks much more like "this was deemed challenging and thus not tried" to me.
Much like every other governmental innovation was in its day; a practically isomorphic argument could be made as to why not having an absolute monarch is actively bad and leads to much worse outcomes, and thus it's fundamentally impossible for democracy to ever work - which would have seemed very credible right before the outbreak of democracy.
As for the latter - acknowledging that it is a single data point - it having been only just over a month from having had our pluralistic democracy's goon squad stomping through my house with machine-guns in complete defiance of the Bill of Rights's notional protections against such things, I can only laugh long, bitter, and hollow.
Sorry to be unclear - that was a reference to recent events in my life which, to avoid cluttering up the comments here with a tangent, I'll just say are summarized here:
(And which have confirmed my extremely jaundiced views on precisely how useless democracy, even with a bill of rights, actually *is* at protecting people from arbitrary state force.)
Oh, my God! I'm appalled. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm surprised. I've seen too much from Radley Balko, PINAC, and similar sources to be at all surprised.
Or you take this as a proof how much current 'democracy with bill of rights' is just broken right now. This does not disproof the concept if it works elsewhere, perhaps this proofs that of your democracy only the facade is left.
The US was founded as a libertarian state. It didn't work at all, which is why we discarded the Articles of Confederation and created the US Constitution with a much more powerful federal state.
The Founding Fathers wanted to create a more libertarian state but quickly realized it was unworkable so had to change course.
And indeed, the US federal government was not strong enough to keep the states sticking together until after the US Civil War.
This is all basic US history, which libertarians are in denial of. Having a weak central state does not result in good outcomes.
"A weak federal government with few powers over arbitrarily powerful state governments" isn't a libertarian system by any reasonable definition of the word, especially when some of those state governments use said power to back up their maximally anti-libertarian policies. You're thinking of states'-rights conservatives.
(Some of whom may call themselves libertarians, but people can call themselves anything they like.)
You’re confusing “federalist” with “libertarian”. The Articles of Confederation may not have been perfect - what is? - but it was supplanted because some wanted the federal government to have more power, not because the Articles “didn’t work”.
I agree with the use of "accountability" in a government context, where
a) There are pre-existing promises in the constitution which the government is not supposed to break and
b) The government is at least theoretically supposed to act as an agent for the public.
I'm less happy to see "accountability" more widely generalized, e.g. to situations where someone with private power has no analogous principal/agent relationship with the public and is violating none of our (vastly excessive) set of laws.
My personal preference is to arrange our society so that the median person is as free as possible. There are cases where private entities do things that reduce the median person's freedom. One example is Amazon's use of noncompete restrictions on their former employees. I wouldn't "hold accountable" Amazon for doing this, and I wouldn't villify anyone on their legal team for trying to tie the hands of their former employees this way, but I would, in the interest of the median person's freedom, make such constraints unenforceable.
In general, I'm not a fan of concentrated power, either governmental or corporate, but I don't see the people wielding it as "needing to held accountable" - I just want to see less concentrated power in the first place, more choices left in the hands of ordinary individual people. (Yeah, some of this tends to imply more laws - yetch!, but hard to avoid - and hard to arrange so that the laws themselves don't concentrate power.)
Totally, we can even go back to Edmund Burke in 1790. There are better ways to secure our liberties than to make them all subject to a democratically elected government. The more you want to protect something, the less you should centralize its safeguards. Democratic is not synonymous with "good". The British system with a limited power hereditary monarch, church power, a parliament, and strong private property is much more robust to attacks on the civil liberties they had. The consequences of a momentary fit of populist madness are mitigated.
I think of democracy merely as a way to obtain routine, peaceful changes of leaders. Other than that, it is not an expression of the "will of the people." Many people use the term that way, and you are correct that it then shades into totalitarianism.
I would add that the "routine peaceful changes of leaders" model does not require that the electoral system is perfect, but it does require that people accept the results. Like Nixon in 1960, as opposed to Trump in 2020 or Gore in 2000. And at some point it requires a government with limited powers, or else sooner or later people are going to want to fight over issues of succession.
He was better than Trump in that respect, but the Florida challenge was needlessly divisive, and for years afterward Democrats said that Bush won by 1 vote (in the Supreme Court). That helped ratchet up tribal partisanship.
To my mind the difference between filing available legal challenges--in a legitimately razor-thin election, in which who got more votes is still up for dispute--and continuing to dispute the election after all challenges have been resolved is a difference in kind, not degree.
I agree. No comparison between Gore and Trump makes any sense. Any politician would have demanded a recount given the freakishly close nature of the Florida vote. Not to have done so would have been inexcusable to everyone who had voted for him. And campaigned for him. I find nothing wrong with what Gore did nor do i find anything wrong with what Bush did or the Supreme Court.
I don't think Gore himself did, which makes him much much better than Trump. I believe that some 3rd party commenters may have made suggestions like "split Florida's electoral votes evenly" (which would give Gore the presidency, but obviously has no legal basis or precedent at all) or had positions that in practice amounted to "recount the votes until Gore wins" or "the court that has the authority to decide this case is the one that says Gore should win."
I think if we take the standard that democracy requires not just that the loser accepts the outcome, but that no random supporters say something self-serving about how their side really won, then very few of our presidential elections have been truly democratic.
Post-election studies basically found that the election with ballots as cast was genuinely inconclusive, and Gore would have won absent racially biased voter suppression limiting ballot access.
I say inconclusive because different permutations of different quasi-objective standards for counting give you different outcomes, and perhaps those are wrong also because the studies didn't get quite every single ballot.
Our ballot counting system, or at least the ballot counting system as applied in FL that year (with those ballot constructions and marking/counting technologies, etc) didn't have fine enough resolution to figure out who got more votes. It was a system failure, it's unsurprising and not blameworthy if it produced irrational behavior in participants.
And frankly, (obviously rigging it up post facto would be pretty skeevy, but) shouldn't we have taken that lesson going forward to implement some sort of proportionality (for divisible outcomes) or split/co-responsibility in the role (for non-divisible outcomes) in extremely close elections? I mean we fall back on randomization to pick a single winner when there are genuinely tied votes, for pete's sake.
So can we discuss election reforms instead of sniping at people caught in failures of unreformed election systems?
[EDIT - 3rd to last word read 'uninformed', I think probably it was supposed to be 'unreformed'. No offense intended to any well-read election systems, nor to any ignorant ones either.
The studies I saw did not even attempt to count the vast majority of ballots (and couldn't, given their limited resources)-- they were limited to counting machine-rejected ballots while assuming, somewhat inconsistently, that all machine-accepted ballots were tallied perfectly.
I don't see what your proposed fix buys us in return for the added complexity. Instead of Florida-style maneuvering to get a plurality, you get Florida-style maneuvering to reach or avoid the threshold for "extremely close election".
I'm not sure if this fits with what they're thinking, but I often advocate all States switching to the Maine-Nebraska system of allocating Electoral Votes. In the case of Florida 2000, they'd've only been contesting 5?-ish votes rather than the whole slate, which mightn't've been enough to swing the overall result.
Yes, sorry, you're right, those were recounts of rejected ballots. Arguably the ballots that the machines accepted didn't need separate recounting because the election was so close that an automatic recount was done a few days after the original tally? But yea I utterly mis-recorded that.
I want to clearly hedge that 1) There will always be a discontinuous threshold, it's not like we can fix that entirely, and 2) there isn't some deeply well-thought-out proposal here, what I wrote above is the full extent of it. But if we're sharing at all then we could actually share in ratios other than 1:1 to make the steps less steep and therefore weaken the incentive for expensive litigious maneuvering. Primarily I was thinking that the complexity buys greater representativeness? And if we're really lucky it militates against intense partisanship and ideological extremism? Eg it probably makes less sense to cast a 'vote against' or a 'hold your nose' vote if adding to someone else's pile doesn't reliably decrease that candidate's power, so maybe we reduce negative campaigning?
Other than the fact that we're 23 years out instead of 3, what difference is there between what Trump supporters say and what you are saying? They are saying that a different system (perhaps one that rejected more mail in ballots using the laws on record, instead of the COVID-era rules which rejected less ballots) would have resulted in Trump winning. You are saying a different system (with less racially biased voter suppression) would have resulted in Gore winning.
I was an adult in 2000 and clearly remember the gnashing of teeth from Democrats about how the election was stolen, so I'm less sympathetic to those that make a big deal about Trump's supporters now.
Trump is definitely acting differently than Gore and is behaving very inappropriately. In case that part was in doubt.
I think the thing Trump supporters claim that's especially problematic is not that the change in rules caused a change in results, but claims along the lines of, for instance, boxes of fake ballots were smuggled into election centers, Dominion voting machines were programmed to create fake votes for Biden, etc.—in other words, out-and-out election fraud.
I think I'm making an empirical claim and "they" are making a normative claim?
If you're saying that my claim sounds equally off-the-wall for lack of citation, you could just ask for the cite and I'd give you https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vote2000/report/ch9.htm . Note particularly the section about voter purges.
And, erm, Trump supporters attempted a coup about it, that's utterly incomparable to tooth gnashing and I stand by people who take exception to that.
Try to imagine Donald Trump ever having gone on the public airwaves and said this the day after 5 justices of the Supreme Court had summarily stopped all further reviews and awarded the presidency to his opponent:
Gore, immediately after the SCOTUS ruling, telling a prime-time live audience of tens of millions that he had just personally congratulated "President-elect Bush", and would do his part of certifying the election results, and that "while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it", and more....yes he was better than Trump "in that respect". In the same way that getting one's appendix removed is better than having it burst inside your gut.
Routine peaceful changes of leaders doesn't even require any democracy at all. An oligarchy could simply engage in round-robin cycling of positions, selecting their successors as members in the oligarchy.
Could, but don't. There's Singapore, and one can make arguments that it's happened in Russia and China, but this kind of succession seems to be rare enough that it's not a form of political organisation worth pursuing.
TGGP said oligarchy. I agree that monarchy has been one of the classic stable configurations that lots of different cultures have landed on. But monarchy doesn't enable *routine* peaceful change of leadership.
Monarchy per se doesn't solve the peaceful change of leadership, but monarch as the front end of an oligarchy can, if the oligarchs aren't required to select, e.g., "the eldest son". IIRC in the Anglo-Saxon society they could select anyone who was a son or nephew of the current king, and I wouldn't swear they couldn't range a bit further afield.
claims 17 british monarchs have been murdered. This does not count those who died on the battlefield. Considering that there were (according to Google) 63 english and scottish monarchs this was a dangerous (and not at all stable) job. Also, civil wars over succession were incomparably more common in monarchies than democracies: USA is now quarter of millenia old, and had just one civil war (and it was not even about succession). Monarchies or oligarchies equally stable I think are rather rare: (Tokugawa shogunate is one exception which comes to mind, and which survived for 260 years, though it was not completely peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dky%C5%8D_uprising)
France has had notably more civil wars since its original republican revolution at about the same time as the US (Wikipedia lists 7). I'm not sure using the US as your example of a democracy is any less cherry-picking than using the Tokugawa shogunate as your example of a monarchy. Also, four US presidents have been assassinated in office, which a similar annual rate as British monarchs, especially considering that you are counting two simultaneous monarchies in England and Scotland up until 1707. I acknowledge that it is a much lower rate in terms of murders per office-holder.
I think you need to read a bit of Shakespeare or the history of the Roman Empire. It's true that seems to happen in places we don't pay much attention to, and where we just accept the official histories...but I have strong doubts that it's really that calm.
OTOH, the Anglo-Saxon practice where a "council of elders" (I forget the requirements) selects the next king from a limited slate of contenders USUALLY worked. It guaranteed that the current power structure was already behind the candidate, and allowed any obvious bad apples to be skipped.
Which is part of why Popper favored first-past-the-post over proportional representation. The former allows people to "vote the bastards out" more easily, while the latter typically results in parties forming a coalition.
Given the outcome in China that system seems extremely vulnerable to a leader getting enough of an upper hand over the other factions that they can't stop him from dismantling it.
Your semi-regular reminder that, under the original ancient Greek classification, electing leaders is a mark of oligarchy; a democracy would choose its leaders by lot (for a fixed term, so you still get a routine peaceful change of leaders).
I have lots and lots of criticisms of Al Gore but lumping his response in 2000 with Trump's in 2020 is simply nonserious. On the contrary, Gore's very-public response to the 2000 election result once it was settled is one of the most important acts of statesmanship during our lifetimes.
I agree. There is also the point that if Florida hadn’t been close, Gore wouldn’t have invented a conspiracy theory about a stolen election. In fact, he had conceded before he realized how close it was.
I think "Trump in 2020 or Gore in 2000" suggests an equivalence where none exists, roughly like "unlawful behaviors such as armed robbery or jaywalking".
Gore lost by five electoral votes and Florida by about 570 votes, and decided to work within the system (sue in courts) and eventually lost and conceded.
Trump lost by 74 electoral votes and pushed lies about "election fraud" which incited his followers to try to stop the certification of the election.
ISTM there is some value in powerful people needing to care about what large numbers of people think about their actions, how those actions affect large numbers of people, etc. This won't necessarily give you good governance, but at least it means that the president/governor/mayor has to care that his people are starving or cowering in fear of criminals or whatever, so he has some incentive to want to make things better.
I also think making democracy into some kind of moral ideal is silly. It's a tool to get as good governance as we can, since we don't know how to live without a government and don't have a supply of incorruptible angels to put in charge of it.
"there is some value in powerful people needing to care about what large numbers of people think about their actions"
In my view, this is completely overwhelmed in practice by the ability of powerful people to game the system. The more faith we put into democracy, the more degrees of freedom that officials have to just do whatever they want. Constitutional checks were more effective than voting.
Or far worse, the often horrendously corrupt U.S. 19th century elections. In a way, elections work even when corrupt and fraudulent, as long as both sides have about equal access to it.
Yes, and that is a preventive against civil war. Sufficiently large majorities are going to get their way under *any* political system, if necessary by winning a civil war.
Far better to let them win bloodlessly via an election. Other than that (not inconsiderable!) benefit, I'm not sure there's anything very good about democracy - it certainly doesn't seem to lead to wise governance or honest leaders.
If you take this point of view, there's something to be said for limiting the franchise (or weighing votes) according to "ability to make trouble". It's probably why only landowners and men were allowed to vote - penniless peasants and women don't make civil war very effectively. Or children.
Agreed! To my mind, the main advantage of democracy (largely orthogonal to whether it is classically liberal or not) is by providing a mechanism for bloodlessly transferring power. This isn't _quite_ orthogonal to classical liberalism. There has to be enough freedom of speech for the opposition to campaign, and there has to be either a tradition or an enforced law for the party defeated in the election to at least more-or-less concede, and for the bulk of the populace (or, at least, as you said, potential troublemakers) to view the result as legitimate. I _think_ that that is enough to avoid civil war over power transfer.
The very large set of stuff that commenters have been putting into the classically liberal bucket: rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, trial by jury (oh wait, that has largely been lost to plea bargaining), freedom of religion, right to privacy (oh wait, that isn't in the constitution), freedom to bear arms, are all separable items, present in some more-or-less liberal nations and absent in others.
What? Historically many societies and nations have had routine, peaceful changes of leaders, and they have not been democracies, mostly monarchies. Whereas ever since Aristotle democracy has been agreed as the “rule of the many” phenomenon.
It can also help cut down on particularly egregious corruption, as this might annoy the voters sufficiently - you can't really get what you want through voting, but you can at least get _rid_ of people. Compared to a one-party dictatorships, it tends to result in more _varied_ rulership as well, and this is typically a good thing.
On the whole though, it's just a competition between elites as in any political system, with the electorate being wielded as tools in the competition. The system tends to mean that the losing side won't be persecuted and has a chance of getting back into power later, so this enabled a peaceful transfer of power. Without this, any potential transfer of power is a do or die situation, as the loser will be persecuted for certain, and this in turns makes a peaceful transfer a lot less likely.
There's a related trend that's becoming ever more annoying to me, where people seem to be confusing 'consultation' with 'getting my way'. If a decision, say in the city government about a zoning decision or a road use change doesn't go the way one wants, one can say 'There wasn't adequate consultation!' and have it published all over the local news.
No, actually, that the decision didn't go your way doesn't mean you weren't adequately consulted. Just as likely is that they listened to you and decided to you were wrong, or that they were going to prioritise other people's wishes.
That one's more a product of the specific veto points created by administrative laws like NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act) and CEQA (it's extreme California state version). The courts aren't allowed to strike down a zoning decision because it's wrong (that would be substituting their policy judgment for those of the People's democratically elected representatives), but they are allowed to strike down a zoning decision because the agency failed to follow certain byzantine processes to the letter. Alleging a failure to adequately consult with a necessary stakeholder is one of the easiest ways to throw a wrench in the works.
My personal definition of "democracy" centres on how much people can choose their government and how much that government is empowered to enact their will.
So I don't think a state religion is inherently more democratic than freedom of religion. But a system that allows the government to institute a state religion if that's what people want is more democratic than one that doesn't.
A system of direct democracy that requires unanimity is both 100% democratic and guarantees freedom of religion as long as at least one person wants it.
No downsides to such a system as far as I can see.
I would wonder if a "system of direct democracy that requires unanimity" can work for very large populations. As a marriage counseling has found, it does not work for groups of two.
There is exactly one way I know of to get 100% of citizens of a significant-sized community to agree on every detail of what the government should and should not spend money on.
That way is to butcher citizens who disagree until all of them have changed their vote and/or been butchered.
A variant of such a system was in place in the Commonwealth for more than 150 years. Its main downside was the resulting paralysis; in time, in became nearly impossible to pass any new legislation. Many historians believe that this system was one of the principal reasons why the Commonwealth lost its independence at the end of 18th century.
So if the State is trying to impose a state religion, and 99 people vote "yes" and one person votes "no", there is freedom of religion.
That sounds great. But what about if the State is trying to get nuclear power plants built? 99 vote yes, 1 votes no, no nuclear power plants. We can argue over "are nuclear power plants safe?" but the downside is one person can hold up something. and maybe their motives aren't good: they are waiting to be bribed into changing their vote, or they are selfish about something, or they are making a bad decision.
It's tricky to balance between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, which is why present democratic systems are as described: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
To be clear I wasn't seriously proposing such a system. However, what if there was a clause saying the 99 could always secede with their share of the land and re-form as a state of like-minded people?
That was the system used in Poland-Lithuania. The rule of unanimity meant that nothing, however necessary, ever actually got done, especially once neighbouring countries realised they only had to bribe one single deputy to paralyse the legislature.
It seems that most of the commenters on this subthread overlook that fact that not all decisions in a democracy must be voted on. Private property, markets, etc. anyone?
What's the point of a "personal definition" of a word? Language describes the way people communicate with one another. Why use a word in a way that's different than the way it's used by almost everyone else?
Everyone has a personal definition for all but the most trivial concepts. Most people don't realize that they do until they run into someone with a different one, like with accents. Those who recognize this sometimes choose to make their definition explicit so disagreements can be more substantial than "is a sub a sandwich?"
What does it mean for the people to want something? A simple majority?
Are there any limits? Does it make sense to separate a public sphere, where we negotiate how to use shared resources, and a private sphere, where we can experiment or be different?
Kind of depends on how much the public chooses to care about an issue. If 30% of people want policy A and 5% want policy B and everyone else doesn’t really care either way, I count that as the people wanting policy A.
If it’s a contentious issue where virtually everyone has an opinion, yes, a simple majority works.
I don’t make exceptions. All limits on the powers of a legitimate government acting with the consent of their people are undemocratic.
There absolutely can be distinctions between spheres where government can let people do their own thing and spheres where societal values are enforced. But what those distinctions are is itself a matter that is open to democratic choice.
E.g. A society majority disapproves of spanking children. It doesn’t necessarily follow that spanking must be made illegal - people must also agree that this is an area where societal values trump parental discretion.
This framework has some hidden assumptions, or is incomplete. Are “policies A and B” mutually exclusive and exhaustive? Do “the people” want one or the other for purely intrinsic reasons, or as a means for pursuing some end that they might succeed or fail in accomplishing which is the actual desired outcome? Do either of the policies violate prior commitments?
But I am moving the goalposts, aren’t I?
If 30% want A, 10% want B, 50% don’t care, and 10% are diametrically opposed to both A and B for some reason, what does “the people” want?
Going further into the weeds, I think laws should be decided by some form of representative democracy. Many issues are messy and complicated, with many different possible options. Many issues are boring and arcane, with citizens mostly having no opinion or interest in forming one. But if you can form a government that retains the confidence of the people with how you handle the things they don’t have clear unified opinions on and is responsive to their concerns on the issues where they do, that’s good enough in my book.
Do you think laws should be decided by some form of representative democracy because this is an abstract principle that we know is good by some a priori argument? Or because that is what the empirical data seem to indicate? If the issue came under careful empirical study, and the results indicated that representative democracy was only mediocre at getting things right, would that change your conclusion?
“ if you can form a government that retains the confidence of the people “
Another difficult to parse concept. How do we know when the government does or doesn’t retain the confidence of the people? There are always at least a few complainers, and also at least a few fanboys. How do we draw the line?
How does it help me to figure out what “the people” want if 30% want A, 10% want B, 50% don’t care, and 10% are diametrically opposed to both A and B for some reason?
People are not a unified thing. We can at that best describe them statistically.
All of the complaints you raise are reasons why I think representative democracy is the way to go. It is a system where the people in charge are heavily incentivised to get the answers to these difficult questions right.
“ what those distinctions are is itself a matter that is open to democratic choice.”
Shouldn’t you say, what those distinctions are *ought to be* open to democratic choice? There have certainly been instances in history when those distinctions were not made democratically.
Can we know what ought to be without checking to see if it is supported by the majority? It is possible to interpret what you wrote as a sort of democratic positivism, where what is good is defined entirely by what is popular. By those criteria, when slavery was popular, it was good, and it became evil only after a sufficient number of persons were persuaded that it was evil. Or in a less extreme form, slavery was always evil, but when it was popular, the government was obligated to adopt it as a policy.
Presumably you do not mean to bite that bullet, but how do we pull it back from there? There seem to be some historical examples where popular policies were mistaken in important ways. Is there just nothing we can/should do to try to avoid that?
I guess the alternative/steelman is to think that we can know that the metaprinciple is true/obligatory independently of popular opinion, and then use popular opinion to derive the rest? But that admits that there are relevant criteria beyond popular opinion, and so does not preclude the possibility that there are more relevant principles that should affect the outcome.
No, I’m totally willing to bite the bullet of “slavery was always evil, but when it was popular government was obligated to allow it.”
If we want laws to simply reflect what is good and right, the clearly optimal governance system is to make me personally god-emperor and I can then rule on everything according to my own moral compass, which is of course the correct one.
But if we make the concession to reality that I may perhaps not be right about everything, or that there may be other people who disagree with me, or that it may be unworkable to have a system that tries to enforce standards that only the god-emperor believes in, you need a system that takes account of everyone’s views. Democracy does that the most cleanly.
Of course it’s possible for a mass of people to jointly agree to commit horrors together. But it’s also possible for a god-emperor to commit horrors. And the range of horrors that can win the support of one man is wider than the range of horrors that can win the support of the whole community.
What is the argument for biting the bullet, for saying government must do evil if that's what the people want? Government is exempt from morality? Government is merely an instrumentality, and so it can do for persons things they could not morally do themselves? These are a bit strawmanish, please supply the steelman.
The argument is that evil is in the eye of the beholder. I certainly would like to impose my own moral standards on everyone - for example, by banning the horror of murdering babies in the womb. To me, that is an evil greater than slavery ever was.
You might disagree with my morality there. Or perhaps you might object to my moral view that the stock market is evil. Or perhaps you might object to my view that emitting more carbon dioxide is the right moral choice as it will enhance the growth of plants and give us cheaper crops. Or any one of my other idiosyncratic views.
But if we aren’t going to adopt my moral standards, then whose? Yours? No thanks.
So maybe the best answer is for us to try to have a system that tries to account for everyone’s views as much as possible. We can at least agree slavery is bad? Ok, slavery is banned. Everyone else thinks we should reduce CO2 emissions? Ok, I lose on that one. Abortion is contentious? Ok, let’s have some elections and see who wins.
It’s a practical system for dealing with the reality that different people want different things.
Some egalitarian-minded people might think it is unfair or dangerous if individual people or tiny groups get a lot of power over others in society. Those individuals might get their power from non-governmental means, like running the world's largest social media website or just having a lot of money. The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media sites, or the ways in which they spend their billions of dollars.
On the whole I like the lines Scott is drawing in OP, but also have some sympathy with egalitarians who want to talk about powerful private actors being "held accountable".
The American federal government spends $60 billion per year on foreign aid. I'm pretty sure that does not include Ukraine.
No idea how much Bill Gates spends on "helping the global poor" but it's not that much. It may be better targeted, although that depends on your opinion of Gates' judgement.
Attempting to generalize that, it sounds like you're proposing we use "accountable" language for everyone with power, regardless of how they got it, rather than only for agents who have been entrusted with power by some principal?
When you say "trolley problem type logic", I think you mean externalities? That is, costs of your actions that fall on people who aren't party to those actions.
Glad I could help clarify, but I think I like the agents version better. It has clear answers for who you are accountable to (the principal) and why (an implied contract).
You could tell a story where powerful people are accountable to the collective for allowing them to keep whatever powers they've got, but at that point you're back to giving the government an implied veto on everything that everyone does.
We definitely do want the government to stop people from taking certain actions (e.g. murder). And perhaps that even means not allowing people to be billionaires; I'm not sure. But I'd prefer to have a story where the government is choosing to place coercive restrictions on people in specific cases that need to be justified by strong reasons, rather than a story where everyone's a slave by default and you owe the government for doing you the favor of letting you keep your money.
Not so much a slave as a hunter-gatherer or Mad Max nomad. Government's doing you the favor of encouraging that money exist at all, reliably retain more value than the paper it's printed on (a baseline Somali shillings fell to). "Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's," as the saying goes.
I'd be a lot more comfortable with billionaires existing if the business models involved, and broader distribution of wealth, seemed consistent with them having some proper personal claim to adding that much value, rather than effectively extorting a few bucks each from everyone else in the world by occupying the natural niche of a new public utility and then deliberately poisoning it.
Go ahead and let profit-seekers find it first, prove the viability, scale it up, collect some rent and prestige for that legitimate accomplishment in making the world a better place. Only take the reins away and make it a public utility once they start to squeeze by charging more while delivering lower quality.
If the public sector grabs too quickly, that'll just end up subsidizing scammers and megalomaniacs with utopian plans which would fall apart if actually attempted.
Money does not require government - although fiat money does. As the government's power wanes, so does its money - which is what happened to Somali shillings, Confederate dollars, the Chinese empire's experiments with paper currency, etc.
Money does require government. Trade goods don't require government. Money is, in essence, a government controlled trade good. Value of that trade good is a separate thing. Government (partially) stabilize the value of the trade good "money" by demanding payment in money for services, like not stealing your stuff.
It's justifiable if it is part of a reasonable system that applies to everyone, e.g. some form of progressive taxation is fine as a means to avoid billionairs aquiring too much money and power.
Such systematic rules is and should be set by a democratic elected government to defend the interest of the general public (that may not be in line with the interest of the billionaire) within reason.
Yeah it's not as if Jeff Bezos employs hundreds of thousands of people (millions, indirectly) and provides a plethora of goods faster and cheaper than otherwise possible to hundreds of millions. He's in it for himself, absolutely, but indirectly this benefits the public much more than politicians who supposedly (big if there) act in the interest of the general public. The marginal dollar Bezos keeps is much better spent than the marginal dollar he gives to the government.
Is that just a rhetorical flourish meaning that you think so little of the justifications you've heard so far that it's "as if" they didn't exist, or are you actually predicting that your philosophical opponents will be unable to articulate any justification at all?
Facebook only has power because users signed up for it and gave away their data. Isn't that being "entrusted with power by some principal", even if it's decentralized?
And by that token, there's also a decentralized form of accountability. We could each decide not to use Facebook any longer if we dislike what they've done with our data.
I understand that might not be the right solution when we're dealing with a company the size of Facebook, but I at least think it's worth thinking through when and why the accountability of the normal free market is insufficient.
Back when Elon was considering whether to buy Twitter, I remember others calling into question Twitter's accountability. It struck me as odd that a private company with private servers was being treated as a "public square".
I eventually realized the sleight of hand: the typical Twitter-user thinks they're the customer. But in fact, most users use the service for free. The actual customers are advertisers like Walmart and McDonald's. And therefore, Twitter is held accountable by advertisers. If Twitter-users want their tweets to be held "accountable (to the userbase)", they can spin up their own server, or sign up for a rival service where the userbase constitutes the revenue. It comes down to the Golden Rule: "he who has the gold, maketh the rules".
Obviously, Elon has attempted to make users shoulder more of the burden. And it has not been popular. Yet the userbase never seems to realize that, if users want Twitter to be accountable to the userbase, the most natural solution is to bear the costs themselves.
"The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media sites"
They say that, but I'm not so sure it's true. Not that long ago people thought Twitter was too big to fail. Elon Musk is certainly putting that claim to the test.
Give it time. His change to require logging into Twitter to view tweets was a massive blunder IMHO, as it isolates tweeters somewhat from the "outside world". Not everyone wants to be actively involved with it.
(I read somewhere a few days ago that he has since rowed back on this, but I'm still seeing redirects to a login page when I try looking at tweets from people whose feed I'm sure used to be visible without logging in.)
Of course, requiring tweeters to make a small extra payment for their tweets to be visible to non-logged-in readers might be the opposite of a blunder, an inspired move that would rake in vast sums, because no doubt every Twitter user wants their output to be visible to the largest audience.
- via google, find a specific tweet that mentions the user
- open that tweet and then click the user’s handle
Even once you get there, its now sorted by popularity rather than time. Basically unusable. I’ve generally been impressed by spacex and tesla, so the poverty of the twitter situation is confusing.
Nitter ( e.g. https://twiiit.com/SpaceX ) seems to succeed at chronological feed, though (it did not at the height of the turmoil)
SpaceX is about solving hard technical problems, including some never-done-before, mainly with large and sophisticated customers. I am awed by what the team has achieved, and I am sure that Musk handling of SpaceX has high value above replacement.
Tesla also has some hard technical problems to solve, but lots of customers, but at least each unit sale is large. They achieved some impressive manufacturing feats, they sometimes have issues with «polish» kind of stuff when scaling up, and there are quite a few questionable customer service and advertisement positioning (Autopilot being closer to real prescribed use of autopilot than to what people think autpilot does, and Tesla doubling down without explaining much…) stories. Getting electric cars scale better than others helps, though.
Starlink is probably close to Tesla, smaller unit sales/subscriptions but also fewer dimensions people care about.
Twitter… is much more about mass-scale public relations with relatively low revenue per customer (be it subscriber or advertiser). And technical achievements are not really unique. And Elon Musk starts with a user base acquired using a specific kind of positioning. Yeah, so all the questionable positioning things are now the main story and not annoying side issues like for Tesla, and it is hard to offset it with unique tour-de-force, and there is no time for a technical tour-de-force… Well, maybe some repositioning will eventually succeed (but that takes time), maybe not…
Fwiw, Twitter sort of blocked me from anonymous use for months before Elon bought it. (You could see a handful of tweets before getting a mandatory login popup.) Then they removed that restriction for a while (you could x the login popup), but now it's back (nothing shown unless login, though I think you can see tweets linked externally). I sure did prefer the unrestricted anon usage myself.
Then again, it's now the same policy as Facebook and Instagram, isn't it? For better or worse.
It's a balance that other media has mostly failed at. How do you a) make enough money to keep the lights on and b) keep enough people looking at your stuff to keep doing (a)?
Paywalls so far are only working for a few newspapers and TV stations.
Has Twitter ever made a profit to the point of returning a dividend? Or has their stock value been based on "bigger sucker" theory for its whole existence?
I'm not saying Twitter is definitely going under. But it certainly seems more plausible than it did a few years ago (though I never took seriously the idea that it, or any other company, would be able to remain dominant forever).
>The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media site
Ah yes, the same egalitarians who defend social media companies' "moderation" policies (i.e. censorship of insufficiently liberal viewpoints) on the grounds of these sites being...private property.
Yeah, the same people that whined about how evil it was for billionaires like Elon Musk owning "public squares" like Twitter only to gleefully flock to Threads as soon as Zuck winked in their directions.
Because this isn't 1930 and the (Western) left is no longer dedicated to opposing the corporations or the capitalist class on principle. Rather, they support the capitalists on their side in the Culture War (like Zuck), and oppose the capitalists on the other side (like Musk).
You can argue that this is a bad state of affairs, but I don't think there's any inherent contradiction here. It would be hypocritical if they wanted the government to intervene against Musk while giving Zuck a pass, but most progressives weren't asking for that. Initially, they wanted Twitter to reject Musk's offer, and now that he does own the site, they're just hoping that it fails. There's no hypocrisy in wanting (brand you like) to succeed while hoping (brand you dislike) goes out of business, that's capitalism working as intended.
I've never seen the Left defend Zuck, or consider him on the Left's side of culture-war issues. I don't mean to say this doesn't happen, because any possible combination of views exists on Twitter, but I'm doubtful that's a mainstream position.
Those same "some people" who are now saying that being a Twitter blue check only means that you have a name and address, but who previously were using their blue check status as "I'm right, you're wrong, and how you tell is because I have a blue check which means I'm an expert and a good person and graded reliable and better than you".
I'd love Reddit's Anti-Evil Operations to be accountable, who decided on that name for a start? If that wasn't putting a thumb on the scale from the outset, I don't know what is.
You don't have to be a woke scold to see the power difference between Mark Zuckerberg and the average schmuck on the street, to see the power that the former has over the latter, and to want to consider whether the former should have some kind of accountability for the impact of their actions on the latter.
I've read a lot of Twitter, both before and after Elon, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I never, and I mean never, saw anybody in with an old blue check say anything like what you're claiming. They might appeal to their authority as an expert on something, and back up their _existence_ with the check, but that's different. It's a big place and others might have seen otherwise, I guess.
I get this, but at the same time, the Biden Administration is a pretty small group of people with a lot of power over others in society. It sort of seems like the egalitarian folks you're referring do not actually mind having a tiny group of people wield great power over others; they just prefer that power be obtained democratically, which, as Scott mentioned in the OP, isn't as desirable as popular sentiment would make it out to be.
It seems useful to distinguish between the adjectives "liberal" and "democratic," as the two are sometimes conflated. Forcing the minority to follow the religion of the majority, per the wishes of the majority, is democratic and illiberal. This usage allows the terms to simply be descriptive without being value judgements. In this way, they can be used relatively consistently by people of different values.
>I think the word “accountable” should be reserved for people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them
This, however, seems like an unwieldy redefinition that is not at all consistent with common usage. People frequently refer to "personal accountability," using it basically synonymously with "personal responsibility."
It seems like the stated objection to the term "accountable" should also apply to the terms "responsible" and "responsibility."
Now I see that you alluded to this point in stating:
> I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
Other commenters note that the common denominator is people with power over others. The criminals are held accountable when they use their physical power to victimize others.
But fundamentally, (as Reich is very much aware) all actions that have an affect are "powerful." Defining "accountable" in terms of power that one has over others, doesn't preclude the application to things like private speech. Those who apply it there could say that more power may be vested in a blogger, than in some minor political figure.
Ultimately, I think the issue is that people disagree about what people's responsibilities are and who should hold them to account. But I don't see this being resolvable semantically.
Just as people disagree about e.g. whether "good parenting" requires parents to abstain from corporal punishment or to engage in it, but the semantic ambiguity is just an underlying value disagreement, and wouldn't be resolved by some declaration that "good parenting" means one or the other.
Exactly. There is a vast literature on the distinction between liberalism and democracy (or, between "liberal democracy " and "illiberal democracy"). See, eg, practicallly everything written about Hungary under Orban.
>It seems useful to distinguish between the adjectives "liberal" and "democratic,"
'Liberal' is a word bordering on meaninglessness, even moreso than 'democratic'. Especially since most people and organizations described as 'liberal' are fine with the imposition of beliefs onto minorities (or majorities!).
Exactly this - real semantic agreement is downstream of real values agreement.
With that in mind, it seems to me that "hold criminals accountable" works as a concept because there there is a venerable enough tradition that we can assume complete consensus that society gets a say on whether murdering people is acceptable.
yeah...I used to read Scott for the effort he would put into steelmanning his opponents before tearing them down. I don't know if it's just recency bias or if there really has been much less of him doing that, but it does feels like it.
The argument he is disagreeing with is pretty bad though. A streelman if that argument would be to not make it and to try to make your point a different way, but if he did that as a streelman it would be totally irrelevant to what is being discussed in the article.
This is one of the reasons I think steelmans are overvalued. Generally, it is important to respond to the arguments that your opponent actually makes, not an idealized argument that they might have made if they thought more like you. One of the other reasons I think steelmanning is overvalued is because it leads to people suggesting that you are obligated to do it, even in situations where it isn’t appropriate.
I think there's a pretty obvious sense in which he failed to steelman it. Unlike a book or speech, certain technologies are so powerful that it is easy to make an argument that only properly "accountable" entities should be allowed to produce them. We are fast approaching a world in hobbyists can produce deadly novel pathogens with easily attainable technologies and few specialized skills.
Part of the social contract is accepting that liberties have trade-offs. In a state of nature, the biggest and strongest man can kill, rape, and steal from anyone he wants. While in this scenario, he is most free, his freedom restricts the liberties of others. Thus, we have laws giving the government a monopoly on violence. In one sense, this is totalitarian, as we have removed a freedom that many cultures historically valued quite heavily. I think this is a good trade-off, and that it's analogous to the freedom to make home baked superpathogens. If what Scott argues elsewhere on this blog is true, so it may be with sufficiently advanced AI.
I'm not saying I agree with the above account, but its the kind of argument I typically think of Scott as entertaining.
Does realizing that many at the time presented the printing press as dangerous and so warranting suppression and centralized control in the hands of the established powers change your mind?
To reiterate, my objection is not that I think Scott is incorrect, it's that he failed to steelman in a way he often does.
But no, I don't think that refutes the steelmanned position. We regularly accept restrictions on some liberties (e.g. murder & stealing) to protect other liberties (e.g. not-being-murdered and not-having-your-stuff-stolen). Some actions have sufficiently large negative externalities that we accept they are better restricted than not. If you accept that unaligned AI could pose an existential threat to humanity (as I believe Scott does), limiting the freedom to create an unaligned AI may be a reasonable tradeoff.
My criticism is actually just restricted to your phrase, "unlike a book." Specifically, that all your arguments generalize farther than you (i.e., your hypothetical steelman) might like.
Same tech that enables home baked superpathogens could enable rapid institutional production of corresponding vaccines rendering them toothless, and deeper insights into immunology yielding lasting cures for allergies, autoimmune disorders, etc.
Fortunately in this case defense also pays better, because a well-treated population is a source of ongoing added value, while a super-pathogen devalues itself almost by definition - far too many free samples. Better compensation and an interesting technical challenge attracts more of the clever, ambitious, best-in-field types, which can then outweigh the intrinsic difficulty of the task.
Nobody knows what these guys were up to! (I'm pretty sure it wasn't superpathogens, more like an unlicenced lab that was doing or trying to do the same sort of work as licenced labs.)
I don’t think that is meaningfully related to the point he is making. If he included this sort of steelman in this post, it would have detracted quite significantly from the quality of the post by being massively off topic.
Scott has written extensively about AI in this past but given that this post isn’t actually about AI, the insistence that he ought to have included this idea seems pretty bizzare to me.
Can you explain what you mean by this? It’s sounds like you are arguing that if you can apply the concept of accountability to AI, then AI is an inherently part of accountability, but that is backwards.
"Part of the social contract is accepting that liberties have trade-offs. In a state of nature, the biggest and strongest man can kill, rape, and steal from anyone he wants."
Unless his victim has a pointy stick. Or his victim has friends who knows where he sleeps.
Here's one part, fairly randomly chosen, where I felt Scott didn't do justice to the argument.
"I agree that you can define “undemocratic” such that it includes anyone spending money or trying to improve society outside of government. But if you define it this way, and also try to correct undemocratic things, you get totalitarianism..."
This doesn't seem like a bad definition of democratic to me; it is a fact that some individuals have larger sway on society than others due to their money, and you could say that this is undemocratic. The issue I would take here is that *not everything needs to be democratic*.
Instead Scott has snuck in 'also try to correct undemocratic things', and uses this to show that it leads to a bad state of affairs. Alright, but what if we don't want to correct undemocratic things in such situations?
This might seem like a quibble to you, but my point is that it is a bit unkind to the person that Scott is quoting who defined democracy in this way.
You're right, also in that this doesn't directly have to do with steelmanning.
A better expression of my feelings would be to say, perhaps, that those who are arguing for the position that Scott is arguing against are clearly doing so because of some principle they feel is really getting trampled on. It's true that private individuals with a lot of wealth command more sway than the average person, and it's understandable that this goes against some belief that every person should have equal say in society - the same belief that democracy springs from.
Now some people note that this is a problem, that democracy is good. That's ridiculous, says Scott - democracy of this kind would lead to totalitarianism! A more considered answer might be that it's true - this is an unfortunate state of affairs that some people have more influence than others - what should we do about it? Is it really an undesirable state of the world, and if so is there some better steps we can take towards equity than shouting 'democracy' all the time? If not, why not?
I'm not sure if I've been clear enough about what struck me in this essay - it's true that the example above was a bad one, but it struck me because of the way he dismissed the other side's concerns. Even if their proposed solution is bad does not mean that there is no problem.
When I hear people talking about steelmanning like this, it really feels like they're simply annoyed Scott isn't making more concessions towards a view they generally approve.
Speaking for myself, my own views on the issues being considered here align with Scott's, and I share the anxiety about people who want centralized control in the name of accountability, but technically a steelmanning is indeed possible here that is not "sanewashing", and doesn't seem to have been attempted. This was the case with that disability post also, but Scott made up for that one by quoting from enough comments that did the steelmanning to a good extent.
To be fair Scott got a lot of pushback for it, and yet he published a good number of dissenting notes in his follow-up. I can't think of pretty much any other celebrity who does that.
When you write and publish stuff online (particularly under your own name, including venerable exceptions like "Scott Alexander"), you're always 100% accountable, because people can and will stop reading you the instant you stop being interesting.
Democracy by itself is nothing special for the reasons you gave in the article. As the old saying goes, it's just two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. What we should value is LIBERAL democracy, because only this protects the rights and freedoms of everyone, including minorities.
Ultimately, the best liberal democracy is a minimal one in the sense that it allows the most individuals to chose their own path without requiring these individual personal choices to be submitted for voter denial or approval.
Because some issues, as a last resort, can only be resolved collectively by voting. There has to be a fallback decision-making process when individual decisions may clash with other individuals' decisions.
Despite being widely claimed (and believed), I consider that a dubious assertion, but that's actually not relevant to the point I was making: advocating for a "liberal democracy" overspecifies your preferences. If all you care about is the "liberal" part, why question the manner in which it is provided?
I also like democracy on moral grounds, I just don't think it's self-justifying. That's why I want a democratic government to still be constrained by a constitution or some informal equivalent.
Suppose I strongly believe we should drive on the right side of the road and you strongly believe we should drive on the left side of the road. How do you propose a liberal society can resolve this conflict without a democratic vote of some kind?
A council of around 15 self appointing highly respected individuals (think supreme court) all coming from the same "liberal" background who make all descisions.
But also, are there example of liberal non-democracies that stayed that way longer than the reign of a single ruler? None come to mind for me, though I'm not an expert.
I don't know whether Humphrey Appleby is correct about Singapore, but, just on probabilistic grounds, I suspect that there has been at least one case of two generations of monarchs who happened to favor liberal practices (for their time - and what counts as liberal is still quite ambiguous today) in their realm.
My answer is that insofar as a government already exists (which I think liberalism presupposes), a say in that government is itself a fundamental right of self-determination. The human condition is about more than negative rights.
But it’s a really good question that I’ve been trying to work out for a good long while now (that is, way before you asked it).
Orwellian reasons, primarily. Over hundreds of years that word has accumulated universally positive connotations, so anything that can smuggle in the connotations of democracy, no matter how totalitarian, can claim political legitimacy and be believed by many.
I never found the "two wolves and a lamb" thing very persuasive. If society is two wolves and a lamb, then the wolves are going to eat the lamb. No "system of government" will change that.
- Liberal democracy is two wolves and a lamb writing a constitution where it says you can't kill and eat lambs, then the Supreme Court decides in a 2-1 decision that it doesn't apply to *that* lamb.
- A dictatorship is one of the wolves being the dictator and they eat the lamb. A dictatorship where the lamb is the dictator, there's immediately a coup.
- A stateless society is ... well it's what happens in nature. I.e. the wolves eat the lamb.
- Someone will say "The second amendment!" OK well if lambs could operate firearms they wouldn't fit as the weak ones in this metaphor.
But usually (insofar as wolves/lamb is a useful metaphor for human society at all), the lambs outnumuber the wolves, so basing power on raw numbers tends to be more pro-lamb than alternatives.
"Someone will say "The second amendment!" OK well if lambs could operate firearms they wouldn't fit as the weak ones in this metaphor."
Well no, it demonstrates that having multiple sources of power are better than one that can be captured and abused. It's not about the lamb being weak, it's about the lamb being outnumbered.
The problem with multiple sources of power is that when those sources of power are captured, then the abusers of that power are that much harder to root out.
This is just a consequence of the analogy being bad. In real life there ARE multiple sources of power, people aren't uniformly wolves or lambs. Taking the example at face value, if the lambs were stronger but outnumbered (EDIT meant to say if the *wolves* were stronger but outnumbered) - or perhaps alternatively if it was one wolf and two lambs - then again the wolf will eat the lambs.
In particular I'd say that democracy makes "having more people on your side" a (larger) source of power, the same way "having more money" or "having more capacity to commit violence" or whatever else is.
There's also the question of whether you're actually adding a cross-cutting power hierarchy, or reinforcing a preexisting one. Part of the appeal of democracy is the idea that it is cross-cutting, i.e., without democracy the power resides in a small number of powerful people. I think the way guns works here is probably complicated and varies depending on time and place.
“A wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him: “Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.”
“Indeed,” bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, “I was not then born.”
Then said the Wolf, “You feed in my pasture.”
“No, good sir,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.”
Again said the Wolf, “You drink of my well.”
“No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.”
Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.”
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.”
Real hot take: wolves are the good guys in the story.
It's not like wolves eat lambs just to be dicks about it, they have to in order to survive. Meanwhile the whole reason for this specific analogy - and not lions and gazelles or something - is that the *humans* are keeping the lambs. Y'know, to eat them. It's not really wolves vs lambs, it's wolves vs humans, fighting over the right to eat the lambs!
And unlike the wolves, we don't actually *have* to eat meat, ever.
As a cat, I am sympathetic to the arguments of predators, but I don't ascribe moral superiority being a carnivore, and I don't concoct transparently self-serving rationalizations for doing so.
I'm failing to see how the fable illustrates the moral. It appears to show that the tyrant may well fail to find a pretext for his tyranny, but he won't care.
<i>- A dictatorship is one of the wolves being the dictator and they eat the lamb. A dictatorship where the lamb is the dictator, there's immediately a coup.</i>
Unless the lamb can convince the dictator wolf to spare it. Historically minorities have often done better under monarchy or dictatorship than under democracy, because it's easier to convince one person not to oppress you than to convince 51% of the entire country.
"Ultimately, the best liberal democracy is a minimal one in the sense that it allows the most individuals to chose their own path without requiring these individual personal choices to be submitted for voter denial or approval."
Until the individuals go to court to have it made law that their individual personal choices be approved by society at large.
1. I encounter libertarians who want a constitution that strongly limits government or insist that the US constitution actually does limit government in ways that would make most of modern government illegal. They are saying that the population can vote a non-libertarian into power, but that leader would have no ability to do anything non-libertarian. This strikes me as undemocratic!
2. I have a hard time saying the US is undemocratic (or less democratic) because a majority cannot impose a state religion.
I struggle to reconcile 1 and 2. Thoughts from the crowd?
My only thought is that functioning democracies require freedom of conscience for the mechanics of democracy to work. If the government can arrest people for wrongthink, it can solidify power forever, so for democracy to survive long-term there have to be certain things (particularly related to freedom of speech and assembly) that the majority don't abrogate. Religion sort of falls under this banner.
1. Of course it's undemocratic! "Majoritarianism" is not generally a libertarian value.
2. Could you elaborate on why? The answer "yes, it's less democratic, but it's good because … something something fundamental rights, dangers of populist demagoguery" is pretty middle-of-the-road.
The US wasn't intended to be and never has been a pure democracy. The Constitution grants the government specific powers and the legislators and chief executive are democratically accountable (or at least that's the idea). Outside of the sphere of influence of government decisions are made by individuals and groups of individuals and the norms, institutions, etc. that emerge in society.
You can't maximize two variables simultaneously. So if you can imagine valuing two things (like personal liberty and majoritarian rule), they may conflict!
Life is sometimes too complicated to be solved using the Kuhn-Tucker conditions, and that's okay.
One problem with this is that "personal liberty" and "majoritarian rule" are in different categories. "Personal liberty" is an outcome of government policy, and "majoritarian rule" is a decisionmaking process for government policy. It is indeed possible that you could maximize both, but only if the majority wants to maximize "personal liberty".
And of course people have different definitions of "personal liberty" to the point that it's practically synonymous with "good". So this really comes down to people asking "do we want good government or majoritarian government", which only makes sense as a choice if you think you can wave a magic wand and get "good government".
I'm not sure it affects the calculus that the two are in different categories. By way of example, we could imagine I'm choosing a restaurant for dinner with my friends. I could make a choice and demand everyone follow me (a worse process, but perhaps a better outcome for me), or I could put it up for a vote and risk going somewhere I like less (a better process, but perhaps a worse outcome for me). I have to navigate this choice virtually every time I dine out and I suspect others do as well.
To your second point, personal liberty is certainly a good. It's not the only good. So if I want to drive on the left side of the road in a country that drives on the right, most societies will understandably restrict my personal liberty, because it conflicts with another good -- safety. Yet those same societies will decide against safety in favor of liberty on other issues.
You don't end up with one maximized good; you end up with a bundle of goods. Trying to decide what's in that bundle is the tricky part!
I think its completely fair to say “I wish the USA had a Constitution that would make the country more democratic, as well as allowing the federal government greater power over various facets of law in the country.”
However the Libertarians are correct that the Constitution which actually exists drastically limits the scope/purview of the federal government and sets up many checks against pure democracy being the sole mechanism for the operation of the federal government.
Libertarians are also correct that much of the modern federal government overreaches the powers vested to it. There’s example of all three federal branches assuming powers that are legally vested in the States. Judicial: Roe v Wade. Executive: Vietnam “police action” (presidential war powers more broadly). Legislative: Gun Laws. A libertarian may tend to take an absolutist view to the 10th Amendment, that all powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the state. I would agree that many of the alphabet agencies are not legal (Dept. of Ed for example).
Amending the Constitution is hard but its been done many times. However it exists so that the rights which were at the time of their enshrinement supported so overwhelmingly cannot be abridged with a simple majority willy-nilly. Its totally fair to complain about the US Constitution and hope to be free of its yoke. But the ways to do it are either by amending it with a supermajority, or deposing it from rulership via war/revolution. I would find both of those options as morally legitimate. However usurping it via bare-majority legislative process is clearly unconstitutional (illegal) and I find to be a cheater and crooks way of governing the state.
We saw what the States did when left to their own devices (slavery, then segregation and oppression), so the central Gov is rightly always going to keep the leash short and yank it whenever necessary.
What if most people wanted slavery, and only a couple of states didn't? Sounds like you'd love to see the central Gov yank that leash and enforce slavery. SMH
The central Gov is usually more enlightened than the provincials. For instance, most US citizens in the early 60s probably didn't want the CIvil RIghts Bill. But the Gov knew which side of history would be right, and forced it through anyway.
A more recent example is gay rights and gay marriage. Voters continuously rejected these measures, so it took central Gov action to secure these minority rights.
Taking a greater scope. An empire losing influence is almost always bad for minorities in the regions it used to govern, the Balkans being a notable example.
On the contrary, the central Gov has been brutalizing provincials for millennia, from the ancients in China, Persia, Rome, Egypt, and pre-Columbian America, to the modern central Gov in... all the same places. Your specific examples are wrong and actually cut against your argument -- most Americans approved of the Civil Rights Act, and as for gay marriage you may recall that Obama was against it, even as many provincials from San Francisco to Dallas to New York just wanted the right to run their "provinces" in accordance with their values.
I'm not trying to change your mind here. Just consider that you should be a little less confident about your conclusions, and ask more questions.
>the central Gov has been brutalizing provincials for millennia
So given the option, would you prefer to wake up tomorrow as a provincial citizen of the Roman/Abbasid/Han Empire, or in the fiefdom of some local warlord after those states collapsed?
The terms usually given to the periods following the end of these strong centralized powers ("Warring States", "Dark Ages"), hints that utopia did not ensue.
And while Obama may have been (publicly) against gay marriage, he sure did appoint the kind of judges and officials who were likely to make it happen.
Gay marriage isn't a great example- at the time the Supreme Court finally made the decision there'd been substantial popular majority in support for a while, it was just the legislatures that were lagging behind (including the federal legislature).
So you want a central government that will yank the leash only as long as it does the yanking to people you find objectionable - the provincials.
The problem with that is, when you build a weapon, you cannot be sure you will be the only one to ever use or keep that weapon (see the atomic bomb). As soon as there is enough of a shift, the state government will be "unenlightened" just like the grubby provincials and start yanking the leash on *your* collar.
Yup! Political winds are very gusty, and can shift unpredictably and with little warning. The "right side of history" is just the ideology of the most recent victor.
Slavery was federally/constitutionally legal and only illegal in one state at the time of writing the Constitution (Vermont). Furthermore segregation of the civil service was enforced federally by Woodrow Wilson after decades of not having de jure segregation in government or washington DC. So saying “the federal government was so racially progressive and the states are evil racists” is a false argument and its just propaganda they teach you in schools to advance the agenda of centralized power.
Furthermore the runaway slave act was passed federally in the 1850, but some states like Wisconsin refused to comply with it. State nullification of laws has been used for countless good, bad, and neutral things (subjective terms I know). States legalizing marijuana is nullification. Jim Crow is not nullification bc its an imposition of extra laws under purview of the state rather than a refusal to comply with a federal law.
Northern states banned slavery throughout the early 1800s by the same power that states legalized gay marriage in the early 2000s. It wouldnt make sense to say “weve seen what states do when left to their own devices and its bad bc they ban gay marriage”. No, gay marriage was already banned, they legalized it one by one. Slavery was already legal, they banned it one by one.
Basically, I think having power more decentralized to the state is not only good but its the Law, since the Constitution is the law. Doesnt mean I support every states law but Id much rather have 50 states than 1. Furthermore, the example of “states rights” that is always invoked is “Slavery/Jim crow” which shows that people arent really thinking through it historically or legally and instead just spewing talking points they learned in school
You're reading past the point. It was an issue of "states' rights" to operate a slave society. Apparently you think that's the only thing that any state wanted to do and was told no for.
Yeah, I'm sure some state somewhere wanted to make Klingon the official language or something, but next to slavery, all other issues absolutely pale into irrelevance.
1. I don't see how that's undemocratic. They're saying that the current government is illegal under our democratically-ratified Constitution, and has been for many years. If their claims about the Constitution is correct, then surely a government running rough-shod over the Constitution, without ever having been granted those powers by the public, is undemocratic. Even more so when you consider that [some of] the things they object to, like the Interstate Commerce Clause, the existence of the Department of Education, and various aspects of the New Deal, were (AFAIK, don't cite me) either decisions by judges, or executive actions. [NOTE: This is wrong. See below.]
2. "Democratic" as meant by Rousseau clearly (by "clearly" I mean clear to anyone meeting the minimal requirement of being more-logical than Rousseau) implies that the majority can do damn well what it pleases with the minority. "Force them to be free." That's the difference between the American and French revolutions. The American founding fathers probably said something to the effect that the Bill of Rights, and the electoral college, were meant to protect us from democracy. If they didn't say it, they were thinking it. Note also that Athens was the most-democratic state that ever existed, and it had a state religion.
Isn't just having a constitution kind of undemocratic, in that it prevents future generations (who never voted for the constitution) from enacting their will if they want something forbidden by the constitution?
Relatedly, if the majority of citizens wanted to change our government to an autocracy, would it be democratic or undemocratic to do so?
So what if the constitution can theoretically be amended through a politically onerous process? The constitution makes it harder to enact any will of the people that goes against the constitution. It's main purpose is to restrict democracy.
If some country has a constitution that can only be amended if the entire population unanimously votes to change it, is it still democratic just because it's theoretically possible to amend, even though it's practically impossible? What if they only need 95% of the vote? Or 75%?
If a constitution can be changed easily, (say by a simple majority), it becomes pointless. The harder it is to change, the less ability the current populace has to enact their will, which is the reason for a constitution.
My point here is that lots of aspects of modern government (Social Security, Medicare, the NIH etc.) are extremely popular and a politician who ran on a platform of abolishing them would lose by a lopsided margin anywhere in the country, but libertarians want courts to mandate that these things be made illegal forever on individual liberties grounds. They're basically saying they should get their way on all important policies, whatever the public wants. I view that as undemocratic.
On the history, the basic story of the New Deal was that congress kept passing programs (it was not executive orders) that expanded government and the Supreme Court kept striking them down by 5-4 margins until FDR was reelected, at which point one justice switched positions and a couple conservatives retired. If this hadn't happened, court packing probably would have gone through. It's like the justices realized that they couldn't defy popular feeling forever.
Now in practice what would probably happen is that if libertarians somehow convinced the Supreme Court to strike down most of modern government is that either an Amendment would be rapidly passed to overturn the court's ruling (the American constitution is notoriously hard to amend, but probably for this it would be possible) or the elected government would just start ignoring or bypassing the Supreme Court (as largely happened during the civil war, and almost happened in 1937). It's ultimately very hard to preserve liberties in the face of too much opposition. For that matter, if almost everyone wanted a state religion and persecution of heretics, the ACLU would probably lose, no matter what the constitutions says.
I wouldn't go that far. I think a constitution/court can make things moderately more liberal, especially around low salience issues. Ensure criminals have rights that 51% of the population would take away. Impart coherence on procedural issues. Notably the court interprets free speech/separation of church and state more consistently and strongly than the average person would. Fortunately the average person doesn't care enough to overturn the constitutional order to impost censorship or whatever.
What I don't think is that a constitutional court cannot restrain a large majority when that majority has strong feelings about an issue. Either the court finds a gentle way to surrender or gets overtly steamrolled.
While you are correct that the purpose of the SC is to be a roadblock in the way of mob rule, I think that the case for surrender in the face of the New Deal is a bit tough. And then you have the Civil Rights legislation, by which Congress legislated a whole new *category* of rights and began the process of rewriting the Constitution to change the "fundamental freedoms-possessing unit" of the country from the individual to the identity group, and the court didn't have the cojones to stop it.
On my original note, though, the reason court packing would be a self-coup is because it would pretty much subordinate the Supreme Court to the elected government entirely, and the next time the same party had Congress and the Presidency we'd have a one-party state for the foreseeable future.
Re. things being extremely popular: We currently have a simulacrum democracy in the US--an illusory majority cultivated by the media, which has convinced most of the country that certain minority views are held by the vast majority of Americans.
I've often heard leftists puzzle over how come some thing that "everyone wants" can't seem to get thru Congress, or is blocked by the Supreme Court, where polls show that the thing "everyone wants" is opposed by at least half of all Americans (for recent examples, affirmative action in college admissions and legal abortion in most cases).
So there are two risks of representative democracy: that the majority will decide to do something awful, and that a minority will manipulate the media to convince elected representatives that the view of a powerful minority is actually the view of the majority.
I think the easiest way to think about it is that, yes, the US absolutely could impose a state religion, you'd just need to pass a constitutional amendment. Now that's a lot harder than passing an ordinary law but a democratic people can pass laws that inhibit their ability to pass laws in the future; we can do contracts, like the Bill of Rights, and we often do because stable laws are good.
The libertarian complaint, as I understand it, is more that people "cheated". The Interstate Commerce Clause, for example, is...probably not being used the way the Founding Fathers intended but no one held a vote or wrote a new amendment, the government just kinda...gave itself this power. The problem is that, other than libertarians, no one cares.
I mean, people find loopholes or invent new technologies or lead marches or...use all sorts on nondemocratic means that undermine the constitution. The 10th amendment, for example, is pretty dead letter. The 2nd, divisive as it is, is alive because a solid group of people really, really care. Even Zuckerberg and his ilk have to walk gingerly around online censorship, the 1st amendment, because a lot of people really, really care about free speech.
But, bringing this back around, the libertarians are right to point out that, legally speaking, a lot of modern stuff shouldn't exist, it didn't go through the proper channels because it wasn't popular enough. Instead, various actors found loopholes and got away with it because the great majority of Americans simply didn't care enough.
In a way, the civic religion *is* the state religion. The holy day is the Fourth of July, the sacred texts are the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, the icons are the flag and other symbols, and the High Priest delivers the sermon to the people every year in the State of the Union Address.
The *true* founding of the US was in 1619, those documents were all written a hundred years ago by white male slaveowners in a language nobody speaks anymore, and the "Stars and Stripes" flag is a global symbol of racism oppression, colonialism, imperialism and homophobia.
If we're pushing it back to 1619, then why not 1492? Or Vinlandia? Or St Brendan?
What makes the arrival of African-Americans more special than anyone else who arrived on the shores of the New World? They've supplanted the natives in their own turn.
He's being facetious, referring to one of the more facile of recent attempts to rhetorically invalidate the Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights.
The state religion point would be more persuasive to me if, in addition to being unconstitutional, a state religion wasn't colossally unpopular. If the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow "a state religion isn't unconstitutional" we still wouldn't have one.
I think you may have missed the point on charity being undemocratic. The criticism is not that donating to charity itself is undemocratic; the criticism is that the government effectively pays a third to up to half of every charitable donation through tax deductions, and that is undemocratic because it’s allowing private citizens, overwhelmingly very wealthy ones, to individually determine how the government should spend its money, generally in line with their own priorities and not the ones government would choose. If there were no tax deduction for charitable donations (as there isn’t in many countries), this argument would go away. As such, it’s an argument against the deduction, not against charitable donation.
More seriously, I doubt you think if a billionaire did all his transactions in gold sterling he wouldn't owe any taxes. The US Treasury prints money and people use it because other people will accept it, but nowhere does it say that all US dollars are owned by the United States of America, and only leased to the holder at the Treasury's pleasure. If that was the deal, hardly anyone would use them.
I see why some people are frustrated that the government is failing to extract the maximum amount of money in taxes, (though I wouldn't equate that to the government "spending it's money"), but killing the tax deduction for charitable giving would do a *ton* of damage to charity as a whole.
And having the government actively pick and choose exactly what causes are "worthy" feels exactly the sort of democratic totalitarianism being described here.
"I see why some people are frustrated that the government is failing to extract the maximum amount of money in taxes,"
Is the U.S. budget deficit a problem or not?
"(though I wouldn't equate that to the government "spending it's money""
Why not? The effect of government subsidies for X and government tax breaks for X are identical.
Keep in mind that the bulk of charitable donations in America go to religion, higher-education, and political activism. Aid to the poor and cutting-edge scientific research are only getting a sliver of that.
>The effect of government subsidies for X and government tax breaks for X are identical.
And the effect of taxes not being higher than they currently are is also identical, and yet this doesn't typically count as the government subsiding private expenditure.
The math here doesn't remotely make sense. According to a quick google, billionaire philanthropy was 27 billion in 2022. So putting a 30% tax on that would raise about a billion dollars in a year.
Meanwhile, the 2022 annual deficit was 1.4 trillion and revenue was 5 trillion. So the 30% cut to charity by would decrease the annual deficit by 0.1% and revenue by 0.02%. (And to be clear, this isn't decreasing our actual deficit, just slightly slowing down the rate at which it increases!)
This doesn't seem like a good trade to me - unless you believe the government is 300x-1500x more efficient than the average charitable donation; but I sure don't.
Those tax deductions were passed by a democratically elected legislator.
Also, by your logic, *all* income spent by private citizens is undemocratic, because the government *could* tax everyone 100%, and by not doing so the government is "allowing" private citizens to spend "its" money in ways that that a majority might not support. Which I think illustrates the point Scott was trying to make.
The implication of this is LITERALLY that anything less than a 100% tax rate is 'undemocratic', because by refusing to hike up tax rates, the government is 'paying' for people to have money of their own. You're saying that the government is giving away 'its' money by not collecting the 'full amount' of taxes when it provides a reduction is how much tax is paid due to donations. But the 'full amount' of tax a person would pay sans charity deductions is arbitrary, because it's whatever the current tax rate happens to be. If the government missing out on tax revenue through granting a deduction is equivalent to the government 'paying' the charity money, then leaving people with any post-tax income at all is equivalent to the government 'paying' people to have money (which they can privately spend as they please), because setting a lower taxrate than it could be is practically equivalent to granting a deduction with regards to tax revenue and private direction of funds.
At the very lest, it's absolutely unclear why getting a deduction for a donation is being treated differently to taxes not being say 33% higher than they happen to be at that place and time. If it's all the government's money, then any less tax being collected than otherwise could be means private individuals get to direct money towards what they choose instead of the government directly as a result of the government's tax rates.
If you say that it's different because tax rates are based on democratic electoral politics, well great, because the tax rate (or even what the government spends their money on generally) is no more 'democratic' then than the tax policy of allowing a deduction for charitable deductions!
Scott seems to have accurately represented Reich's view. Reich does *not* say that the undemocratic problem of charity would disappear in the absence of tax-exemption. He writes the opposite:
> Even if we eliminated all tax subsidies, we’d still be left with big philanthropy as an exercise of power. So it would still deserve our scrutiny. Sometimes the exercise of that power should be resisted...What is the framework by which we can distinguish between philanthropic power that is welcome and that which is to be resisted? The answer is found in the goals or ideals of a flourishing democratic society...
And it's not even like Scott should have attacked a steelman of Reich's position, rather than his actual position. Reich's actual position - that any individual decision that has an effect on others should be subject to majoritarian whims - is extreme, but at least consistent.
The defense that charity should only be limited in the case of tax breaks that nominally initially designate a chunk of income as "taxable" before "relinquishing" a portion of it on the basis charitable use, is not robust since it depends on this particular tax structure. If, for example, there were no income tax, (and instead just other taxes like consumption taxes, etc.) then the income would have never been nominally designated for the government, so that charitable contribution wouldn't be a relinquishment by the government, but I don't think that those attempting to steelman the argument would be okay with that.
Similarly, the same steelman argument against tax deductions that take money that would *otherwise* go to the government, would argue against any tax decrease, since that reallocates money that would *otherwise* go to the government. It also argues against not raising the tax rate to 100%, since *otherwise* the government would have money withheld that it could use in a majoritatian way.
The common denominator of these issues with the steelman, is that the steelman depends on the particular existing tax structure to define a default under which the government is entitled to money. But actually following the reasoning should lead to a 100% tax rate.
This, ultimately, is Reich's stance, in attitude if not in policy. That *all* actions that affect others, which includes spending any dollar, should be under the aegis of the government determined via majoritarianism, not in the purview of the individual.
This is the consistent version of the argument that Scott appropriately critiques.
I suppose one solution would be to remove tax breaks for charitable donations, but I expect that would be too unpopular to gain the public support required to pass it in a democracy. If you think otherwise, you're welcome to try to get the policy passed!
I'd be okay with eliminating deductions for charitable donations, but also it's not the individuals who use these deductions who write the tax code. A democratically elected government decides that this tax deduction should exist.
Charitable donation is no more undemocratic than buying a house with a mortgage, or contributing to an HSA, or many other activities that the government has chosen to subsidize. After all, I bought a house because it was in accordance with my own priorities, not because there was a democratic vote concluding I should buy a house.
I think you've labored harder than necessary to get to what seems a straightforward definition of orthogonal axes: totalitarian vs. liberal is about *how much* the government gets to decide about people's lives, and democracy is about *how* the government makes the decisions it is allowed to make.
Israel is currently giving a good lesson regarding your footnote 2; the proponents of the legislation to weaken the judiciary argue (accurately) that they are just making the country more democratic, finessing the fact that too much democracy is bad (tyranny of the majority, Madison's Senate as a "necessary fence" against "fickleness and passion", etc.)
The way you are using the term, I also don't think accountability should be limited to the case of a person who is vested with specific powers *by other people*. Parents are very accountable to their children before the children are capable of vesting anything. And to a certain extent people are accountable to other people generally. Not about everything, but in the sense that they are *not* free to do whatever they want without concern for the consequences to others.
Although, some use accountability more narrowly. The better term here could be *responsibility*, while accountability can focus specifically on a responsibility to *explain the reason for your actions". While I think people have some level of responsibility to other people, I don't think they have anywhere near as much accountability. As long as you aren't hurting anyone, you don't have to explain yourself. https://culture.io/resources/responsibility-vs-accountability/
I found the recent judicial reform proposals in Israel amusing for precisely that reason: it was hilarious watching people argue that the elected legislature gaining power over unelected judges was "undemocratic."
Or even just look at Trump - him, the elected leader, trying to get unelected bureaucrats to do what he wants was a sign of his lack of 'respect for democracy'.
Yeah yeah, demo = majority and cracy = rule, so democracy = let the 52% decide the 48% henceforth have no rights and pay all the taxes. As part of the two million liberals give or take terrified for their futures and children's futures here, I deeply resent your semantic pedantry and your finding our horror "hilarious".
The only reason anyone ever argues their vision is "more democratic" is that democracy has delivered prosperity and good outcomes. But whose democracy has done this? What positive results can we ascribe to your "democracy" where the majority elected officials get to enact any policy with impunity? None. It has not been tried here. It has been tried however in Turkey and Hungary. Maybe you see these regimes as role models; we do not.
The Israeli education system has, in fact, taken pains to raise students' awareness of these tensions. Generations of students here were raised on textbooks that plainly state the principle that democracy is a rule by majority, but it is not just that. It _can't_ be; that way lies madness. So first of all our wider interpretation of "democracy" is not coming out of nowhere, and second of all it is the only interpretation that doesn't inevitably converge into the Putin model where the majority has democratically elected to outlaw all criticism of the majority elected government. A democracy with checks and balances on majority rule is the only sane democracy, and the only democracy that has actually done the work to earn people's appreciation and goodwill that have made the word "democracy" so popular.
So, yes. the elected legislature gaining power over unelected judges is undemocratic. Specifically, their earning the power to tell unelected judges "we're going to profile people based on racial and religious criterions to decide who gets the draft and who doesn't, and there's nothing anymore you can do", or "we're going to re-appoint the finance minister who had to leave this exact same position a few years ago due to a bribery conviction, and there's nothing anymore you can do" -- that's undemocratic! If your personal dictionary takes offense to this, I would rather toss in the bin your personal dictionary than the actual system that has worked for us so decently all these years.
It sounds like YOU really dislike (representative) democracy, and for all the right reasons, having correctly seen it for what it is and what it entails, but have also decided to simultaneously believe "democracy is always good," so now you have to twist yourself into knots (sorry, it's still hilarious) trying to reconcile these.
You COULD admit that what you really want is a judicial aristocracy, but I don't expect you to do that.
But what if the judicial aristocracy started doing things he didn't like? How would he remove it, there are no elections.
At the end of the day people want what they want. They aren't too keen on how it gets done. They tend to want whatever institution is favorable to them to have more power.
They are slightly afraid of what other people might do to them and so the idea of being able to "vote the bums out" has some appeal, but that depends a good amount on whether they trust their fellow citizens enough to do it.
Well, at that point, he'd argue that the judicial aristocracy has ceased to be "democratic" (in this context, meaning "good for nebulous reasons") and support a military coup to make it so.
It's not a judicial aristocracy, because it isn't hereditary. Democratic processes always come into play in the appointment of new judges. So the judiciary is subject to democratic influence, but on a longer time scale. Which is a great firewall against the majority's tendency to get riled up and overreact to the issue of the day, or abuse the minority.
>Democratic processes always come into play in the appointment of new Judges
Not in Israel: If the judges don't want a nominee they can veto their appointment and there is no force in Israel which can force them to accept one, especially considering the leaders of the Israeli security orgs have all already pledged their loyalty to the court over the elected government..
To be more precise, if the judges *unanimously* do not want a judge, they can veto it. But this is also true of the legislature and various other combinations of stakeholders. So yes, selection requires supermajority, not just majority. But this still seems generally democratic to me. It is far from having the court completely in charge of its own composition.
From Wikipedia: Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President of Israel, from names submitted by the Judicial Selection Committee, which is composed of nine members: three Supreme Court Judges, two cabinet ministers,, two Knesset members, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. Appointing Supreme Court Judges requires a majority of 7 of the 9 committee members, or two less than the number present at the meeting.
If elected officials appointing judges is bad, why should they have control over security policy? Financial policy? Anything at all? Wouldn't it be better to leave it all to the "experts" just like you want in judicial policy?
You (rightfully) don't actually believe in democracy, you just want to use the word because it makes your favoured undemocratic regime look more legitimate to modern eyes. In this way you are similar to the propogandists of North Korea, Syria or Iran.
I think elected officials appointing judges is better than the alternative of unelected officials appointing them (or of having them be directly elected: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Courts-Pursuing-Judicial-Independence/dp/0674055489 ). What's important is that once appointed the judges can't easily be *removed* by elected officials. Which means that they have limited ability to shape the court during their time in office, which makes it a good moderating influence against rapid surges in people's preferences.
Your points are well taken but you begin with an incorrect definition of democracy, saying "demo" refers to majority. It doesn't. The derivation is from the Greek for people, and this is what the word means in the US tradition -- rule by we the people. Everyone who's thought deeply about this subject differentiates between democracy and unrestricted majority rule. (What historically has been known as tyranny of the majority) Not that elections and majority rule isn't a part of democracy, but it has quite a few parts which aren't necessarily consistent and often may be inconsistent. For example:
--Selecting representatives by popular vote, most often majority but sometimes a plurality is enough.
--Limitations on power of government, especially the ability of people to organize outside of government control (without this, any "democracy" is just a sham) and access to information about what the government is doing and ability to discuss it. (Like, no secret police or at least, very limited)
--A defined set of personal rights that are protected by the government
--A large degree of inclusiveness in political processes of people governed
--Rule of law as opposed to rule by fiat, with laws being equally applicable to everyone in the same circumstances
I don't claim this list is all inclusive but I think all of these are pretty basic aspects of what a democracy means.
From this perspective, calling some particular government a "democracy" or not a democracy isn't usually very helpful. What is helpful is talking about what ways systems are democratic or undemocratic, recognizing there are compromises and tradeoffs inherent in the very essence of the thing (democracy) itself. In this sense Scott is entirely correct in pointing out that the majority rules aspect of democracy can easily turn into totalitarianism, what I at least would call tyranny of the majority. But that's not the only conflict inherent in the nature of what we call democracy. Individual rights conflict with majority rule. Limited government conflicts with the ability of the people to make rules or policies through representatives.
One thing that is not generally agreed is the role of popular initiatives to decide issues rather than representative government. Does a democracy require initiatives? We call systems where issues are decided by representative government "democracies" even if there's no initiative process. And I think we'd call a system where all issues were decided by initiatives "chaos" or possibly "idiocy" as the results wouldn't make much sense, though, this is just my own opinion as there are no such systems to speak of. So to me, at least, it's not actually about majorities deciding stuff issue by issue.
So, my final point is, a couple of other essential elements of democracy, given that it's government by people, are compromise and moderation, as the "people" are a group of, well, people, and democracy is a system for people to pursue life, liberty and happiness together, or something like that.
"What positive results can we ascribe to your "democracy" where the majority elected officials get to enact any policy with impunity? None. It has not been tried here."
The Israeli Supreme Court only asserted the power to strike down legislation in the 1990s.
Agreed, there have to be non-democratic mechanisms in place to protect democracy. Case in point in the US: many state legislatures, elected by democratic means, have gerrymandered their electoral districts to keep themselves in power even after losing the support of the majority.
I think the argument about unelected officials, from this side of the Atlantic, is that American elected officials like judges and district attorneys and sheriffs are then beholden to the local party; they need the party support to run, if they make decisions that are not in line with the party they will be punished electorally, they have to make compromises to get elected and that hinders their ability to administer the law impartially.
I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other: are the elected legislature gaining power going to ensure justice is administered without bias, or are they going to lean on the judiciary to make decisions that the particular political bloc want, even if that is not in the public interest?
I think the right interpretation of what they're saying is that the judiciary is the guardian of the democratic process. If those in power neuter the judiciary then they can e.g. change the election rules to no longer be democratic.
"Accountable" in this context means you have to act in line with the will of those you're accountable to or be punished (often by losing your power). Children can't generally punish or replace their parents, so parents aren't accountable to their children in this sense. Parents are free to ignore their child's will. Parents are responsible for their children and have certain obligations towards them.
“Democracy” became the word used by nearly everyone in the mass media for statements and debates about not only governance, but as shorthand for the end goals of governance. That was a significant error that has not been corrected, yet.
Democracy is not an unalloyed set of virtues, it’s a grouping of methods for governance. And it still appears to be the least bad method(s) for citizens of a state to choose as their method of governance.
The issue with using “Democracy” as an alias for the _actual_ end goals is: inarticulate debate that creates layers of confusion.
Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness. These are shorthand terms for some rather solid end goals. Human flourishing is another.
Personally I tend to consider Liberty as the most important secular end goal, at least at the level of evaluating among different buckets of end goals.
Its not an error. When they say “democracy” they are not talking about the end goals of Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness. Anybody intellectually honest knows that “democracy” is code for Absolute Power of the Regime
I'd say `democracy' is basically a way to decide who gets to run the country without a civil war. As in `we could have a war to decide this, but a whole lot of us would die and the side with the most supporters would probably win, so lets just do a headcount and let the side with most supporters run the show, and skip the death and destruction bit.' That's valuable in itself, but it doesn't have to come bundled with liberalism (and liberalism doesn't have to come bundled with democracy).
Meanwhile, the idea behind liberalism is `if two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner, it sure sucks to be the sheep. And you never know when political coalitions might shift leaving you the sheep, so lets put in some guardrails so that not being in the majority doesn't suck too hard.' This is also valuable. But to some extent it is in tension with democracy (e.g. unelected judges overruling elected legislatures).
Exactly. This is literally what politics is. Politics is factions vying for power over a state. The typical means this is done is by warfare. The US had a wonderful idea in erecting a Constitution that would allow us to vie for power through non-violent means. I much prefer democracy to constant civil war. However to forget that it is warfare by other means blinds us to the nature of politics. Furthermore, non-violent democracy is only tenable within a certain Overton Window, outside of which conflict is inevitable between irreconcilable factions.
>Meanwhile, the idea behind liberalism is `if two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner, it sure sucks to be the sheep. And you never know when political coalitions might shift leaving you the sheep, so lets put in some guardrails so that not being in the majority doesn't suck too hard.'
Not true at all. People described as liberal have no problem imposing their beliefs on political minorities. This is an extremely naive reading of 'liberalism'. It's much more true to say liberalism is just a different set of in-groups and out-grounds, and the same old support for helping the in-group and hurting the out-group.
Every democracy is democratic in its own way. You're on sturdier ground with your point about accountability meaning that someone has given you some special or specific authority or power.
"So either you should avoid defining “democratic” this way, or you should stop assuming that more democratic = better."
I'd go with the second. The only way to make sure more democratic is always better is to define it as such. And then something like "a monarchy is not democratic" becomes an opinion instead of a statement about how that form of government works.
There are a lot of people who value democracy, but democracy isn't the only thing they value. So a clearer statement would be "more democratic = better, all else being equal." It's just difficult to talk this way because people (especially me) don't enjoy contemplating how they're compromising on their most cherished values.
Unfortunately, that seems to be inevitable. So long as you value two different things, there may be situations where you can't maximize both simultaneously and you'll have to choose one or the other.
A useful tool I have found in reading certain works on this topic: where it says "democracy", read "American". Or "America-friendly" if that scans.
Both words have the same problem with "being used as a synonym for 好 by Americans", and I find that making a substitution that relies on that tends to clarify what is actually being said.
True Socialist Brotherhood is when we democratically sit down together to democratically eat a democratic meal of food that is democratic to eat, Democratic Brother Democrat Erusian!
Alex, you have got to stop using ideograms or else provide a translation to ensure that you sy what you mean, because looking that one up gets me:
"democracy being used as a synomym for 'good; very well; nice; OK; alright' by Americans" which I don't think is what you intended.
I'm *assuming* you mean "good" but hey, maybe you mean "okay"? I don't know, because you haven't bothered your arse to clarify what you mean and are just showing off, with the bonus of good old-fashioned Orientalism at work! (Ah, the Exotic Orient with its exotic concepts that we Westerners don't have the subtlety to create ourselves).
The problem is that there isn't a short way to describe what I mean; or if there is I don't know the word for it. It is not the same as ṛta; and a word-vector description will descend too far in the weeds to be helpful. The vague sense intended is that when people say "democracy", they mean "positive coded, with any other ambiguity lost in translation and misunderstanding".
As far as "you can get away with Latin like *persona non grata* in English, but you can't get away with kanji" ... yes.
When you're using words/concepts from another language, in the writing system of that language, for an audience that will majority be unfamiliar with that language and will then have to look online for unsatisfactory translations, you are not making your meaning clear or expressing the point you want to make.
You'd do as much by just sticking in a black box instead of the logograph: "Both words have the same problem with "being used as a synonym for ⬛ by Americans", and I find that making a substitution that relies on that tends to clarify what is actually being said" is just as clear - or as opaque - as what you posted.
The problem is that via usage, one translation of "hao" is "hello, hi, good day" and do you really want to express "when people say 'democracy', they mean 'hi'"?
It would be like writing in Chinese for a Chinese audience, using "persona non grata" untranslated, and leaving some at least of your baffled readers to go online, see an idiomatic translation, and wonder why the hell you are talking about door-to-door salesmen?
I think the terminology we have simply doesn't cover all the variables, probably because it's advantageous to many proselytizers and would-be leaders if the terminology is thoroughly confused.
Let's set up 2 axes here:
- to what extent are people to be told what to do or not do, punished for disobeying, etc.?
- WHO decides what people will be required to do or not do?
When we're talking about democracy, we're really talking about who, not "how much".
Democracy - The People (TM) decide.
Theocracy - The Deity, decides.
Aristocracy, Oligarchy etc. - A limited group of especially powerful people decide
Dictatorship, (Absolute) Monarchy etc - The Leader, King etc. decides.
In most cases, authority gets delegated, with varying amounts of principle/agent issues. E.g. I've never seen a Theocracy where the deity expresses Its wishes independent of Its clergy.
Some democracies have traditions of leaving individuals free to decide many things for themselves. But it's still a "democracy" if we all vote on what each of us get to eat for breakfast, or even if our elected representatives delegate that decision to a civil service bureaucracy.
It's kind of similar with accountability, except more pluralistic. Assuming the government (TM) doesn't hold a monopoly on decisions, there will be things that have results not mediated by the government. If I post offensive drivel on substack, and literally no one wants to read it, I'm held accountable by having neither an audience nor a blogging income.
The language we need here would involve something like "limited government". Government can be limited because tight control is impractical. (Slow communications, lack of reliable surveillance). They can be limited because of checks and balances. (Sure, the King is absolute - until enough nobles get mad enough to rebel, or someone assassinates him) They can be limited because everyone agrees that certain things should be matters of individual conscience. (I fear this tends to be unstable.)
Except "government" isn't the right term. If 99% of the population agrees that certain behaviour justifies murder, all the government needs to do is keep out of the way. You need not have an official theocracy for apostasy to be violently hazardous to one's health.
At any rate, I think your discussion above would be more useful if you started with the meanings you intended, not the thoroughly overloaded terminology.
"E.g. I've never seen a Theocracy where the deity expresses Its wishes independent of Its clergy."
There's the very tangled example of Pope Vigilius, a 6th century pontiff who was intriguing against his predecessor (who ended up exiled and starved to death) and intriguing with the Byzantine Empress Theodora who offered to make him pope in return for his support on Monophysitism (the heresy that there is only one nature in Christ, and that is the divine one):
"Empress Theodora sought to win him as a confederate to revenge the deposition of the Monophysite Patriarch Anthimus I of Constantinople by Agapetus and also to gain aid for her efforts in behalf of the Monophysites. Vigilius is said to have agreed to the plans of the intriguing empress who promised him the Holy See and 700 pounds of gold."
Vigilius ascended to the papacy through tricky and indeed irregular means, but once pope, he abandoned the Monophysites. Since the Emperor himself wanted certain concessions made in declaring writings heretical, in order to try and impose unity on the Eastern Church and bring the Western Church into conformity with it, Vigilius' stance is all the more remarkable and is considered an example of the Holy Spirit preserving the Church from the teaching of heresy. Vigilius is not an edifying character but he could have paid off his imperial patrons by imposing the changes they wanted, yet he did not. The end result was that he was pretty much arrested, marched off to Constantinople, and it took eight years before he was able to get back to Rome and then he died on the way:
"Vigilius refused to acknowledge the imperial edict and was called to Constantinople by Justinian, in order to settle the matter there with a synod. According to the Liber pontificalis on 20 November, while the pope was celebrating the feast of St. Cecilia in the Church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, and before the service was fully ended, he was ordered by the imperial official Anthimus to start at once on the journey to Constantinople. The pope was taken immediately to a ship that waited in the Tiber, in order to be carried to the eastern capital, while a part of the populace cursed the pope and threw stones at the ship.
After his transfer to Constantinople, Vigilius wrote to his captors: "Do with me what you wish. This is the just punishment for what I have done." and "You may keep me in captivity, but the blessed Apostle Peter will never be your captive."
...Vigilius sought to persuade the emperor to send aid to the inhabitants of Rome and Italy who were so hard pressed by the Goths. Justinian's chief interest, however, was in the matter of the Three Chapters, and as Vigilius was not ready to make concessions of this point and wavered frequently in his measures, he had much to suffer. ...Thus at the end of a sorrowful residence of eight years at Constantinople the pope was able, after coming to an understanding with the emperor, to start on his return to Rome in the spring of 555. While on the journey he died at Syracuse. His body was brought to Rome and buried in the Basilica of Sylvester over the Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria."
So this is one case where the deity was not made to express wishes of the clergy, when said wishes were bought and paid for 🤷♀️
It still came to us via Vigilius. Maybe the Holy Spirit inspired him, but no one can know that for sure. Maybe Vigilius sincerely believed he was doing God's will, at some cost to himself. But God didn't show up, visible to anyone but Vigilius, and express His wishes.
People with power somewhat regularly do dumb things, which end badly for them. (Elon Musk is a current poster child for this.) Maybe Vigilius was as self-destructive as Musk, with no deity involved.
Vigilius could have made the Deity say what he wanted the Deity to say, but he didn't. By not doing so, he pissed off the Empress who thought she had bought and paid for him, and displeased the Emperor who had the power to have him flung on a ship and brought from Rome to Constantinople.
That's the point of difference between what the original claim was, and what happened in this case.
> You could, in theory, define “democratic” this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism ... I first noticed this during a discussion with Rob Reich ...
It's worth noting that a great many classical political philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle on, noted that democracy has a tendency to devolve into tyranny due precisely to this dynamic, and that a non-democratic regime can therefore be more free for its citizens. This sounds paradoxical only if one conflates participation in government with freedom in non-government affairs.
The framers of the US Constitution were deeply distrustful of both undemocratic governments and democratic governments, and including both democratic and undemocratic elements in the structure of the U.S. government. America is the world's oldest democracy, but it's special sauce was a norm for respect for the individual (including a Bill of Rights) that set many areas of life aside from the purview of government.
I wonder if they had anticipated the following quote. I also read third-hand that Adams thought the govt. should be torn down every 10 years and rebuilt which sounds good and may have been possible in the 1700s.
"The Founders [of the U.S.A.] wished to achieve a national majority concerning the fundamental rights and then prevent that majority from using its power to overturn those fundamental rights. In twentieth-century social science, however, the common good disappears and along with it the negative view of minorities. The very idea of majority—now understood to be selfish interest—is done away with in order to protect the minorities.
…
This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought.”
So who was the British prime minister when independence was declared?
"The title of oldest continuously functioning democracy is more hotly contested. Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man all have local parliaments founded in the ninth and 10th centuries, when Vikings pillaged, plundered and set up legislative bodies on the sea-islands of far northern Europe. Iceland’s national parliament, the Althing, dates back to A.D. 930, but it spent centuries under Norwegian and Danish rule. Man and the Faroes, meanwhile, remain dependencies of the United Kingdom and Denmark, respectively.
The United States is among the oldest modern democracies, but it is only the oldest if the criteria are refined to disqualify claimants ranging from Switzerland to San Marino."
When I say "accountable," I'm talking about having recourse if someone abuses my trust. But are there people besides public officials that we reasonably repose some trust in?
In the Puritan colonies in 1700s New England, people expected they could trust other people to share their religion, and reinforce their shared social norms of obedience to God. That shared norm gets you a very different "accountability": the accountability of the scarlet letter.
Today, nobody reasonable thinks they're entitled to that kind of deep social norm matching with their neighbors. But that's a statement about our society, not a permanent statement about morality.
In today's society, "accountability" is mostly about elected officials, because they're the ones who have trust they might just get away with abusing. Other societies have done things differently.
I'm amused to note that your set of representative non-freedoms you attribute to a totalitarian system were pretty much SOP for some or most classes in the Middle Ages.
"a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom."
- Essentially everyone was required to be Catholic, and participate in Catholic rituals regularly.
- Noble heiresses married whoever the king told them to; this was generally a good source of royal/government income.
- Peasants' children were peasants, period. Nobles' heirs were assigned the job of a fighter, officer, courtier, landlord etc. (The latter could perhaps resign their title, and might get away with it if their alternate career was something deemed worthwhile, like religion. But religious careers were supposed to be assigned to younger sons. )
I don't think we can call any medieval country totalitarian - there wasn't anywhere near enough of a central government.
I think "the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism" is literally true, in the sense that democracy is two wolves and a sheep making dinner plans – it just sounds off because the connotations of democracy are halfway between "government by majority vote" and "government that aggregates preferences in an ideal utility-maximizing way". "Not regulating x is undemocratic" connotes "I think regulating x would raise total utility, so not to do it would be a coordination failure"; "regulating x is totalitarian" connotes "I think regulating x would lower total utility, so to do it would be tyranny of the majority."
Democracy is a process. I happen to think it's a good one with positive moral foundations, but democracy isn't self-justifying and can be used immorally. That's why you still need a larger moral framework within which democracy operates.
An excellent point. Democracy can only be as good as (a majority of) its participating population. If one votes for something for selfish reasons instead of it being the best thing for the population (in their opinion) then it breaks down.
Two wolves prefer lamb for dinner, but it's also a short-sighted vote, since they soon won't be able to make that choice.
>I think the word “democratic” is most useful when applied to the structure of a government; a government where the military can overrule elected officials is less democratic than one where they can’t. I would avoid using it for discussions of the size of government
This seems a little awkward and inconsistent with common usage. Such usage would imply that voters going to the polls to choose leaders is "democratic," while the same voters also voting on ballot measures is not "democratic."
Furthermore, it seems to clash with the preferred definition of "accountable." That definition states that:
>people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them (elected officials accountable to voters...
The "accountability" of elected officials to voters seems to refer to the former performing the will of the latter, although this is left undefined.
So if "democracy" includes the selection of the officials, and "accountability" demands that the officials follow the will of the people, and majoritarianism is the net will of the people, then why does this definition of "democracy" not demand majoritarianism, which was the problem it was trying to solve?
I think Yarvin’s model of the three types of political power—monarchic, oligarchic, and democratic—captures things well. None is inherently good. Democracy unchecked by the other two is just mobocracy. The democratic urge has a natural ally against oligarchs in the monarchic power or executive authority. In this way we see that overstrong central authority is one of the main failure modes of populism (the other being anarchy).
While he argues this is what happened in the US, I don’t think he would say it is inevitable. A democracy can instead become a centralized dictatorship (see fascist Italy and Germany; a dictator is even better at organizing than competing oligarchs). A democracy can also stay “purely democratic” and collapse into anarchy. The US’ pathway is not inevitable, but the colonies’ distaste for kings in part made it most likely.
It’s more common on small scales, like a club where people stop caring about votes and just do what they want. Given sufficient time and interest someone will emerge to become oligarchs or monarchs; it’s not a stable condition but it is a real one.
Yarvin isn’t *persona non grata* here like he is at .. a lot of other places. But i must point out that model was invented by Aristotle over two thousand years ago.
I'm not convinced at how the terminology is wielded here. If a democratically-elected government enacts reams and reams of legislation detailing every aspect of life and, in every case, it legislates that the people can freely choose what to do, is that totalitarian? In fact, it is already the case that "nobody [can] express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology without government permission," since the government is sovereign and each time it DOESN'T revoke permission for something, its inaction implicitly grants it.
By reducing complex political systems to competing ideologies, you end up actually equating democracy and totalitarianism.
Democracy and Totalitarianism while not equal are extremely correlated. In James Burnham’s ‘Macchiavellians’ he argues that more democracy leads to more totalitarianism. He terms it Bonapartism and argued its the inevitable endstate of claiming the people’s will to be the source of sovereign authority. I very much agree with this assessment, I think we’ve witnessed the drift in several examples in our lifetime, and I thank God we dont live in a more democratic society. The US Constitution’s strict limits on democracy are the reason a free world exists today.
" In fact, it is already the case that "nobody [can] express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology without government permission," since the government is sovereign and each time it DOESN'T revoke permission for something, its inaction implicitly grants it."
I disagree: that point of view is already totalitarian in nature, believing that the State (like an omnipotent God) has rightful power over everything and only chooses not to exercise it in some cases. This is in contrast to the American system where the consitution specifically denies that the State has the power to do certain things (Article 1, Section 9) and specifically states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It's a clear delineation: the State has the power to do these things, but not all things.
The idea that the State has the de jure right to decide what religion I should practice, or what ideas I should express, or how I can spend my money, or whether I can own property at all, is a totalitarian idea. If the State has the right to control all those things, but chooses not to, then it is a totalitarian state still.
The constitution is not imposed and enforced outside the ordinary means of governance; the constitution is an instrument of the government. Though it is done via the constitution, the state voluntarily relinquishes its power over certain activities and, in so doing, recognizes that it is its power to wield. Sure, the mechanism of the constitution is used to make it difficult in practice for some specific government to usurp political norms but it is not impossible in principle.
The way you frame it suggests that it is totalitarian simply for a state to be self-determining in every aspect. You make out as if it's the case that the state does not have the right to decide what religion you should practice but where does your freedom of religious practice come from? You can say the constitution and then I would again point to the first part of this reply.
The Constitution is imposed and enforced outside of the United States government, because it is the instrument by which the United States government was created. That's what it does, and what it's for. It precedes and creates the state, not the other way around.
And yes, the state does not have the right to decide what religion I should practice. A state that claimed that right would be immoral, as it would violate my human rights. Our human rights are not created by the Constitution, only recognized by it. This is explicit in the text of the Constitution itself: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In other words, just because it's not written in the Constitution doesn't mean it isn't a human right that you as a citizen have. How could that be the case if the Constitution is the source of those rights? The authors never intended the constitution to be where our rights come from, only where some of our rights as humans are enumerated.
Or, as the Declaration of Independence put it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
The State has the powers that the people choose to grant it: it does not have unlimited powers, that the people then choose to not use.
Democracy and accountability become tyrannical due to the flagging character of its leaders and citizens. Maybe lured by wealth and advantage over other states to the neglect of socially responsible traditions(4). Maybe a more primitive nation is forced to modernize(5). As community decreases govt. authority must increase to maintain order. Then, of course, we have the corruptive nature of power.
In short, for a society to be healthy you need:
1. A minimum number of people with the temperament, skill and position in society to be leaders to be examples of character(1)(2).
2. A culture backed by traditions, etc. that encourages character to be present, understood and valued by the masses(3).
Footnotes:
[Disclaimer: I am not assigning blame with the following but supporting relevant generalities.]
(1) “But in any society, leaders who aren’t willing to make sacrifices aren’t leaders, they’re opportunists, and opportunists rarely have the common good in mind. They’re easy to spot, though: opportunists lie reflexively, blame others for failures, and are unapologetic cowards.”
― Sebastian Junger, Freedom
(2) "The history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arises when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favour of money and political power. And contemporary history is the hideous record of what happens when political bosses, businessmen or class-conscious proletarians assume the Brahman’s function of formulating a philosophy of life; when usurers dictate policy and debate the issues of war and peace; and when the warrior’s caste duty is imposed on all and sundry, regardless of psycho-physical make-up and vocation.”
--Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945
(3) "Kant argued that men are equal in dignity because of their capacity for moral choice. It is the business of society to provide the conditions for such choice and esteem for those who achieve it. ”
--Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 1987
(4) "The renovation of the Ka’ba transformed the fortunes of Mecca. It also eroded the tribal ethic. Tribal life had never been egalitarian. An individual’s moral worth was, as in most ancient societies, defined by his or her social status. Nevertheless, the ethos of the collective good ensured that the tribe took care of every member. Mecca’s growing affluence acted as an acid to this philosophy. The riches from the Ka’ba accrued to only a few families and helped create an ever more stratified society. The weak, the infirm and the dispossessed were denied not simply access to the new-found wealth but to the protection that came from the old tribal ideals too.”
--Kenan Malik, The Quest for a Moral Compass, 2014
(5) "The problem of adjustment is acute for both the coloniser and the colonised. For the former imperial powers, they have to get used to their new circumstances and formulate a new role for themselves in a changed world. For the new countries, they must rid themselves of the illusion that now they can go back to an idyllic past when there was a satisfying society – sometimes of natural socialism – which the white man came and destroyed. Romanticism, however natural, is fatal to progress. What has happened is irreversible, and the choice before each of us is what to make of the future, not how to re-live the past.”
--Lee Kuan Yew, The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew, 2013
I think this is overly charitable. The people saying Substack authors aren't accountable aren't using a bad definition of accountability, they're just stupid and/or lying. Anybody selling a product on a free market is necessarily accountable -- if their product is bad enough, their customers will stop buying it and they'll lose money. Claims of "lack of accountability" only make sense in a context where someone has the ability to coerce people into using their services.
Not at all. They are just maliciously obfuscating the meaning of the word to avoid saying the dreaded words "censorship" and/or "coercion". Never assume stupidity when willful malice is as good an explanation IMHO.
Also, I'm kind of confused by the claim that Martin Luther King wasn't held accountable to anyone for his decisions of how to protest, given that he was repeatedly arrested for protesting in ways that the government didn't approve of.
“people saying Substack authors aren't accountable aren't using a bad definition of accountability… if their product is bad enough, their customers will stop buying it”
I think that's the ethically right course of action but it may not go the way you expect (Acts 5:27). A convincing story of universal Truths to a receptive audience can change the course of history. So can telling a desperate crowd what they want to hear – per every charismatic despot of history.
“Democracy” is a really good example of the Hegelian dialectic in action. It’s not actually coherently definable; you can’t express everything the word does without contradicting yourself. You can make up your own, coherent, definition, but it will miss some facet of the real word.
So, for instance, democracy means both “people have rights” and “people have to obey a majority of their neighbors”. We call it “undemocratic” for El Salvador to lock up people without due process, and we also recognize the power by which that’s being done as “democratic”, ie, derived from a fair election.
The cheap way to talk about it is to say that democracy is “in tension” between conflicting ideals. The interesting analysis is to dig into the archaeology and figure out what we’re trying to achieve by synthesizing these multiple contradictory ideas into one thing.
Israel is considering a change that would give the Knesset, which is an elected representative body, more power over the Supreme Court, which is unelected. Some US politicians call this "damaging the nation's democratic institutions". If the Knesset, a democratically elected body, were to overturn Supreme Court decisions, that would "jeopardize Israeli democracy".
They're saying this because "democracy" also means "a system of checks and balances", and they're concerned that this will give one party too much power. And that's sensible! They're talking about democracy in a totally normal way, that people understand just fine. But you just can't encompass this way of talking if you don't accept incoherencies and contradictory concepts co-existing in a word.
I'm still trying to grok the continental/Hegel worldview and found your posts in the disability thread super interesting.
But I feel like the point you're making is pretty at home in a more Analytic tradition as well - isn't it just Wittgenstein family resemblance/word games stuff? We can't actually create necessary and sufficient conditions for most words that we use, and pretending that we can and then trying to use those conditions to reach new conclusions is just playing word games. Scott has a lot of posts on this theme as well.
What is the Hegelian dialectic brining to the table here?
(To make my tone explicit: this is meant to be curious and inquiring, not combative.)
Thanks! That's a really smart observation. I think you're right that there's not a huge difference between Wittgenstein's word games idea and Hegel's dialectic idea. They're both ways of getting away from scholastic syllogistic thought, and accepting the sometimes-contradictory nature of the concepts we deal with in real life. I think the difference is in focus, or context.
Wittgenstein is like another Kant. He's building out a rigorous system that reaches its limits and then stops. And some of the details of the system he builds out are super useful for addressing lots of different problems, including the problem of how to deal with words like democracy. He also introduces a skepticism about how far philosophy can go, which is also very Kantian.
I think a Continental philosopher (like Deleuze, who I think called Wittgenstein an "assassin of philosophy") would see Wittgenstein's work as almost a proof that Continental philosophy is needed. Wittgenstein's skepticism and rigor in the quest to be right have eroded away all of philosophy's usefulness. He's left sort of futilely trying to police language.
There are two problems with that: It renders philosophy useless as a human activity; and most likely, he's only running into problems because he's uncritically accepting certain ancient binaries which were never real in the first place (maybe like the "meaningful / un-meaningful" binary, in Wittgenstein's case.) I can imagine Deleuze holding up Wittgenstein as exactly the kind of dry root-branch thinking he wants to replace with creative rhizomatic thinking.
But I can also imagine Deleuze really appreciating Wittgenstein's idea that a word is best understood as a game between people, that it doesn't have some nature other than how it's used. That feels Continental, to me.
So, in sum, Wittgenstein found a clever way to solve some old problems and speak more truly about democracy; Hegel moved philosophy toward a mindset where the thing that you do when you use philosophy (Continental philosophy, at least) to discuss democracy doesn't really have much to do with truth. That's exemplified, in my mind, by Deleuze, who's openly contemptuous of anybody who would try to evaluate his books as "true" or "false".
> I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that, or serves as a bludgeon that would-be dictators can use against an independent judiciary.
Yes; this sort of hypocrisy is quite common in political discourse. But I'll even go further and say that democracy is highly overrated as a system for solving problems, and saying that the correct to "X isn't democratic" is very often, "good." David Friedman gives the classic explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpn645huKUg
You can have a totalitarian democracy, sure, that doesn't make it not democratic. This is a silly way of understanding concepts- you've begun by assuming that democracy is intrinsically good or not totalitarian, which is not at all true. That's why we distinguish between democracy and liberalism. Conflating democracy and freedom is just bad political philosophy, and really an elementary error. Political theorists have made this distinction all the way since Aristotle, and the concept that democracy must be good or not totalitarian is an entirely modern imagination that has sprung out of popular political rhetoric.
>and the concept that democracy must be good or not totalitarian is an entirely modern imagination that has sprung out of popular political rhetoric.
Yes, weird that Scott is arguing against the common, modern use of the term and not some supposed "true" definition of the word back in ancient Greece.
You misunderstand, I’m not claiming that the only true definition of democracy is that of Aristotle; I am using the technical definition ‘rule according to the will of the people’ (a definition that would include both Aristotle’s concept of demokratia and politeia). This is a procedural question, and can be either good or bad in practice; it is neither in the abstract
Quite right. Democracy is tempered by liberalism. Democracy is good only up to the point that it (unreasonably?) infringes on the rights of the individual.
Contra the other person who responded below, you can’t really understand political philosophy at all if you don’t have that distinction down
I think it is a mistake to use MLK as an example of "good" change. Having racist opinions is an important personal freedom. Many racist opinions are correct, for instance; and can be important for self-protection and the protection of one's community.
Whites at the time had very real fears that when blacks moved into their community, they would be so violent as to force whites to move; I read a book about someone's experience in Baltimore when blacks were displacing whites; it simply wasn't safe for whites after a certain point. Whites were forced to flee to the suburbs, selling their homes at a loss, in order to not have their kids beaten up or themselves mugged or raped; and yet according to the dominant narrative, it is whites who are to blame for all of this, not blacks. Michelle Obama: "y'all were running away from us." Yes; for good reasons. Normally if a group moving in forces another group out, we consider the group who is forced to move out as the victim. Why does this not apply when it's blacks moving in and whites moving out? Clearly the powers that be have something against whites and favor blacks.
But MLK didn't stop people from having those views or even expressing them. MLK's views were positively conservative by today's standards and mostly amounted to preventing discrimination in commercial activity, voting rights and in not having the government choose to support racist institutions.
> preventing discrimination in commercial activity
I.e. supporting the abolition of people's freedom of association. Don't pretend like wasn't an act of supressing people's freedoms. If you want it banned, fine - but don't call it 'commerical activity' to act like it's not restricting anyone's rights.
And MLK explicitly supported affirmative action, which literally means discriminatory hiring policies. You can say that's a good thing, but it's literally racial discrimination by institutions.
I don't see why that is much more of an imposition on rights than other commercial regulations.
Personally, I think those regulations served a practical purpose but now exist primarily to express a moral attitude and in an ideal world maybe be repealed (once the boycott will land the other way they aren't so needed) but I feel the same way about regulations that require hairdressers to have such and such accreditation or the like. Or laws which require a car to be sold via a dealership. I mean that every bit as much prevents me from choosing who I contract with (if I want a car I can't choose not to contract with car dealers) as anti-discriminaton law does. So as far as the cost/benefit of rights vs benefits go they are far from the top of my list of laws that should go.
I agree that there is an area where this intersects with free speech concerns eg what if you want to run the KKK dinner and I agree that when expressive content is at issue extra care should be taken. But those are facts about implementation that reflect nothing about MLK or his concerns. I doubt that kind of thing was even on his radar.
More broadly, I think it's important to be cognisant of the system we actually have and recognize that even if in some ideal world a rule wouldn't exist it doesn't necessarily follow that it's better if it doesn't exist in this world.
For instance, in an ideal world we wouldn't have rules that punish people for smoking weed. But it would be a worse world if we just repealed the bans on marijuana for white people (even if for some dumb historical reason the law had been written seperately to impose the same punishment on whites and non-whites).
I'd argue the same is true for restrictions on commercial transactions. Even if in an ideal world you'd live in a libertarian paradise in a world where we tolerate all sorts of regulation for all sorts of reasons singling out racial discrimination law as the place we won't accept any regulation of commercial transactions (and they are hardly the only law demanding certain offers be available if you offer something to someone else) would be worse.
It's very difficult to speak about this subject in a vacuum. There would be zero need for any sort of CRA-type legislation if not for the relatively unique historical-sociological circumstances of the US.
Jim Crow was an exploit of the manner in which the US system preserved individual rights, essentially a mass conspiracy to disenfranchise and restrict the freedom of a group of citizens.
The restriction of freedom of association in the Civil Rights Act was necessary to prevent a second Civil War.
The problem is how broad-scoped it was (cf. Hanania's analysis, which is essentially entirely correct). If it had come in the form of a Constitutional amendment stating something along the lines of "Congress shall have the ability to make laws prohibiting the restriction of free movement and commerce based on race," it would have never metastasized into what it is now.
Even better, potentially, although I think it would need very specific wording to make this non-nebulous enough to avoid the pitfalls of the current CRA: "Congress shall have the power to intervene against mass conspiracies to deprive people of their customary individual rights based on race."
In fact, that's the motte of the pro-CRA argument: "what, you want to go back to Whites Only signs?"
This isn't just a problem with definitions. It's a deep seated problem with our desire to signal our moral views that's being exacerbated by the internet.
If you really want to say X is bad then the most effective way to signal that is to demand some kind of consequence or punishment for doing X. If you say, X is bad but people should be allowed to do X there will be suspicion that you don't really think X is that bad. I fear the internet is making this pressure worse.
We created a number of technologies to limit the harm from this tendency. For instance, legal norms/rules like the 4th amendment which make it harder for the government to punish behavior without a victim to complain. Sure, we say it's about privacy and that's a nice bonus but the focus on government violation (as opposed to people secretly reading your papers) and use in prosecution suggest a substantial interest is limiting the ability of the government to punish some kinds of behavior.
As we move into a more digital interconnected world I fear we'll need new technologies to manage this issue. Principles that we regard as sacred which can be appealed to allowing expression of disapproval to come apart from calls for consequences.
On a related note, I’ve made this point when discussing communism.
Marx, and to a lesser extent most socialists, want “the market” or “the economy” to be subject to “democratic control.”
This sounds great. We replace this large, unaccountable system of “the market” with a system accountable to the government, and through the government, the people.
But in practice, this means deeply interfering in the individual choices of nearly every single person in society. This is the petty tyranny of the homeowner’s association telling you what color you can paint your house--but for every single good and service in society.
I’m not sure I agree, however, that we should simply declare that democracy and accountability are inconsistent with totalitarianism. There is a reason that philosophical liberalism insists on protecting individual agency, and that many classical liberals supported democracy primarily as a means to that end.
John Stuart Mill’s famous treatise “On Liberty” is often interpreted as attacking the supposed morality of the majority or of the democratic will, and insisting on the freedom of the individual in the face of these.
"This is the petty tyranny of the homeowner’s association telling you what color you can paint your house--but for every single good and service in society."
And yet there are humans who want to live under a homeowners' association. Can't say I understand it myself, but they do.
You might be able to salvage "hold criminals accountable for their actions" by noting that many crimes consist of unlawfully doing things that normally only people vested with extraordinary authority are allowed to do. Criminals take people's money without their consent, kill people, and imprison people. Government officials also do all those things, but (at least theoretically, in healthy societies) they are supposed to only do those things in lawfully delineated circumstances that promote the general welfare.
I suspect you were a bit uncharitable to Rob Reich (pun intended). I don't even have to read Reich to know that he must have been referring to tax breaks, which at least to some extent mean that effectively people are able to redirect a fraction of their taxes to causes of their choice.
It seems like a mistake to compare people’s freedom “to express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology” to people’s freedom to do about risky AI tech as they want.
In the former case, the impacts are smaller. Less people have a stake in it, or have a lesser stake. The acts of “expressing an idea”, “releasing a new product” or “inventing a new technology” are unlikely to hurt society and the larger populace. In situations with potential societal harm like AGI, or high stake situation like wealth redistribution, the public should have a say in it.
So I would define democracy as: a more democratic society gives people more say in things they have high stakes in. Your freedom to express your opinion has high stake to you, low stake to others. So a truly democratic society should give you the freedom to express most opinions. It matters less what others want because they have low stake in the situation.
Same idea for accountability. People are accountable to others if their action harms others. People are accountable to society if society has a high stake in what those people do (eg criminals). People cannot be held accountable for expressing non-hateful opinions because society has low stake in what a person says. But the person himself has high stake in what he can say.
Accountability should not correlate with “vested power”. If my action screws over a number of people immensely, then I am accountable for my action. We could understand this as “I entered a legal contract to not violate laws in exchange for access to public services”. I was “vested with the privilege to access public services instead of having to live in the wild”, so legal accountability automatically exist. Social accountability can be understood as “I entered an implicit social contract to be nice to others, in exchange for others being nice to me.” I was vested with the privilege of being treated nicely in society. If I violate my terms of the contract bigly, and do something bad others also have a stake in, there’s social accountability.
People should be accountable for their actions whether or not it harms others. It's the escape from accountability that is the problem, like blaming "external factors" when a bad policy fails, and the politicians get re-elected anyway.
This issue is also very well known in academic political theory, and is one of the first things discussed within the 'democracy' section of introductory textbooks. The general strategy to resolve it is to decompose a concept into multiple dimensions - for 'democracy', Swift (2019, pp. 291-305) breaks it down into 4 such dimensions: 'directness or indirectness of the decision', 'accountability of the representatives', 'equality (of opportunity) for influence' and 'scope of authority of democratic will'.
With this kind of conceptual analysis, when someone says that the government having control over more areas of people's lives is more 'democratic', they are saying that it is so on the 'scope of authority of democratic will' dimension. You can also start an evaluation of the value of democracy with much greater granularity (no longer is it simply a question of the amount of 'democracy' that is optimal, but instead the degree of each dimension of democracy that is optimal).
An implication is that it is theoretically possible to have a totalitarian democracy (which is a situation where there is large scope of democratic decision, while the government also scores highly on the other dimensions)., thus agreeing with Scott's analysis. And we also have a theoretical reason to believe that this is unstable and will likely collapse into a totalitarian dictatorship because the large scope of democratic decision allows the people to vote themselves out of democracy (because the scope of decision-making is so large that it includes modification of the democratic procedures themselves and the suppression of rights that are essential to maintaining the other dimensions of democracy).
References:
1. Swift, A. (2019). Political philosophy: a beginners' guide for students and politicians. John Wiley & Sons.
A modern liberal democracy is a carefully tuned and integrated package consisting of democratic procedures for electing officials (note that those officials usually have no legal obligation to follow their promises, but since there is always next election they have a strong incentive to act in the interest of people. Also, those who are outside suffrage are invisible to polititians, except as possibly a nuisance, hence suffrage as wide as possible is important), independent judiciary, constitutions, constitutional courts and international treaties which, not only set the rules of the game, but also guarantee basic rights of people regardless of vagaries of current elections and prevents tyrrany of the majority, free press and freedom of expression which both controls other power centers, but also ensures efficient information flow (there is a reason why many dictatorships are divorced from reality), freedom of activities of citizens unless there is a very good reason to ban some activities, which ensures effective allocation of resources, elasticity and exploration of possibilities necessary to meet future challenges, and it is also a basic human right. Take even one piece of this package and the whole system quickly degenerates into its opposite. While I agree that liberalism and democracy on one hand and totalitarianism and authoritarianism (in the strict sense) are correlated but not the same, but there is a very good reason for this correlation, and why our current ideal system is called "liberal democracy". Some people are under illusion that we can have democracy without liberalism/liberty or liberty/liberalism/libertarianism without democracy. They are sadly (and sometimes dangerously) mistaken.
I agree with the article but I want to point out that if your AI has the chance to literally kill everyone, then that has reached the point where you should probably involve a democratic process and shouldn't just go ahead unilaterally. (This of course doesn't apply to weaker AI systems.)
The practice of winning political victories by subtly and silently redefining words goes all the way back to Plato's /Politeia/ (always deliberately mistranslated as "Republic"), which begins with Socrates saying they're going to figure out what "justice" means, and ends with Socrates discovering that it means that everybody does what exactly and only what Plato tells them to, or gets killed.
I'm still bitter that when people today say "liberals", they mean authoritarian leftists.
Roussea famously said that we need to be forced to be free.
This sounds like a contradiction, but arguably not if you take a broad definition of freedom.
Freedom can mean the freedom of an individual to make their own choices, or for someone to vote and participate in a collective decision about what kind of society to live in.
Notably, the two trade off against each other. For example, if each individual has the freedom to decide how much noise to make, then the individual has lost the ability to participate in a collective decision of how noisy they want the community to be at night.
This isn’t a comment in favour of Rousseau, just explaining the way I’d explain a Rousseau-like position which might not match his actual view.
Your overall point is why the term "liberal democracy" was invented. Democracy without protections for individual rights, without a "right to privacy" (in the sense of a right to make decisions about one's private life without government interference), is as oppressive as dictatorship. Neither Orbán's "illiberal democracy" nor the CCP's "socialist democracy" achieves the goals that motivate pro-democracy activists, and they should be reminded of this regularly.
That said, even in the liberal tradition, your right to swing your fist ends at another person's face. Thoughts and speech are traditionally considered your own business, but when you take actions in the physical world with physical consequences for other people, those people get some input.
And this gets really muddy in the context of computer code, where something that looks like speech can be converted to physical actions without the involvement of another agent. It also gets murky in the context of creative AI, where speech can be generated by something that isn't a free-speech-rights-holding agent.
I tend to think that regulating this stuff is likely to be worse than not regulating it, at least at this stage. But it's not immediately obviously illiberal for democratic institutions to consider the questions: *are* these technologies infringing on individual rights? *Do* they pose unacceptable physical risks to the general public? *Is* a LLM's speech an expression of its owner's free speech rights?
As a practical matter, I think making an argument for how these questions should be answered is likely to be more valuable than arguing that they shouldn't be asked.
hey there, love your article, but i think there are a few things that need to be addressed.
1: Address counterarguments: you should address counterarguments to strengthen your points. By presenting opposing viewpoints and explaining why they may not align with your position, the article can come across as more balanced and open to discussion.
2: Streamline the writing: The article can be viewed a little to dense to follow at times due to its length and intricate ideas. Consider breaking up the longer paragraphs into smaller, more digestible chunks. anyways keep up writing the good stuff. cheers
> I think the word “democratic” is most useful when applied to the structure of a government
I disagree, somewhat. If a private army decides to set off a war with a neighbouring country without asking anyone, that seems undemocratic. Similarly if anyone uses force to just overpower the government in making a decision. It's not surprising that the term gets extended to government-y decisions (the kind that people would _expect_ (and want) to be made by the government exclusively) even if not literally made by the government itself.
On AI... Yeah, it also seems right. Under the assumption that unchecked AI progress results in the end of democracy and the transfer of all power to someone's alien creation, I think "undemocratic" fits.
Possible typo: "The only society that doesn’t leave space for the person trying to make the world better as they understand out outside of the existing governmental process is - again - totalitarianism."
This sentence is weird to me. Usually people say "as they understand it". I think the "out" is supposed to be an "it".
I believe that you will run into difficulties if you try to strip the 'punishment' sense out of accountability. I think that a sizeable number of people want the ability to blame, punish, make suffer, scapegoat and humiliate. 'Indulging my inner sadism' and 'enjoying a little cruelty' is the whole point. It just sounds so much better when called 'I want accountability'.
This comes very much to the fore when you are trying to reform an institution or organisation. Clearly, if some powerful people are 'a law unto themselves' and can violate laws and norms without reprisal, you have a setup that is ripe for the abuse of such power. But as a practical matter, abuses of power often are the result of a cover-up. And often the things being covered up are, at the bottom, tiny mistakes and peccadillos. It turns out that people involved are very frightened of what will happen to them if the accountability police get a hold of them, because they in no way trust that they will treated fairly by those that come to judge them. Instead they may feature as scapegoat of the week. Seems that their power, too, is seen as 'unaccountable'.
The money to religion analogy doesn't work, because they're not the same. Money is a state invention, with the entire system of property fully regulated and enforced by the state. There is no conceivable pristine natural state of it where every individual can just do their own thing and not bother anyone else. (Arguably, in practice, there's no such state possible for religions either, ever since universalizing ones arose, managed to impose themselves as a social requirement and made it their point to slaughter the infidels. But at least it's easy to imagine. And, now that some states are protecting it, it may not be natural anymore, but still, kinda works.)
The conceivable natural state for property relations? Commons everywhere. This, of course, far from high-modernist government controlling everything, but even further from antisocial individuals appropriating earth's resources and government assisting them and preventing you from stopping them, with violence. Even if the "appropriating resources and preventing you from stopping them, with violence" applies to government all the same, "at least they're democratically accountable" is in fact a valid argument (even if the accountability is, in practice, very poor, because in the alternative it's being compared to, it's non-existent).
Of course the problem is, all of this is motte and bailey. Democratic motte is [humans need to cooperate and peacefully resolve their differences], the bailey is [give all power to bureaucrats]. Accountability motte is [we need to update our trust in humans based on bad things/decisions they've made], the bailey is [panopticon where you cannot stray from the line even for an inch, and you have no say in setting the rules].
We need those mottes, really really need them. But of course, it's not surprising they're not convincing when they're so often used as a cover for the baileys. But bear in mind, there are many terms like this. One of them? "Freedom". We really need that one too. But with a bailey of [assholes with coercion-backed rights to resources can do anything they want and you're unable to stop them], of course people will eventually go "nah, fuck your freedom, we need to make those more democratically accountable".
I don't know the way out, but (everyone) please be aware of the problem. As the saying goes, "Knowing is half the battle."
> The conceivable natural state for property relations? Commons everywhere.
This is a common belief among certain left wing ideologies. But it's not true. Archeologists and anthropologists both agree concepts of property and media of exchange are human universals present in all times and places. The idea of primitive communism or a time before money or property is little more than a myth. And that's without getting into non-state currencies or how the commons themselves were a state creation.
Now, this doesn't mean we've always had industrial capitalism or the joint stock corporation either. But the idea that the "natural" state is a universal commons without money is just objectively wrong.
>Archeologists and anthropologists both agree [your claims here]
I mean, all the info we have about times past is just conjectures. My beliefs against yours, you disagree, can't be helped, whatever. But this, this is just ostensibly, patently false.
Unless, of course, you disregard all the people who do not in fact agree as left-wing ideologues and not real archaeologists and anthropologists, in which case I'm tempted to interpret your "both" as "all two of them".
Also, first, of course there was a time before money. Like, does this simple statement even require explanation? Second, "primitive communism" (which has nothing to do with commons conceptually, so if that was in response to what I said, just nope) is just an idea that societies operating near subsistence level are naturally less economically unequal (which, conceptually self-evident, there's nothing to get rich on), and living near subsistence level is widely accepted as the norm for most pre-civilized history. (I guess it's kind of ironic that the most famous contemporary criticism of the notion comes from David Graeber, otherwise best known for a book describing how much of what was anachronistically interpreted as evidence for money is better conceived as purely means of accounting - you can take a guess which of these two theses was controversial.)
> I mean, all the info we have about times past is just conjectures. My beliefs against yours, you disagree, can't be helped, whatever. But this, this is just ostensibly, patently false.
Finding cowry shells as currency means my 'speculation' has more evidence than yours. Or do you imagine there was a central mint pumping those out ten thousand years ago? You said money is a creation of the state. What state was there then?
> Also, first, of course there was a time before money. Like, does this simple statement even require explanation?
I said media of exchange. Currency, as in coins, was invented at some point (and in fact we know when and where). But money predates currency. Graeber's thesis, while again popular with the left, has been savaged by academics and he notably could not get such a thing through any form of review.
Look, you clearly have beliefs that you think are obvious and don't require any kind of justification or investigation. I understand there's a three to four century long tradition of inventing a state of nature and then using that to justify modern political preferences. But there is a knowable reality here and if your beliefs really proceed from what you think happened five thousand years ago, rather than just being an ex post facto justification of what you already wanted, you should look into it. Beyond Graeber and into people who actually care about the archeology or ethnographic accounts.
The first attested use of shells as currency is imperial China.
But again, the past is fundamentally unknowable. I can't prove some ancient necklace wasn't actually money, so I don't expect I can stop you from believing it was. But the present is verifiable. You can check what actual anthropologists are saying. (Like "of course real societies don't work like markets, the economist founding myth of barter is bullshit, that's basic stuff we always knew". To which the economists reply "hey, we know that too, you're accusing us of arguing from spherical cows, those are illustrations, not factual claims about past societies".) And verifiable means substantiable. If you make an outrageous claim like how a distinguished scholar, a specialist in the field, "could not get [something] through any form of review", you should really have some kind of proof ready.
But, whatever, that was at least an implicit concession that you do in fact, to quote myself, "disregard all the people who do not (...) agree" [with your worldview] "as (...) not real archaeologists and anthropologists". Why, on the other hand, would you refuse to concede you've written precisely what you've written, just a day earlier? "The idea of primitive communism or a time before money or property is little more than a myth." Your words, verbatim quote. There is a possibility to say "okay, that was a bad phrasing, let me try again", it would not detract from your point and made this conversation much more constructive. At this point, I'm not even sure if there's a point to referencing anything you said in my response. But okay, let's try. "Money predates currency" - okay, for some definitions of currency that aren't just synonymous with money, and if you believe in primordial barter. But what it, purely logically, definitionally, cannot predate, is commodities. And that alone is putting us very far into the history of humankind, very close to the present, far closer than your "human universal" claim - again, verbatim quote - would allow.
> The first attested use of shells as currency is imperial China.
This is simply not true. Again, I ask you actually look into the relevant research.
> You can check what actual anthropologists are saying.
In fact I do. And you are rather misrepresenting it.
> If you make an outrageous claim like how a distinguished scholar, a specialist in the field, "could not get [something] through any form of review", you should really have some kind of proof ready.
Outrageous? You could disprove me by showing how, for example, A History of Debt passed peer review. Of course it didn't because it couldn't. You're clearly using claims and terms to avoid actually engaging with the relevant claims.
> Your words, verbatim quote.
I admit I don't understand how this serves as a 'gotcha'. If you would clarify what you mean I'd respond. As I said from the first, humans can exist under diverse economic systems. But I don't know which one you're referring to here.
> Your words, verbatim quote. There is a possibility to say "okay, that was a bad phrasing, let me try again", it would not detract from your point and made this conversation much more constructive.
What bad phrasing do you think I've had? Again, please be specific because I don't understand.
> But what it, purely logically, definitionally, cannot predate, is commodities.
There's the Marxism. The reification of labor into commodities as some form of evil. Unfortunately Marxism, like Locke and Hobbes and the like, invented a prehistoric past that just coincidentally agreed with their current theories. But no, it is invented rather than any reality.
>You could disprove me by showing how, for example, A History of Debt passed peer review. Of course it didn't because it couldn't.
No such thing exists, to my knowledge, so of course it couldn't. But if you're referring to "Debt: The First 5000 Years", then certainly, I would assume it did not pass peer review, because books, as a rule, are not being peer reviewed. (Do I really need to be explaining this?)
And look, you were not making some off-hand nitpick here. You were constructing an elaborate argument around it being "notable" that Graeber "could not get such a thing through any form of review", for which reason you advised me to disregard it and read "people who actually care". (With at least a strong implication that those are people with actual expertise and credentials, the kind of people who rejected his theses when he tried to run them through peer review.)
And again, he was a life-long academic, something that's impossible without having a long history of peer reviewed publications under your belt, and specifically, an anthropologist long specializing in the very subject he was writing about. It would indeed be very notable if he "could not" (as in, attempted and failed) get something through a review. But - that's not what happened, is it?
> Your words, verbatim quote.
>I admit I don't understand how this serves as a 'gotcha'.
You: [a statement] is a myth.
Me: Nah, [a statement, direct quote] is obviously true.
You [right after quoting me]: I said [something else entirely].
Again, you might have said "I meant [something else entirely]" and avoided this conversation. But now that I think about it, your reply makes more sense if I assume you did not even register the point I was making and responded to something else entirely. But those were two very simple, very direct sentences, is it too much to ask for them to be interpreted exactly as written?
>There's the Marxism.
What? The word "commodity", a basic economic term? You can replace it with "fungible goods" if you want. But do you actually want to, or do you want to find an excuse, any excuse, to just not register what I'm trying to explain to you?
It is worth considering the origins of the state when thinking about the term 'democracy'. Why do people allow themselves to be subject to the control of a government? Because they trade some of their freedom for the security of the state, this is the social contract. Using the freedom/security trade-off to reflect on the example of someone's freedom to give to any charity, there isn't a justification to take away this person's freedom to donate and give it to an elected government. I think there's a difference between justification of state control over different parts of people's lives and what counts as making decisions more democratic.
I think the word “democratic” is most useful in the sense of “liberal democracy”, where individuals have rights that way heavier than the votes of the majority. I’ve often heard “democracy” without protections for the rights of minorities and individuals as a “dictatorship of the majority”. It’s the role of the courts to make sure the other branches don’t overstep.
Liberal democracy is what we typically mean when we want to defend democracy, and so I think any definition of democracy that doesn’t include these is suspect. But not everyone sees/understands/agrees. I completely agree that there are bad definitions of democracy out there, and I think people who claim something is undemocratic often need to be challenged on their understanding of democracy – as you do here. Rule of the people and rule of law must mean more than just the will of the majority.
I don’t think MLK is the best example for any of this. He, and much of the rest of the civil rights movement, engaged in civil disobedience, deliberately breaking supposedly “democratically” enacted laws (spoiler: they weren’t), and getting jail time and the wrong side of billy clubs for it. They were most definitely being held accountable. Civil disobedience is not a democratic way of doing things, but may, paradoxically be necessary to enact or uphold a democracy. (Hence, the liberties.)
I am very much a proponent of liberal democracy (at least until AI throws up a better alternative), but I acknowledge that there are problems and difficult discussions to be had in a liberal democracy too. Like how much does a country owe its citizens and vice versa? (Which goes to tax law, entitlements, military service, etc.)
I think I have lamented the world’s lack of a truly anarcho-libertarian alternative in this comment section before. Just so that people could vote with their feet, if they think the compromises reached inside the liberal democracy are too expensive for them, or are too skewed towards dictatorship of the majority. (I.e. if they think taxes are too high; and/or they don’t want to contribute to x, y, z spending; etc.)
I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not saying liberal democracy means everyone has the right to do everything. That’s more like the libertarian society I say does not exist. I’m talking about rights like human rights, roughly along the lines of the liberties outlined in the bill of rights and other places: Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc. The whole life, liberty and pursuits of happiness thing. When specific liberties come into conflict with each other, as they often do, someone (like the courts) need to adjudicate.
When it comes adjudicating civil liberties in the courts in the 50s and 60s, it was the rights of people to be treated as equals that weighed heavier, not necessarily the opinions of the majority.
Well, no. You’re not exactly wrong, but not exactly right either. The degree to which the constitution passed by a democratically elected legislature is debatable, even though the ambitions were in order. Some state and federal laws were, but those had to comply with the constitution. And some amendments to the constitution were. And you’re right in spirit, in that the laws and the constitution had to be interpreted by democratically elected people and appointees and employees of the government... But that only goes to show that the system is complicated.
No one is claiming the conflicts that come up aren’t often difficult to resolve, but the basic philosophy behind liberal democracy (small l, small d) is easy enough to grasp. And it’s not as new a concept as you make it out to be.
I am not sure whether you’re strawmanning me on purpose or are not trying very hard to understand, but I’m not going to engage further. If you want to understand my position, there are centuries of good writing and thinking on the subject, but start by reading the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia pages on liberalism and liberal democracy.
> I think the word “accountable” should be reserved for people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them (elected officials accountable to voters, managers accountable to owners, charities accountable to donors, etc)
I think this has some disadvantages in the case of governments.
Like let's take businesses as an example. It seems to me that similarly to how you feel one can talk about charities being accountable to donors, one could also reasonably talk about businesses being accountable to customers, for things like product safety and product quality.
But often, the government is offering some sort of service. In those cases, wouldn't there be some logic in talking about the government being accountable to those it offers the service to?
What you are missing in your point that totalitarianism can be construed as "democratic" (which is indeed being made by Russian and Chinese pundits) is the dimension of "time". One of the painful lessons of German history is that a democracy where elected leaders are free to do anything that a majority want them to do at that time, quickly ceases to be a democracy. "The will of the people" needs to be constrained by checks and balances - a constitution, a strong judiciary - otherwise people soon find out that their will is no longer relevant when they find they've voted a psychopath into office. (See also "the paradox of tolerance".)
So yes, it's always a balancing act, not just between majorities and minorities at any given time, but also between people and their future selves, and pure democracy is neither good nor stable. That needs to be stated explicitly, so we can discuss where to draw the boundaries, instead of engaging in buzzword tennis.
My read is that this is a pretty weak strawmaning.
In the first 3 paragraphs, you argue that one view of democracy can be that the 50.1% rule without limit on the 49.9%, conflating it with majoritarianism. I'd be very surprised if more than a small minority of people advocating for more democracy view it this way. I believe that most of the people would agree that more democracy would also mean more protection of the right of the minorities such as their freedom of opinion, speech and religion, as well as the protection of their ability to influence the political life of the state (via allowing them to vote for example). Hitler got elected democratically, the enabling act of 1933 giving his government full power was voted by the vast majority of the assembly, but it doesn't mean in any way that his power was democratic at all.
You argue that one can decide to not define democracy like that. But in the rest of your piece you completely conflate the concept of democracy with majoritarianism. Moreover you assume a democracy can be totalitarian, while the later has been defined as an opposite of the later. It seems then cheap to try to assimilate the two concepts to support your claim, I believe it'd be much saner for the sake of the discussion to create a different word for the concept you name here as 'totalitarianism'.
Some people view charity as undemocratic not because individuals are able to choose which charities gets the funding instead of the government, but because the wealth distribution is so skewed that only a handful of people are able to decide where this money goes. One can argue whether this unequal distribution of wealth is a terrible thing or not, but the critic of current's charity system (and it's funding through tax subsidies) is not focused on disabling individuals choosing where the money should go. I think Piketty for example advocates having a specific part of the budget of the state allowed to charity, and having each people choose their preference to which to redirect this money. This money would then be distributed uniformly according to each citizen's preference, not according to the preference of the richest nor according to the preference of the 50.1%. I fail to see the totalitarian aspect of it.
It’s sort of like “racist” or “sexist” but in reverse, where even if something is objectively correct, and is also sexist, you have to explain why it’s “not really sexist” because it’s true. Like “saying that women have smaller brains than men isn’t sexist, it’s a scientifically proven fact.” No - it is both sexist and a scientifically proven fact. Those are not mutually exclusive. But because “sexist” is just a euphemism for “something that is wrong and bad,” you have to play word games to avoid those connotations.
No. Democracy is defined very vaguely as the exercise of the power by the people, in opposition to autocracy where the power is exercised by a single individual, or plutocracy where the power is exercised by the most wealthy individuals.
When speaking of democracy nowadays in Europe, everyone takes the liberal democracy definition of it. I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case in the US, but my insight here is lacking
It's this vagueness that Scott uses here to strawman any person advocating for more democracy as a proponent of majoritarianism, whereas it's not what most of them advocate at all.
I'm honestly too unfamiliar with this specific example (as well as vastly annoyed by the Common Law system) to reply to it now.
I already gave an example of that related to philanthropy in my original comment.
Edit: Sorry I read your reply to quickly. In that case it would indeed give more power to the majority and remove some for the minority, but without disempowering it entirely at all. Assuming that the minority had too much power (somehow plutocratic), it can be viewed as an attempt to balance more fairly the original distribution of power, without falling into the dictatorship of the majority (which I thought is what we all agreed is the issue here) as wealthy individuals would still be able to indirectly give money to the charities they want, just a lesser amount of it.
Agreed. Virtually anything "taken to the extreme" is a bad thing, so that smelled a lot like strawmanning. Just because I disagree with the current form and expansion of charity does not mean I'm totalitarian. To imply so serves no useful purpose, but if that line of reasoning is useful after all, then I might as well say that advocating personal freedom, *taken to the extreme*, would lead to absolute libertarianism. That would not be much better than totalitarianism.
To become a billionaire philantropist, you have to become a billionaire first, and you can hardly become one without violating democratic principles first: exploiting your workers and/or the tax laws. Most billionaires, when they're not outright criminal, steal a little from everyone and, among others, then want to get all the social credit through their philantropy. It does not take a totalitarian to find that objectionable.
>you can hardly become one without violating democratic principles first: exploiting your workers and/or the tax laws. Most billionaires, when they're not outright criminal, steal a little from everyone
“Exploiting” in the morally-neutral, purely descriptive Marxian sense? Or in the more common “this is unfair and bad” sense? A common trick of socialists is to try to smuggle in the connotations of the second sense while only providing evidence for the first sense.
The use of "democracy" to sum up something that needs to be defended by stopping the people's elected representatives doing things, seems confusing. See Orban, Israel's Supreme Court, Trump, etc. I can see you might want to oppose the decisions of the people's representatives, but why use the word democracy to represent what you want, when the people having power is literally what you oppose? And why is the phrase liberal democracy used so often, when individual freedom is also something which you seem to think has, in general, gone too far?
I think democracy has, to a lot of people, come to mean rule in the name of the people by an educated elite, plus rule that aims not to hurt people, plus rule that involves people having a lot of power to tax their neighbours, and stop them doing what they want. A mixture of a state religion, niceness, conservativism, and socialism. Which is entirely defensible.
I suppose this mixture of beliefs might have come to be associated with the word democracy because the places that are ruled in this way tend to be democracies. Basically, because this mixture of beliefs is how people want to be ruled. Or at least it is for as long as things are getting better for most people, most of the time - as they have been in the West for most of the past 75 years. If this stops being the case, then you get the odd phenomenon of the majority of the elite rallying against democracy in the name of democracy.
For AI regulation we conveniently have a bunch of network-effect/exclusivity-contracts using companies — larger than some state governments — using their dominant positions to fight for complete control over a new sector. Except maybe Facebook/Meta who seem to count the (actually good) outcome of «let it split into a thousand small pieces» either as acceptable or as extremely implausible. OpenAI seems to be closely enough tied to Microsoft.
Antitrust laws exist for that, and in general applying higher standards of behavoir to things that have become larger than many state governments turned out to be a reasonable idea.
MLK… once he started building a movement, he built a movement for a specific purpose and ran it for that purpose (antitrust laws are much stronger on the power-repurposing; if anything, it's the political party that run afoul of the intent of antitrust laws, a proportional system with narrower party platforms and explicit coalitions is indeed better)
Of course the actual quality of specific call to actions might not rise to mentioning antitrust law…
(It would be nice if Khan's FTC succeeded at least at reminding people that antitrust laws exist, and exist for a reason)
> I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
Its not democracy that holds criminals accountable, it's the rule of law.
Everyone donating to their favourite charity seems like the pinnacle of democracy to me - a distribution of goods according to the distribution of preferences in the population.
Only if ones ideas of democratic are very closely tied to the winner-takes-it-all-democracy they live in would they think that outcomes of every democratic process need to be uniform.
It's probably meaningful to make a distinction between a liberal democracy and a merely electoral one. It's quite democratic for 51% to oppress 49%, but this merely shows that it's only liberal democracy we should truly value (although this doesn't make the electoral one completely meaningless - after all, it's somewhat better if 51% oppress 49% than if 25% oppress 75%).
Democracy - at least of the liberal kind, but even illiberal democracy is probably better than autocracy - is a good way of getting a good outcome. That's the whole point.
'Liberal' and 'democracy' are literal synonyms in the west today. "illiberal democracy" in the traditional sense of the term is now labelled 'populism'.
"Democracy" can also be analysed as a set of institutionalised insurance-arrangements. Both normatively and empirically.
The insurance-theory of democracy works at two levels: the level of elite competition for power, and the level of citizen-ruler relationships.
First, democracy insures competing would-be rulers against the risk that they will be violently suppressed or killed should they lose the battle for office. In exchange for being protected in this way (plus having the right to attempt to conquer office again four-five years from now), competing would-be rulers accept that they cannot do everything they want if they win the internal power struggle in the state. (European elites in particular often had to learn the hard way that being insured against oppression if you lose is worth the price of not being able to do everything you want, unrestrained, should you win.)
Second, democracies also insure ordinary citizens against the risk that they will be violently suppressed by whichever elite that rules the state. Secret ballots at regular intervals install the fear of losing power into the heart of rulers, reducing the probability that they will use their power to suppress ordinary citizens.
The insurance-theory of democracy may at the same time explain the existence of constitutions, the rule of law/Rechstaat and special legal protection of minorities, as these aspects of a political order serves as insurance against the risk of tyranny by the majority. Killing several empirical birds with the same analytical stone, so to speak - and resolving some of the tensions Scott and/or several commentators point out.
For example: You never know if you may end up in some identifiable minority yourself one day, which provides a majority with an insurance-motivation for accepting constitutional legal safeguards against suppressing present-day minorities.
When someone wins an election by campaigning on an issue and wins (especially if they win decisively) they will often claim they have a "mandate" from the people. Let's assume for a second that the issue really was salient to voters and they really had a reasonably formed opinion about it.
So say Ron DeSantis wins by 20 points and decides that he's going to pass universal school vouchers which was a big part of his campaign. He gets the legislature to vote overwhelmingly and then signs it.
Then the Florida Supreme Court comes along and says "no, public education is a fundamental human right and taking money out of the system like this violates that right. Also, some parents will use it to indoctrinate their children or become a public health menace." Or whatever. They strike the law down.
I think we would all consider that "undemocratic" and the members of the court that did that "unaccountable" if there was no way to remove them.
You can copy paste this onto literally any issue that you can think of. Maybe you prefer things to be undemocratic and unaccountable one some issues and not others, but you understand the principal.
Of course I could probably come up with some example where you would be sympathetic to the court. Maybe Adolf Hitler comes back from the grave, runs a successful political campaign and gets a lot of votes, and decides to do the things he did before. If the Supreme Court stopped him everyone would probably say they were doing their job. We would say that despite being an election he intended to end democracy, and despite the court not being accountable to the will of the people it's accountable to higher principles that are in the peoples best interest.
I just don't know if there is a way out of value judgements on all this stuff.
C.S.Lewis wrote on this subject in 'Screwtape proposes a toast'. From the point of view of a devil of course, so not to be taken without salt:
"Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.
Such was our counterattack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counterattack takes a different form.
Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.
You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.
The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you."
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks."
The Devil simply understands marketing, emotional manipulation, and how to justify the means for the ends. Some other things similar to "you're not against democracy, are you?" are:
- Think of the children!
- Healthcare is a basic human right.
- Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- We must [do/avoid] [something] at all costs!
Absolutely everything has advantages and disadvantages. One cannot give to a charity of any sort without reducing someone's personal wealth. One cannot eat without having a living thing killed. When one drinks water, one introduces impurities into it. Yet I would not argue against any of these things, since the advantages, in my (and most others) opinion outweigh the disadvantages.
I would say almost all mainstream parties in wealthy democracies are ideologically liberal democratic and would essentially agree with the principles Scott outlines in the post. On controversial policy questions different "liberal democratic" values are often in conflict and the broad principles don't compel one particular outcome.
>Most liberal democratic countries do not have free speech, freedom of association, etc.
What, at all? Im.pretty sure all have freedom of association in the political.sense, and only restrict it where it overlaps with private discriminatory behaviour.
I think liberalism has won so comprehensively in many of the democratic countries, that when most people say 'democracy' what they really mean is 'liberal democracy', and it can be good to highlight that these are different things sometimes.
Having said that, I think some form of democracy is desirable for any liberal state - after all, for legitimacies sake, people should have a stake in their government, and democracy (while imperfect and with it's own pathologies) is still a better check on the powerful than many other forms of government.
'Liberal' and 'democracy' are literal synonyms in the west today. "illiberal democracy" in the traditional sense of the term is now labelled 'populism'.
You get quandaries like this when you're trying too hard to preserve the taxonomy of your heuristics. It's laudable to strive toward that sort of perfection, of course. Democracy and accountability are just ideas; what you're searching for is a tidy encapsulation of all their good qualities - the ultimate steelman.
Like I said, that's an admirable pursuit, but most of the time we've got to modify our heuristics to spec, accounting for things like scope. The answer turns out to be a lot of duct tape pretty often.
This is the best commentary I've read about the current situation in Israel. I just want to acknowledge that. Scott is the best at narrowing down and clarifying exactly what the important issues are - I'm going to be sharing this one with friends and family.
Please make it very clear that Scott is strongly in favor of judicial independence, even if he thinks "democracy" is not the right word for this value.
Also, you should probably share Scott's "Dictator Book Club" series as well. Bibi is not currently included, but depending how things go, he likely will be...
Though I agree fully, one correction: "I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad"" - Nothing "recent" about it, tale as old as democracy ("Pericles - democrat or tyrant"). In my looong life, "undemocratic" was always "bad". (or is it "has been" - English tenses have been fiendishly tricky, always).
Accountability is the opposite of independence, but it’s a Russell conjugation (“we must defend the independence of the civil service, whilst fighting unaccountable bureaucrats”). It’s also a two-place predicate (“accountable to whom?”). Whether it’s good or not depends on what you’re talking about, but the arguments journalists, judges[?], or private individuals to be accountable to/dependent on the state should ring alarm bells for wanting to subvert democracy, whilst wanting congress to be unaccountable to/independent of the electorate would be an attempt to establish an oligarchy.
Democracy is government policy and/or the composition of the government matching the preferences of the population (you may need to insert some caveats about causation to avoid Gettier-casing popular dictatorships). Only a tiny fringe of people want to ban private charity, so banning private charity would be undemocratic. The alternative is, “most people would think your tie’s pretty ugly, so you wearing it is an attack on democracy.”
I don't think there is an issue with a definition of "democracy" which considers state religion voted by the majority of people to more democratic than freedom of religion. The issue is only when we assume that "more democratic" automatically means "more liberal" and vice versa. Liberalism isn't the synonym for democracy. There can be illiberal democracies and liberal dictatorships (Ataturk Turkey is a good example, I think). Such are not very stable but possible.
Likewise, "more democratic" doesn't necessary mean "better". We often need to find compromise when more democracy and some other of our values. When we are talking about "liberty" in particular, I think a good heuristic is to side with more liberty for private things and with more democracy for public/political ones. The line isn't clear cut. but it doesn't have to be. The less something is private and more political the more reasonable it is to sacrifice liberty for democracy and vice versa.
I also don't think that talks about accountability should be reserved only for some people with very special powers. Obviously, great power requires great accountability. But it's a spectrum, we do not need to cut off all the accountability when the power is just moderate.
The goal is maximum human freedom, not maximum democracy. Institutions should be subject to the safeguard of democratic control when they have direct coercive power over people's lives: in descending order of importance, the state should have elections and plebiscites; employers should have unions and/or codetermination and/or a direct co-op structure; and Internet platforms should either have user input on codes of conduct and moderation decisions (Wikimedia is a great example) or a robust set of viable competitors allowing users to vote with their feet.
Regular charity isn't coercive and shouldn't be anyone else's business, but the Gates and Chan Zuckerberg and Soros foundations do "charity" at a scale where an individual gets to effectively set public policy with moderately coercive effects on researchers, farmers, students, etc. This should be addressed, perhaps by preventing individuals from accumulating billions of dollars.
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of that to my comment. Insofar as this is true, you also have the negative freedom (freedom from coercive obstruction) to sleep under a bridge, defecate on a sidewalk, or use drugs on a park bench. I'm guessing you also have the positive freedom (freedom to achieve goals) to sleep in a bed, defecate in a toilet, use drugs at home or in a licensed establishment, and pursue your good in countless other ways unavailable to the indigent.
Charity and other forms of redistribution, when done well, can empower donees to exercise more positive freedom. Taxation-based redistribution has the downside of slightly decreasing the negative freedom of rich taxpayers, but this is generally a Pareto and absolute improvement in freedom because the rich are dramatically freer than the poor (negatively and positively), and a marginal dollar matters much less for a rich person's ability to pursue their good than for a poor person's.
Ah. The standard liberal line is that coercion should only be used as sparingly as possible to provide a larger net benefit to others' freedom, without violating human rights in the process (e.g. imprisoning but not torturing murderers, taxing but not eating the rich); or, with great caution, paternalistically, where there is high confidence that it will ultimately cause a net benefit to the victim's positive freedom.
I gather you're advocating for involuntary institutionalization of the homeless, on the theory that this will improve their lives. Under a liberal framework, which I'm defending, you're not allowed to argue this by substituting your judgement of what makes a good life for theirs, nor by complaining that you find their exercise of human freedom annoying, but only by arguing that they themselves will eventually come to agree that being taken off the streets and forced to stop using narcotics improved their life.
I tentatively agree that this is plausible for certain people and certain forms of institutionalization (especially those that offer things like toilets, beds, and skill training with minimal coercion attached). But "the people living on the streets of San Francisco" is far too diverse a population for institutionalization to be defensible as a blanket policy.
The great strength of liberalism is that it allows large, diverse, productive societies to function according to a minimal consensus in which nobody has to worry about the state oppressing them just because some of the people in their cities consider people like them a "blight".
The great weakness is that there are always people who—because of their wealth, gender, race, ethnic identity, religion, or some other combination of factors—think that their in-group's interests could be better served by blowing up this consensus and using the state to crush their inferiors. When this has happened, these people have often been surprised to discover who ends up wearing the boot.
This is part of why I phrase what I, personally, would prefer, as maximizing freedom for the _median_ person in our society. The bottom 1% are sufficiently dysfunctional to damage themselves and those around them. The top 1% often have incentives to do things like impose Amazon's non-compete clause, which typically damages the freedom of many people below them socioeconomically.
"The goal is maximum human freedom" I agree. Thank you for noting that coercive power is present in _both_ the state _and_ employers, and that they both need to be checked in some way for the average person to retain freedom. ( possibly not in a majority vote way - there are various types of checks that can be used )
Yeah the Athenians tried unlimited democracy for a bit, but this resulted in lots of people being exiled and some being killed for basically holding the wrong opinions. Then they had a tyrant or two and when they went back to democracy it was more limited.
Most democracies since then have learned that lesson. It's the reason for Franklin said "a republic" instead of "a democracy". It's also the reason your Constitution is mostly limits.
Aren't 'populist'/'popular' and 'anti-populist'/'unpopular' (or arguably Burkian?) exactly the denotations needed for discussing policies as opposed to governance structures?
[I'd have thought someone else would say this, so maybe I'm missing something?]
At any rate these bounds on uses for 'democratic' and 'accountable' both seem straightforwardly correct to me. 'Accountable' seems interesting in relation to 'responsible'. Accountability is one mechanism of enforcing responsibility, maybe, with responsibility the actual end-value? Certainly, distinguishing means from ends helps clarify whether more of something is inherently desirable.
Here in Israel, we protestors have been fighting tooth and nail to keep our independent judiciary; and we've been doing that under the banner of "democracy" (or rather "DE-MO-KRAT-YA!!"). This on the grounds that protection of individual rights and liberties is an integral part of the concept of democracy, and that without the Court we would have no such protection. I am saddened to read that you see that usage as "Orwellian".
I think it is also the case that democracy, in the sense of people choosing their leaders, cannot really be maintained together with totalitarianism. The same unchecked power that the government uses to control individual lives can also be used to modify the election rules in their favor, and to eliminate other checks and balances on their power. Hungary seems to be a good example here.
Finally, there's a more troubling question: how much can we weigh the voters' choice in the context of totalitarian rule? I thing the Chinese government is in fact very popular in China. Controlling how people think is just not that difficult if you're allowed to punish dissent. If there was a country where the government controls speech but allows free elections, the ruling party would usually win (as long as there's no major disaster that they can't cover up). Would you still call that "democracy"?
I think the point here is why do you have to define a judiciary with the power to veto the elected legislature in favor of individual rights as being “integral” to democracy, instead of just saying “I think it’s good to have a judiciary with the power to do this”?
> If there was a country where the government controls speech but allows free elections, the ruling party would usually win (as long as there's no major disaster that they can't cover up). Would you still call that "democracy"?
Yes? Assuming that people can run for office and freely vote without serious restriction (or repercussions), that seems pretty obviously democracy. "Democracy" isn't just a synonym for "good government".
Controlling how people think seems not to be too difficult in ANY country, if you use the right methods. In the United States, those methods appear to be touchy-feely platitudes, empathizing, and identifying with the listener. Faking sincerity helps a lot.
Do you think the US government successfully controls how the people think? Then why is it so rare for either party to win more than two elections in a row?
The majority of people, yes. I think nowadays politics is more like following team sports, so you support your "team" and boo the opposing one.
It is not rare for a party to win two elections in a row. The incumbent still has a tremendous advantage. Trump was the first president since Bush (senior) NOT to win a second term.
Here in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a second term despite terrible economics, promising to fix the roads and giving up when the legislature didn't approve additional funding for it (surprise), and stupid draconian executive orders during the pandemic.
Yes, it's always been like team sports, or any other tribal division. Each tribe has a few people who tell them how to think. But you pick which tribe to belong to, and the government, often unhappily, lets the opposing tribe's leaders do their thing. That would not be the case without protected rights.
What I don't understand is how people can back a particular party line so consistently. They must do it without thought. It has been documented, I believe, that if you say [your popular party member] backs [opposite the party line] then most people will be in favor of it, which means the actual party ideals don't mean anything.
As far as consistency, how can people be pro-abortion and anti-capital-punishment? Or the reverse?
Why is it one may safely conclude that, if someone supports affirmative action that one also supports gun control? Or vice versa? Or if someone is against gay marriage then they must also be against welfare?
"As far as consistency, how can people be pro-abortion and anti-capital-punishment?"
nit: This is more-or-less my position (albeit I'm only weakly anti-capital-punishment). My point of view on abortion is that I don't consider a fetus (or, really, a newborn) to be a full person, so I consider the woman's right to control her own body to override any rights of the fetus. My point of view on capital punishment is that (a) given how few people the USA executes, this gets too much airtime (1/1000 of traffic deaths would be about right) (b) as a taxpayer, since it costs more to execute someone than to keep them imprisoned for life, and no enhanced deterrent has been demonstrated, it isn't worth the extra cost.
"The same unchecked power that the government uses to control individual lives can also be used to modify the election rules in their favor, and to eliminate other checks and balances on their power. Hungary seems to be a good example here."
Hungary is an example of... what? "Media bias?" "Gerrymandering?" The same things you hear about in most democratic countries?
The CCP are popular because if their economic policies, and a certain amount of nationalism - China is becoming a world power. In general China is more authoritarian than totalitarian - at least for the Han Chinese majority.
If you have ever lived in a authoritarian state (or a corporation) it’s just a matter of keeping your head down in public and not condemning the regime. And even then some criticism is allowed, and private conversations are not necessarily monitored.
The problem with democracy right now is lack of confidence in institutions.
Alas, true as presented, but it depends on the most extreme definition of democracy - essentially mob rule democracy of the wolves voting to eat the sheep kind.
No country's democracy actually works like that. It's a bit of a straw man argument. The U.S. Constitution spends a lot of words delineating the branches of government and what their specific responsibilities and limitations are. Thanks to mostly Virginia slaveowners, who really, really cared about having a national government that couldn't interfere with their way of life, we have the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments). Edge cases and changing circumstances have yielded the rest of the Amendments.
The point is that the rule of law supersedes the rule of the mob in a functioning democracy. Of course if we elect a President and Congress who declare themselves above the rule of law....
With respect to "accountability" I would make a distinction between what the word used to mean, and what it has come to mean. The old fashioned sense is that it is having to live up to the terms of an agreement: you were hired to be the dog-catcher, and have you done exactly that in an effective way? If not, you will be replaced.
In other words, accountability judged behaviour in a specific performance-related way. But now it tends to mean not just policing behaviour, but thinking and how thoughts are expressed. We are perfectly comfortable with policing behaviour, from parental control to police departments. That's the price we agree to pay for living in a society rather than as loners. But we were free inside our own heads and were shocked by the idea of 'thoughtcrime' in 1948 (yes, I did mean 1948). The outward expression of thought, speech, is increasingly restricted on the grounds that it is not only offensive to say the wrong thing, but actually violent to do so.
Does anyone think there would be reluctance on the part of those who have bought into the new orthodoxy to restrict our thoughts if they could, to make us "accountable" for them? We already see elementary schools teaching politically orthodox views rather than the three 'R's.' We watch with a mixture of concern and horror as the mayor of London hires behavioural psychologists to design his latest campaign ("Maaate") to push behaviour and speech—thought will follow—in his desired direction. It is a perfect example of the new accountability, with any incorrect utterance to be immediately corrected by the disapproval. I don't mind my behaviour being policed, as it affects other people directly. I'm willing to tolerate the speech of others that I disagree with, as long as they give me the same tolerance. But I really don't like the idea that my thoughts are to be molded into acceptable forms via "accountability."
"We watch with a mixture of concern and horror as the mayor of London hires behavioural psychologists to design his latest campaign ("Maaate") to push behaviour and speech—thought will follow—in his desired direction. "
Which is simply the logical follow-on from the Nudge unit which was then spun off to be a profit-making private business of its own; don't you just love the free market? Especially when it can be spun as being socially aware and for the greater good?
"The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also known unofficially as the "Nudge Unit", is a UK-based global social purpose organisation that generates and applies behavioural insights to inform policy and improve public services, following nudge theory. Using social engineering, as well as techniques in psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing, the purpose of the organisation is to influence public thinking and decision making in order to improve compliance with government policy and thereby decrease social and government costs related to inaction and poor compliance with policy and regulation. The Behavioural Insights Team has been headed by British psychologist David Halpern since its formation."
Nudge Theory. Hitler only had Mein Kampf, the poor fool!
"TESCREAL ideologies tend to advance an illiberal agenda and authoritarian tendencies, and it’s worth turning a very critical eye towards them, especially in cases where that’s demonstrably true. Clearly there are countless well-meaning people trying to use technology and reason to improve the world, but that should never come at the expense of democratic, inclusive, fair, patient, and just governance."
(1) "Reich flirted with an argument that charitable donation is inherently undemocratic: people are allowed to donate money to whatever causes they personally want, instead of giving it to the government to be distributed via the elected government’s budgeting process."
Oddly enough, this was one of the things that got up my nose when I first heard about Effective Altruism. Not that they wanted to do charity, or even do charity right, but all the self-righteousness about "the common people just give their money to whatever tugs at their heart strings or their local church, they don't even consider what is the most effective use, they should be Said And Led by Us".
I won't say it was totalitarian/authoritarian, but it flirted with the edges of "if they won't be good of their own accord, they should be *made* to be good". And then in a few years time EA went off on their own little round of wasting money and getting involved peripherally with scandals. Well, looks like it's hard to be right, doesn't it?
(2) "But once people are supposed to be “accountable” for their personal lives and ordinary decisions, you’re being totalitarian again."
I disgree mildly with this; we *do* expect ordinary people to be accountable for their actions, hence laws about "no, you can't bop Steve over the noggin and take his stuff" or "no, if you're married to Jill, you can't go off and marry Jane at the same time" or "no, even if the megacorporations are really really rich, you can't stroll into a store, load up on goods, and walk out without paying, that is still stealing and no, it doesn't matter if they have insurance and expect theft anyway". Which leads into:
"I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
I disagree more strongly with this because (a) holding even criminals accountable gives them agency; they are people, who make choices and decisions, and can be reasoned with or appealed to and rehabilitated, with punishment as the last recourse for the incorrigible (b) "punishment" strips that away and now we have only things reacting to stimuli in Brownian motion and as GKC put it better than I ever could:
"That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment."
Accountability yes, even if it leads to punishment; punishment on its own, no.
(3) I appreciate the distinction made between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Totalitariansim need not be authoritarian, and authoritarianism need not be totalitarian. I've been accused in comments elsewhere of being authoritarian, and it's not unfounded. I am aware of channeling my Inner Saruman, and I've had to fight hard against those instincts. Again, GKC puts the temptation wonderfully: this is beautiful and orderly and prosperous, but it's wrong - there's a worm in the apple (it's a long piece so I'll attach it to this in a separate reply).
It really is a hard struggle, and I don't think people without those instincts about "rules are good and I like rules because rules make it easy to know what to do and what to avoid" realise that.
(4) "Completely separately from the totalitarian thing, I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that, or serves as a bludgeon that would-be dictators can use against an independent judiciary."
I think people toss about the terms "totalitarian, authoritarian, democratic, free, good, bad" too easily. It's true that people are polarised now, and are using these terms to bash one another over the head. "You're a totalitarian fascist nazi, I'm a democratic caring citizen".
"When people were trying to get Substack cancelled back in 2021, one common complaint was that, absent a boss who could fire them if they said politically incorrect things, Substack writers had no “accountability”.
I'm smiling a little at that, because way back when "politically correct" was the "woke" of its day, the people criticising/complaining about (and people did complain, sometimes unjustifiably, rather than criticise reasonably) PC were met with "all political correctness means is being polite, that's all" with the implication that surely everyone knows to be polite if they were raised properly. and if you're objecting than you just want the liberty to be rude and mean without consequences (the same way that "critical theory is not being taught in schools, but if it is, all critical theory means is teaching kids about slavery, why are you objecting to that?" gets a run out today).
The Authoritarian Temptation, from "The Ball and the Cross" by G.K. Chesterton, the chapter 'The Dream of MacIan':
As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly talked about equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot be equal."
"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in his place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our kings have come back to us."
"The Stuart——" began Evan, earnestly.
"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart and yet older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost by insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ever he shall return."
"But now——" said Evan, in a low voice.
"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you," answered the other. "But in England the king enjoys his own again. The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but free at last of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called being a citizen."
...As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations. The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed, and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward; and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple crown of swords.
As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but picturesquely clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large numbers; but it required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in order. The mounted men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than steel. Only in one place—at the corner of Bouverie Street—did there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely, across the shoulders with the flat of his sword.
"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply. "The old man was moving as quickly as he could."
"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said the man in white, with a slight smile.
"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
The other did not answer. Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park, he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own ignorance. And I am not sure," he continued, turning his back on Evan and looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, "I am not sure that I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an individual."
Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling suddenness and stared at the other's back.
"Discipline for society——" he repeated, very staccato, "more important—justice to individual?"
Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
…"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into subordinates."
MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and unaccountable eagerness. "Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, "go on!"
"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid and——"
"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals; I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong; everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is not the rightful king who has come home."
"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice, "because you are going to see his Majesty."
"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
"Do you desire death?"
"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
"From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?" said his companion, sternly. "You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of the swaying ship.
The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to hide an awful smile.
"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not God?"
MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are. You are not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once."
The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
I've also found that the word "democracy" functions more and more as an incantation. Democracies came about in the West as a system for elites to influence and change governments without resorting to force or constitutional crisis in countries which already had a fairly solid rule of law in place; for literally millennia, western societies lacked democratic arrangements but maintained the rule of law (to which even Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors bowed). The key term here is "rule of law." Without it, democracy is a sham and a Chavista shitshow, with oligarchies competing to see who is more effective in lying to peasants (see, as an example, pretty much every democracy in the developing world). Democracy is just a cherry on top of well organized societies with the the rule of law. So my proposal would be to stress "rule of law" much more than we stress "democracy." Another proposal: every time you are tempted to write "dictator," write "despot" instead. It's much more correct. A dictator is a temporary leader for an emergency, all the way from Roman times to Spain's Franco. I know that's not what Webster's says, you can blame semantic shift for that and many other terrible sins on language that make discussion more difficult. The right word is "despot."
"I've also found that the word "democracy" functions more and more as an incantation."
That's why dictators/despots/presidents for life everywhere use it as a means of pretending that they are not dictators; we had legal democratic elections and I won fairly with 98% of the vote. It's a sham, because "democracy" excuses everything. You can't come interfering in the internal affairs of our country because the regime is 'democratically' elected, and this holds up until the West decides that it's in our interests to intervene, when the strongman is no longer useful to us.
Without a question. You now have to declare yourself a democratic leader to gain legitimacy, same as in the past illiterate tribal leaders called themselves basileus, khans, or caesars/kaisers/czars.
"to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that,"
Here's where my cynical side kicks in: when they do it in a way *we* like, then it's democratic; when they do it in a way the other guys like, then they need to be abolished.
If you control the polling centers and voting machines but not the courts, of course you’d be gung-ho about “Democracy.” But you can easily imagine the narrative if it was reversed: it would be the great battle between the constitution and civil rights versus “Populism.”
Accountability is interesting in terms of freedom. If you say something your subscribers don’t like and they all unsubscribe are you being canceled? If being canceled a violation of your right to free speech?
If you own a wedding cake bakery and you make some offensive statement that alienates your potential customers, are you being canceled? Are your rights v being violated?
Note that the most famous early democracy, in Athens, was kinda totalitarian, in that the assembly could vote Socrates to death for basically having unpopular ideas.
Today's “democracies” aren't democracies in that sense; they're democratic republics. The democratic part is about how we choose the politicians who run it.
Socrates was put to death for supporting a dictatorial regime that overthrew Athenian democracy with the support of Sparta and then began putting people to death, stealing their stuff, and otherwise acted tyrannically. Plus another of his students plotted a coup and then defected. His unorthodox religious beliefs were just an excuse for this.
He also wasn't voted to be put to death in the assembly. He was voted to death by a jury in a trial.
Confusing elections with democracy is a part of the problem. The Holy Roman Empire had an elective monarchy. That it was elective doesn't make it democratic. According to Aristotle, only what we now call "direct democracy" is democracy.
In Aristotelian philosophy, what we have now in most of the world would be elective aristocracy, since we choose a few select group of people we suppose are the most suited to held power.
I think the problem of "accountability" you are describing is what Nassim Taleb refers to as Skin in the Game. As a legal principle, it should be clearly stated and applied case by case in the constitution, code laws such as trade code, civil code and so on. I think the civil law system is much more suited to apply it than the common law system.
And in the specific case of the USA, the difficulty to rewrite or greatly ammend the Constitution coupled with the virtual control of the Suprem Court over it makes it more difficult to update it democratically.
If some dude was running around the streets of my town shooting people, I would not say it's "undemocratic" that he has chosen for citizens to be dead without it having been voted upon as a society. But the social contract from which gov't derives its legitimacy requires it to stop malicious actors, and if it doesn't it loses that legitimacy. The gov't has a quasi-monopoly on the socially acceptable use of force, and society votes on what private uses of force are and aren't allowed, and we only accept this because basic defense of the citizenry is a foundational obligation not up for debate.
I think AI presents the same problem. A bunch of tech dudes are out there working on a doomsday device that is going to kill and/or enslave every citizen, it's the government's job to defend us against that, to send SWAT teams into the AI developers' offices and server farms and start smashing and de-gaussing everything in sight, just as MI6 would dispatch James Bond to demolish the villain's secret underground lair. The problem with Drax's newly-invented nerve agent that will wipe out Earth's population to be replaced with his genetically superior moon colonists isn't that we didn't get to vote on this new technology.
The only reason to call it "undemocratic" is if you're trying to persuade a center-left normie and need to speak to them in the language of CNN Panel-ese. "AI is like the January 6th rioters" might be the secret code to getting something done about it.
On "accountability", I worked for many years at a county-level elected office, and people were constantly getting upset when they didn't like that official's decision, and would demand to speak to his boss. They could not wrap their heads around the fact he didn't have one, they really conceive of government as some giant single corporation where everybody except Joe Biden can be told what to do. It never occurred to them that elections were accountability, or that oaths of office were accountability-- y'know, all that "democracy" stuff.
What social contract? Did you ever sign this contract? I know I didn’t.
This usage of “contract” has always struck me as odd, because it leaves out the most important part - actually signing the thing!
I would be much more okay with this if there was a literal social contract - when you turn 18, the government sends you a form that you can choose to opt into or out of, granting all the supposed benefits of the social contract in exchange for the yearly theft and indefinite coercion. But this doesn’t exist! No one ever *actually signed* the thing.
Today seems to be my day for quoting from "The Ball and the Cross":
"It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.
...I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
..."The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. "Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution happen?" he asked.
"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract."
Also, apart from being an involuntarily-entered contract of adhesion, it's one that can only be terminated with one party's consent, which party can also rewrite any clauses of the contract at any time without notice, and which is also the sole judge of any matters relating to the contract. Oh, yes, and it can only be terminated, even with that party's consent, if you have previously entered into a similar contract with one of the other oligopolitan suppliers of the same services.
Considered as a contract, the "social contract" is possibly the most absurdly leonine contract ever assembled, which would be instantly voided on the grounds of unconscionability, duress, and what-the-fuck by virtually all the legal systems which it supposedly supports.
It's not meant to be perfectly legalistic, you can't pop open Black's Law Dictionary or the ALI's Restatement of Contracts and just apply it literally. It's an analogy. But if you DID crack open those books, you would find that there's such a thing as implied acceptance, where the parties are both acting as if that's the deal and they're bound by it. While the government acts like a predatory robber gang in many regards, it nevertheless has acted as if preserving public order and using force to protect the natural rights of its citizens was part of the bargain. The basic deal of gov't is the same as the romanticized movie vision of the mafia, this one group maintains exclusivity over a territory and skims off the top, while also protecting those people from outside forces like rival gangs, and keeping a semblance of peace by providing a way to resolve issues. And just like the mafia, government knows if it abandons that power, somebody else will move in to take it.
This is why the inaction in the face of the 2020 riots and ongoing drawdown of policing are uniquely dangerous to the social contract, the gov't wants to keep skimming but will let gangs or mobs control areas within its borders. If a street gang credibly offered protection from shoplifting for a fee, that would be more attractive to a shopkeeper in the area than paying for police that won't protect their property.
In the face of an existential threat, the abdication of its obligation is even more damning to the government, and is the sort of thing that gets them overthrown at higher levels than local neighborhoods. If the government is going to let Sam Altman or some other dork enslave or exterminate us, they've failed on such a fundamental level that anybody else offering to keep us free has a plausible case to replace them. But most of the people who expect that doom to befall us think the window of time will be very small, so there may not be a chance for our government's failure to give competitors an opening.
I think accountability is a useful concept for private actors, it just looks different.
All of our actions have externalities. They have costs and benefits that accrue to people besides ourselves, even when they are not outright crimes. Society should have some mechanisms for evaluating them.
For example, in my judgment, the current trend of environmental protests that involve blocking roads and defacing works of art are harmful and counterproductive to their causes, though I could be wrong. But it does seem that a healthy society would be able to challenge those who organize such stunts and in some sense hold them "accountable" for whether these actions are having their intended effect.
Private actors should probably have a longer leash than government actors. MLK's activism would survive such an investigation, but maybe it wouldn't be so clear early on (particularly since the goal of such actions is to move public opinion). And I am finding the current trend of government officials declaring themselves above criticism to be maddening.
But I do think it's a useful concept even for private actions, even if it has been a but overused.
If you read the book "The Problem of Political Authority" by Michael Huemer the confusion around these words becomes clear
We ascribe a special moral authority to the state, state actors are allowed to do things that ordinary people can't do - why can't I hold you accountable the same way? I demand you show me your order books, report to me to get permissions etc. In fact these processes exist in voluntary businesses transactions all the time, yet for some reason we think if governments say "we say this is how it has to be" that is somehow justified - we do this because we implicitly assume we confer these special rights to a sovereign through some kind of process (e.g. democracy, social contract)
The longhouse is a kind of democracy I suppose. I mean, I think you’re getting at the public-private distinction, which itself can be democratically decided. I agree with you that some people have a bad and inflated sense of what should be public and insufficient appreciation for the private. But they’re just wrong, not undemocratic. I get that people in favor a greater private sphere want to define a kind of minimalist private bundle as predicate to true democracy, thereby calling some private bubble to be “democracy.” Something like, free speech is “democratic” even when minoritarian because we can have a meaningfully democratic decision without it. But you can turn that logic around and say, free abortions are “democratic” even if unpopular because they enable meaningful female participation in democracy. Which I suppose is find, but we haven’t clarified anything we’ve just moved the issue to what public policies or private space we see as sufficiently necessary to what we as meaningful democracy.
The best example of democracy outside the political sphere is gang rape. If, say, 80% of participants believe the activity should continue, then not only is it moral and correct (according to the worldview that democracy is good), but also opposing or resisting is immoral.
It was a mistake to replace one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away.
I don't think this follows from the idea that democracy is good. Rather it follows from the idea that democracy is the only good. By way of analogy, I might say that a Crunch bar is good. Yet I won't sell my car in exchange for a Crunch bar, because my car is also good.
When you value two different things (i.e., when two different things are good) you may sometimes have to make choices between them. That's pretty noncontroversial in economics, but in morality we don't like to admit that sometimes we have to compromise. But that's what we're doing.
In your example of the gang rape, we value personal liberty more than we value democracy. And that's okay! That's not because democracy isn't good -- it's because democracy isn't the only thing that's good.
This is an important point, that helps clarify what people (should) mean when they say "we're a Republic, not a Democracy!" But I've also noted, empirically, that people who are very attached to that slogan are also very interested in replacing civil service protections with a greater role for political appointments, so that democratically elected leaders can root out the "deep state". It's interesting that protection against democracy seems to be something that people across the political spectrum are all committed to in some places but not others.
I think there's also an interesting question to be raised about whether "democracy" needs to occur through elections, or whether sortition (i.e., randomly calling people up for government duty, like in juries) should count as "democratic" in just the same way (after all, it still makes government subject to the will of the people - in fact, even more directly in many cases).
I thought the Civil Service Act of 1883 is when a lot of government employees got removed from the political appointment process, and that this act is what President Garfield was assassinated over.
But the point is that trying to put the deep state under the power of elected officials is trying to eliminate some of the republican features and replace them with democratic features.
I feel like it would be easier to think clearly about this stuff if we made more of a separation between different ways that government power can be wielded by unelected people. A civil service that is largely insulated from political forces is very different from some roles in the government being inherited, or from the way judicial oversight by judges with lifetime or very long term appointments works in the US, or a system of government where the military is largely self-governing (including managing its promotion decisions internally) and the top generals get seats in parliament, or where some roles in government are sold to the highest bidder or awarded to the most successful businessmen. All those are ways to step back from democracy and have some other source of power in the government, but they seem extremely different to me.
>But the point is that trying to put the deep state under the power of elected officials is trying to eliminate some of the republican features and replace them with democratic features.
Sure, this might be a critique of people appealing to republicanism who support this....to the same extent it's a critique of democrats opposing this.
A critique of people who prefer pure democracy, not a critique of members of the Democratic party, which, despite the name, is not committed to pure democracy.
I think most people in politics are using arguments as soldiers. So most people want more democracy when that would help their side and less democracy when too much democracy would harm their side.
In theory, these are significant problems with democracy and accountability, but in practice, those problems are strawmen used by people who want special (usually partisan or ideological) exemptions from both. Democracies are capable of collectively deciding on the degree of individual freedom they grant, and historically have made choices in a reasonable range, though not always in the range that, say, radical libertarians or radical socialists consider acceptable. (Hence their antipathy towards democracy when it interferes with their goals--although not when it supports their goals, of course.) People with more mainstream views often also see restrictions on democracy (judicial review, for example) as a healthy counterweight to what they view as the dangers of excessive democracy; such people are invariably the first to scream, "tyranny!" when those same counterweights end up weighing against their own preferences.
"Accountability" is a bit trickier, because it's so vague as to be meaningless unless a specific monitor is identified. ("Democracy" can arguably be defined as "accountability to the voting public", for example.) In practice, though, the intended monitor is almost always obvious, and the real argument is about whether that monitor is appropriate, while those who use the term generically are implicitly thinking of themselves and their friends and allies as accountable to no one, and everybody else as accountable to them.
I'll ignore the rude ad hominem and focus on the latter part of your question: certainly, most humans in modern democracies consider the range reasonable, because that's what they vote for. Moreover, when governments shift out of that range, they lose popularity and get voted out of office, which suggests that their out-of-range choice is viewed as unreasonable by most people. As for "most humans in history", the vast majority never had any experience of living in a democracy, and assumed forced submission to a brutally autocratic ruler of one flavor or another to be the entire feasible range of human freedom, so I don't consider their views on the subject to be terribly relevant.
I feel like I agree in principle with the sentiment that, if "democratic" means "rule by the people" or "the final arbiter of authority over a jurisdiction should be the residents/citizens/whatever of the territory," I love how "democratic" it is to circumvent the Congressional appropriations process with charitable giving. I think the tax exemption for charities, in this perspective, is actually brilliant. So I'll give the example when that makes me nervous:
It really weird me out when scientists do things like, "we know that any technologically superior alien species must be peaceful, so let's broadcast our position in the galaxy as broadly as possible so they can find us." (https://xkcd.com/1377/) Or, "We're just going to solve climate change by spraying the upper atmosphere with sulphur[, probably plunging the whole planet into an ice age considering how badly we understand climate models." [Quote modified to illustrate out how sill I think this idea is] (https://gizmodo.com/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-sulfur-climate-change-1849931460) That's definitely a problem. Maybe some theory involving non-ergodicity and the possibility of large-scale ruin needs to be made formal? Like, "Sexual pairings are your own business (provided it's consensual)" or "You should be able to practice your religion (except if it involves sacrificing people)". We could have, "You should be free to pursue your objectives and goals in competition with others (except if it's literally going to end the world)." (I'm not saying AI will, but I understand the problem if people think it would)
There are ways and ways. Extract CO2 in a factory process can be ramped up or down if (when) you misjudge the rate you need? You do you; I don't need to have an argument about what parts of global warming is right or wrong. Put sulphur in the atmosphere in an irreversible process that may cause (has historically caused) an global ice age that wipes out all life on Earth if (when) you misjudge the amount of sulphur to release? I have a problem. That outcome would be significantly worse than global warming. A solution that requires an absolutely accurate answer in a whole class of problems (complex dynamical systems) we know we can't solve, that's not a good solution. If we can't even answer the Collatz Conjecture, I feel like our approach to the solution to global warming should be more incrementally controllable.
Same with aliens. If we don't know whether the reason we don't see aliens is if there's interstellar predators that everyone else is hiding from, maybe shouting isn't the best strategy. The possibility of complete ruin means ideas like "expected value" pretty useless.
Totalitarianism is seen as the opposite of democracy as it prohibits opposition parties. Very weird argument. Government is decentralized so it makes sense for certain things to be part of govt. Democracy has to do with giving people power to deliberate and is a good thing (and again is the opposite of totalitarianism).
A constitution is what protects minority rights. The check is that if the formerly majority power starts not acting in the interest of the majority, they will lose the support of the people and lose to an opposition party.
It's not a perfect system but when one branch over-steps its power, it typically does lead to backlash against that branch. The SC has had both more and less power over time and it partially depends on how it's acting. Currently, John Roberts doesn't want the SC to overstep its power for fear its power will be reined in again. If a president is seen as overstepping his power, then the public can hold him accountable by voting him out or his party out during the midterms. The constitution also gets amended at times which impacts which rights are protected.
In electoral dictatorships, the army is the check on the ruling party. And in these countries, the government's policies are much closer to what the populace supports, largely because the ruler has to keep the army happy and the army is comprised of (lower-) middle class citizens who tend to have typical views on things.
Scoff all you want, but what you're describing results in the farcical situation of in the US the congress incumbent reelection rate being 5-10x higher than it's approval rating.
Reelection rate has to do with most US congressional districts being safe districts given our first-past-the-post voting system. There are many states and localities adopting ranked-choice voting which helps reduce safe districts and decreases the polarization inherent in a FPTP system.
Military men tend to be more right-wing than the general populace. Also you have coups which often aren't in the interest of regular people. Laborers tend to be more leftist, while the military tends rightist.
"When people were trying to get Substack cancelled back in 2021, one common complaint was that, absent a boss who could fire them if they said politically incorrect things, Substack writers had no “accountability”. Here it’s painfully obvious that “accountability” is opposed to people retaining ownership of their own output, to them working for themselves instead of a megacorporation, and to them keeping control of their own lives. A society where every writer has “accountability” is totalitarian - or, if you don’t like that word for something that might lock in merely corporate rather than government control, at least it would lack a flourishing private sphere.""
It should be abundantly obvious by now that many civil libertarians turned into totalitarians the moment they got the whip hand.
As taught by Weber: "A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." So the most appropriate definition of "democracy" would be:
- A state where (almost) all adults can vote on which people get to authorize the dispensation of physical force.
This doesn't tell us what uses of government force are legitimate, i.e. it doesn't tell us whether or not using the power of the state is acceptable to restrict the number of available religions. But as long as a legitimate vote is held deciding who gets to authorize violence on behalf of the government, the nation can be considered democratic. Anything beyond that is a political question and has little to do with "democracy" per se.
The state does not have a monopoly on violence in the US. I'm much more likely to be the victim of private violence than state violence in most of the country, especially in urban areas.
But only because the state allows (and in the case of one political faction, explicitly endorses) that. They could send the military in at any time - they just choose not to.
You are right, but it sounds like you don't understand why.
Classically educated people understand the basis for society initially started with the need to curb violence (which is the natural state, but very destructive against long-term survival).
Starting with superstition based structures (i.e. prophets of delphi), moving to might (kings/tsars, unelected nobility), and then finally to current forms of government whose constitutions recognized natural rights to property and contract; and that some other rights were traded for similar civil rights under a rule of law which enforces those civil rights equally to the greater benefit of the whole. The basis for what we the rule of law.
If you think about it like a stack, that bottom layer (violence) is always present; when the top stack layers fail; everything reverts to the lower stacks. This is why protests worked at one point, people in charge were responsive to those they oversaw because they know the danger of ignoring law (which isn't just something someone passes but derives its authority from its predecessor documents drafted by the governed; but this is largely no longer being taught in any real understandable way.
Older generations know this, but newer educational material seems to intentionally obfuscate and misleads without rational basis. You'd be surprised how clear so many taught subjects are from books prior to the 1950s.
I think to some extent "accountability" is a word that's become kind of a stand-in for the desire to punish people for engaging in behavior that is deemed not to be pro-social. As Arnold Kling likes to point out, people have a strong desire to reward cooperators and punish defectors (ie, reward pro-social behavior and punish those deemed...not pro-social, since anti-social doesn't seem like quite the right word here). There are good historical reasons this instinct exists, but there's also a mob mentality lurking not so far in the background here, which is, um...generally not so laudable. As such, I share Scott's reservations about its use and perception as generically good.
Gordon that's wrong, and that new definition is a corruption of language that quickly leads to sophistry, dissembling, and worse;
Accountability is simply the relation of an obligation to reasonable or expected demands that may or may not be voluntarily enforced. Its a common element in contracts.
Incidentally, redefining new words to have multiple meanings that conflict is an element of newspeak as it is described in 1984 referring to tactics used by communists to manipulate the perception of the prolets such as the naming of the "Ministry of Plenty" (whose role ensures no one receives sufficient nutritious sustenance to be satisfied).
Its best to not invent new things when common meanings already exist to describe appropriately, and to also resist all such attempts at corruption.
The only benefit for someone engaging at that level is to confuse, mislead, and manipulate; all things deceitful people do to enrich themselves over others without any rational basis.
Complicated situations almost never have a simple optimum. I strongly feel that PARTS of government should be democratic...and other parts not, at least in the short term. Perhaps all of government should be democratic in a multi-decadal time-frame.
OTOH, when circumstances change, adaptations are needed. How should they be done? One can guarantee that only some people will see the problem...and one can nearly guarantee that those people will not agree on the proper solution.
For a specific example, social media is fracturing society, because fostering "engagement" is profitable, and the easiest way to foster engagement is to treat important topics as sporting contests. The news doesn't help with it's "tell both sides of the story" attitude to whether the sun will rise tomorrow, but social media is where the real push comes from. But who would you trust to fix the problem? The first amendment is pretty clear, and it clearly needs to be changed if you're going to address this through government. (I think that the change is that corporations should not have the RIGHT to free speech. And that those who are paid to speak on behalf of a corporate sponsor should be required to ensure that the listener was aware of who their sponsor was. But I don't think our current legal system could be altered in that direction. It clearly bends in the opposite direction.)
So though I think of myself as relatively libertarian (small "l"), I'm not opposed to some regulations to ensure certain kinds of accountability. And I'm pretty sure that our society (as a mass entity rather than as individuals) does not agree with me.
"It might sound like I’m arguing that it’s okay for small things like your private life to stay undemocratic and unaccountable, it’s only big things that change society which should be subjected to democratic scrutiny. I’m not sure I believe this." Well, I sure hope not.
This reminds me of a relevant passage from C. S. Lewis. In 1959 he published the essay "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" in the Saturday Evening Post. It was a sequel of sorts to his famous "Screwtape Letters" and has Screwtape giving a speech to a graduating class of devils. In it Screwtape addresses the proper diabolical use of the word "democratic":
"Thanks to Our Father Below, the threat (of liberal democracy) was averted. Our counterattack was on two levels. On the deepest level our leaders contrived to call into full life an element which had been implicit in the movement from its earliest days. Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.
"Such was our counterattack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counterattack takes a different form.
"Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.
"You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate."
ASI is supposed to rule the whole world someday, if I understand correctly. AI development is a path toward a new government, and that will be the effective constitution of the world for a long time, maybe for the remainder of human existence. If anyone should be accountable to the people, I would think it would be the government. So at some point, the development of AI should become accountable to outside interests (outside of its developers). The stakes are higher here than with Orwell, King, or Gates.
Democracy is at its core a populist idea that can be implemented in such a way that can be self-defeating. Illiberal democracies are a good example of that. The Founders Fathers understood this which is way they saw democracy as a means, not an end by itself. The goal was the decentralization of power to prevent tyrannies. As long that's the premise, democracy can be implemented in a good way to achieve that purpose.
I think people conflate government and society. For example, thinking that the Constitution (or at least the principles behind it) tell us that we should have a religiously-neutral society, and keep religion to our private lives.
I've never been able to come up with a good analogy but I think a government is something a society has, not a way of being a society.
What's going on is that a government is really just a glorified security company. But nationalism has led people to conflate the nation with the nation-state, and added in a bunch of woo about "the will of the people" (whatever that means).
This really suffers from lack of steelman and lack of conceptual clarity. The points many make about "liberal democracy" are exactly on point. The contrast is not between democracy and totalitarianism. You can have democracies that are totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever. Democracy refers to the extent to which those who are governed have some say in who those are who govern or what laws are authorized. The scope of that democracy can be relatively unlimited, which may lead to totalitarianism, or it can be limited, by a constitution, a monarchy, or even just by tradition.
That some clowns day democracry means that philanthropists should be restricted in what they can do with the money is a strawman argument. There are always clowns arguing this or that; they can and should be ignored.
So you're criticizing him for responding to actual arguments that people are making (that you don't like) instead of inventing 'good' arguments to argue against? Ffs....
I must have missed where the majority of the social elite believes that "democracy" means " I can control someone else's philanthropy." But I've been busy.
There really is no need to steelman. The objections to this regarding "liberal democracy" fail because, outside of Scott's pedantic definition, "democracy" is used as a cheer line meaning "what progressives want." If Trump or Orban are elected that is a "threat to democracy" as is Brexit, Bibi not letting wildly left wing judges in Israel pick their replacements, etc.
I'm not sure that conspiracy theorists are particularly skeptical - they're just skeptical of outsiders. As an example, the members of Jonestown were unbelievably skeptical of the American government, of organized religion, of multinational corporations, etc. But they weren't particularly skeptical towards their in-group and they ended up committing mass suicide.
In my experience, conspiracy theorists will believe really flimsy claims from people in their in-group, while refusing to accept even the most rock solid claims from their opponents. That's not a triumph of skepticism, it's blind loyalty towards one's tribe.
And on the other side of the coin, you have the "skeptic community" which is now largely defined by believing in every single thing that the government tells them to believe and ridiculing anyone who questions the mainstream narrative on anything.
I don't see the problem with that? Skepticism shouldn't be defined by what you believe - it should be defined by questioning your beliefs.
So if someone says that 2+2=4 because they were taught that in schools, I wouldn't call them skeptical. If someone says that 2+2=4 because that's what their tribe believes, I wouldn't call them skeptical either. If someone says that 2+2=4 because they've been unable to disprove it, then I'd call them skeptical.
Three people - identical beliefs - only one skeptic. Why should we care if skeptics believe the government? Shouldn't we focus on how they got to that belief?
Sure, but this "skeptic community" consistently accepts literally anything that the government and intelligence agencies tell them, despite having absolutely no reason to believe those things, simply on the basis that there's "no evidence" not to believe them. "Unless you have absolute proof otherwise, never question anything that you are told by the authorities" is not the mindset you'd expect from a "skeptic," thus the irony in the name.
I think we're defining evidence differently. If I met someone who said "Oh, I was in Paris last week", I'd probably believe them. After all, they're telling me what they did, which they would likely have personal knowledge of, and testimony based on personal knowledge is a form of evidence. Of course, if someone else countered, saying "Hey, you weren't in Paris last week, I saw you at your house in Brooklyn!", then we'd have conflicting evidence. Maybe we'd want to get physical evidence to resolve the dispute, but that's not always possible.
So what do we do? In the American legal system, the trier of fact determines credibility. They'll decide who they think is telling the truth.
That's not believing someone without evidence, that's choosing between the evidence that exists on both sides. And that's sort of inevitable - virtually any contested question is going to have evidence on either side. Being skeptical can help you pick which evidence to credit, but it doesn't resolve the basic problem.
Completely sidestepped the point he was making. The “authorities” are not individuals making casual claims about their personal behavior. They are dictating policy and norms for millions of individuals.
The problem is you're treating "democratic" as if it's a meaningful word. It isn't. It's just a another word that means 'liberal'.
This is exactly why the word 'populist' exists as a pejorative, and why things that have no obvious connection to popular will or electoral politics are frequently called 'democratic'. 'Populism' is essentially when an elected politician implements or talks about an issue that has large scale public support but which isn't liberal, even though this is far more 'democratic' in the traditional sense of the word than most of what gets called 'democratic'.
Re: “hold criminals accountable for actions”. To me this still is a consistent usage of “accountable”, if framed as:
All human beings are vested with authority to be free within the laws of the land.
Perhaps awkward in the sense that it defines freedom as a special right, rather than a natural state of being; but I feel this better maps to my intuition.
"I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way" -- I assume this is a direct reference to https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ : "It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy"
If people claim to be acting in accordance to some ideal, they should be held accountable to the standards of that ideal, otherwise they are wrongly gaining status which is rightly associated with the ideal.
I find footnote 3 to be the right way to think about democratic government. I think the word "democratic" is usually used to mean representative democracy (which fit with footnote 3) and refer to the government - but we could certainly also consider if other parts of society is democratic - for example, corporations are seldom very democratic, yet they can hold a lot of power. Billionaires donating to charity is certainly a less democratic process compared to taxation and government spending on wellfare (given that the governement acts in the interest of voter). Functional government can and should regulate individuals and corporations to a reasonable extent and put checks on their power. A functional government should act in the interest of the general public, and balance interest of different groups. How much regulation? That is really a very difficult question, and ideally it would be up to the voters to pick the party most aligned with their interest.
What is needed in all this is balance - any extreme will lead to bad outcomes.
You manage to both be completly beside the subject of discussion and engage in ad hominem.
To be clear I am only saying that there need to be some balance between the power of democratic government and freedom of individuals and corporations. I don't claim to have the answer to the optimal point of that balance, though yes - I suggest it is not at the extremes.
Agree with the broad strokes but disagree with the details. The idea that every person's individual actions should be subject to popular vote is both on the rise and obviously horrific.
But the concept of individual accountability even for things like "saying or believing the wrong things" clearly has a place in society. Societies should have values and ideas/actions that fall outside those values (and even if you don't agree with "should" there it doesn't matter - they do). People who transgress against those values will have that transgression held against them. Not allowing that to happen requires much more totalitarianism than just accepting that it does. Because often the "accountability" is enforced by people acting freely.
PS one thing we should consider holding substack accountable for is it's crappy commenting infrastructure
A democracy is just a society where decisions are made democratically. This includes the decision as to whether one should have freedom of religion or have a mandated state religion. Both societies, as long the decision re policy on religion is a democratic one, are perfect democracies. There is no contradiction there.
To clarify, it is only the highest level of government that must be democratic. E.g. we could democratically decide that all government policy will be set by the richest person. As long as that top level decision is democratically made you have a democracy.
The examples of charitable donations and AI development, where terms like "undemocratic" are used but shouldn't be sufficient to win the claims of their arguments, are nonetheless legitimate cases where a person could reasonably believe that individuals or small groups have too much power that is unchecked by collective decision making. Maybe the term "undemocratic" is a bit subpar, but at least it's a concise way for those people to explain they believe that more government oversight would be an improvement. The term "less democratic" might be an improvement since it is less absolute, and certainly it should be combined with a more thorough argument about why more "democracy" in those cases would outweigh the trade-offs.
To be charitable to what I think the other Robert Reich meant, there are certain things a private citizen can do that will affect the lives of thousands of other citizen. There are benign ones like writing a book or making YouTube videos about volcanoes. But there are also things like polluting the air, enforcing the law, and declaring war. If we imagine Elon musk amassing a private army and declaring war on another country, there is a sense in which it’s undemocratic, because somebody acted unilaterally, instead of our elected representatives voting on it, and a sense in which he’s unaccountable, because we can’t vote him out of office. The same goes for vigilante justice, etc. I worry the continuum between freedom and totalitarianism is too simple a model to capture these nuances. We’d need a model in which it’s absolutely totalitarianism to mandate a state religion or ban books, but in which it’s democratic - and not in the totalitarian sense - that only elected representatives can declare war or found a police department.
If “we imagine Elon musk amassing a private army and declaring war on another country, there is a sense in which it’s undemocratic,” it's undemocraticness is perhaps it’s least objectionable feature. When people commit murder, we don’t worry about whether it is democratic or not. Perhaps the error is rooted in thinking that if a state decides democratically to invade another country violently, that this is a legitimate function of government and not murder?
People doing stuff with money (such as donating to charity, or anything, really) is democratic in so far as people have roughly the same amount of money. It's voting with the pocketbook, instead of the ballot.
Doing stuff with money becomes less and less democratic as wealth becomes more unequal, especially as corporations control vast resources controlled by tiny groups (essentially the board and CEO).
There's something 'democratic' in every citizen getting $1000 to give to any charity they personally want; the resulting distribution of resources closely matches the desires of the population, which seems like a good description of what democracy is about.
But when there are like 12 billionaires who have all the disposable income in the entire country, and what charities get funded is almost entirely a reflection of those 12 people's values and priorities and interests, then it becomes a lot clearer why the term 'undemocratic' is appropriate.
It doesn't really matter if the distribution of charitable funds is based on the personal whims of 12 totalitarian government officials, or 12 ultra-rich people who control most of the economy; the average person is equally unrepresented either way, it's therefore equally undemocratic either way.
Scott, you mistake the core problem and dissemble, your arguments are non-sequitur.
As a result, this shares more in common with propaganda pieces to rabble-rouse than something written for rational discourse. I'd suggest you return to rational thinking and logic instead of relying on sophistry to make a point. Critical theory cannot be used to prove anything, it amounts to whining and destructionism.
Earlier in the 20th century, any rational person knew that to make a rational point that would be accepted by rational people, you don't create new words; but instead you use commonly understood words with common definitions/shared meaning, to get your point across.
The only effective use of redefining words to less understood words, or appropriating existing words with opposite definitions is for lying and deception. Irrationality, destructionism, corruption, and deceit/loss. The only reason you do this is if you are trying to lie or deceive and cause some loss or harm. Its not accepted by rational people, and rationality is the only reason we've been able to build civilization up to the point we're current at.
Mises had quite a bit to say about that type of corruption of language if you read between the lines of what he had to say in his published works, which btw thoroughly refute socialism. Falsity and the cult of false beliefs is rampant because of indoctrination, usually from a young age. Few go back and critically evaluate those instilled beliefs which were accepted prior to the age of reason.
Robert Lifton explains some of the psychological grooming process from the historical perspective of a PoW in Mao's first revolution. They use sapir-whorf and distorted reflected appraisal to its fullest effect (inherent weaknesses in all humanity).
These techniques have only become more sophisticated today (i.e. this account was documented in the 50s iirc), often without needing the isolating components to drive people crazy, or break them into compliance. All that's necessary is sufficient interference in an individuals life in a small set of categories. USMC University has a book on Political Warfare which touches on this subject matter.
Similar techniques are being used in K12 schools under social emotional learning frameworks, and in the workplace under DEI frameworks to promote critical theory (and your article does to).
Please educate yourself so you don't inadvertently push false narratives as true.
Totalism is just another face of what's being pushed in its flavors of socialism these days, and its being pushed regardless of the fact that economic calculation hasn't been solved for those systems; hence its destructionism as Mises calls it, under the false belief of the masses that they are marking things better, while the leaders actually in-effect promote behavior towards destruction and slavery (in its many forms).
It comes down to proper education, very few people receive a classical education that would let you recognize the inherent and structural issues in what you have written. Most never take college Philosophy; such as logic or ethics. Please educate and reform your arguments so you don't mislead others.
This is a fascinating example of several propaganda techniques, which is not at all ironic because it's a deliberate feature of such techniques--expressing opinions as if they were facts, projecting malign intent, insisting on some tradition as justification for rejecting the views of the other, etc. are all designed not only to disguise their own nature, but to make the other side look like the one arguing in bad faith.
Victor, you need to be specific in your criticisms, and the basis for those criticisms otherwise you are the one who is guilty of exactly what you are falsely accusing me of (through implication).
I referenced my sources in logical rational manner, but you claim these are opinions without refuting any of the source material (which hasn't been refuted in almost 100 years, Mises). You provide no logical rational basis for such a premise/implication.
Mises has yet to be refuted, especially with regard to economic calculation, and being an economic system, socialism-based economics (which came after exchange society) and how its supposed to work in society must necessarily be considered and proven better than economic systems such as the distribution of labor/exchange systems before adoption or even jumping to discussions of opinion, ideology, or psychology, regardless of the truth or falsity of your subsequent statements.
This is just rational self-preservation considering everyone's lives in the system depend on the system remaining functioning and not breaking down.
Societal systems breaking down because they can't handle shortages very commonly translates to outcomes of death, or totalism/slavery; and that's hardly a normative statement;.
You would need to refute the structure of the argument, and/or the sources and importantly; be specific about it (because broad generalizations are a fallacy).
You currently appear to have no fundamental basis for the implication you are making, which harms your credibility.
When words and communications have multiple meanings, context is important.
More specifically; if you look at your own abductive reasoning process, as it was structured; if you actually apply the process validly (rationally) you would likely not have posted at all or at the least provided some logical support; because you would know the presence of A indicating B being true, is not always true for B indicating A; though that's exactly what you implied as being true (B indicating A).
Since you have provided no logical support for those accusations/suppositions, your basis appears nothing more than flawed logic, or sophistry.
Lumping logic/rational thought in with propaganda and drawing/anchoring a negative association where there is none... is beyond sinister in my opinion, because associative priming in that context is a sophisticated brainwashing technique, with no inherently logical basis; primarily meant to mislead the uneducated and untrained. Its been used by cult leaders for decades.
Victor, Do you have any specific refutations about the source material, or argumentation structure that my sound statements were based on?
Also, it should be obvious that engaging in manipulative criticisms without logical basis, and failure to follow well-known rational argumentation structure is an example of the definition of arguing in bad faith; not merely a false accusation of the appearance of such. I don't see why I should need to point that out, but you seemed to be confused or are intentionally being obtuse.
When dealing with liars, and deceitful people; observations, logical thought and argumentation is the only tool we can bring to bare to discern truth from falsehood.
I hate being the Objectivist bore here but - yes, this is exactly what Rand was warning about 40+ years ago. Democracy is the rule of the majority, the system that executed Socrates. And the demand to hold heroic and interesting people "accountable" is straight out of "Atlas Shrugged". Seriously, go read the fictional newsstorues by "Bertram Scudder"
A government that is forced to choose a state religion say by some unchangeable constitution is less powerful than a government that can enforce a state religion if it sees fit, and not enforce one if it decides otherwise.
Sitting back and not interfering with peoples lives is one of the choices a democratically elected government can make, and quite a popular choice at that.
If people vote for a totalitarian party who controls every aspect of their lives, they get it. If people vote for a libertarian party who does absolutely nothing, they get it. In either case the system is democratic. "How much should the government interfere" is another parameter to be set by the mechanism of democracy.
Charitable donations aren't undemocratic, because the democratic government chooses to allow them.
The people aren't a thinking entity with desires and goals--individual humans are. If the people vote to impose a nightmarish police state 55%-45%, then a whole lot of individual humans are going to be disappeared in the middle of the night by secret police, and there's no sense in which they (at least the ones who voted against) chose that. They just had it done to them.
I popped in just because I was deathly curious to see how the ACT audience reacts to this article.
And I must say, I am impressed. It seems the PMC-led nonsense going on regarding "accountability" and "democracy" - which is really just thinly disguised agendas - is not shared by the majority of the commenters.
The other interesting part is the amount of space devoted to discussion of libertarian views. I have always found the entire field to be ludicrous - I continue to believe that libertarianism is entirely a product of the ahistoricity (is that a word?) and experiences of Americans, promulgated into the young and naive in other parts of the world but nonetheless a contradictory and inconsistent grouping of thinktank puffery.
Great point. And dear God youre right about the globo-corps which is scary that the argument logically holds up. I hope WEF never sees your comment to fuel their fire
One World Government: The Only Truely Accountable Democracy
>multinational corporations are *more* democratic than governments when it comes to actions with a global impact because they are accountable to shareholders, employees, customers, and business partners around the world
Redefining 'democratic' as a measure of the geographic distribution of the individuals who have the capital to influence corporate decision making departs from common usage only slightly more than suggesting that current era multinationals are in any meaningful way 'accountable' to the vast majority of their customers. If your preference is corporate governance, you don't have mutilate existing terminology in order to argue in favor of it. Unless of course your goal is to make those preferences seem more socially palatable by masking them in disingenuous language.
Well, most countries are more democratic in this sense than global corporations, as they are depending on a working economy which is in turn depending on good external trade and good international relations. The big problem arises from big power imbalances when the powerful doesn't have to care if the small peers suffer as long he doesn't make most of them upset at the same time. This is true for economic actors as for states or criminal gangs.
But belonging to the strongest group lets you easily forget or oversee this. So I'm very much in favor of a multi-polar world without a single hegemony as much as I'm against any single person or group getting too rich and powerful.
Some people have been criticizing the conflation of "democracy" and "liberty" for decades. Mostly "extreme" (read as: "") libertarians, but also plenty of Tea Party Republicans.
Agreed. And I’ve done precisely that, here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/bad-definitions-of-democracy-and/comment/21484458?r=da796&utm_medium=ios
As an extreme (even 'by read as "" standard') libertarian, yep, I do that.
As a cynic, I might go a little further, and observe that the only difference between the various things you can put in front of -cracy is who gets to wear the jackboots; as long as it's any kind of -cracy, someone's wearing them, that part of the word coming from the ancient Greek term meaning, approximately, "the beatings will continue until you obey".
I'd be inclined to argue that the link between liberty and democracy is almost purely correlative, not causative; the countries everyone usually cites as an example tend to be ones which have strong constitutional, traditional, or both, restraints on what any government is allowed to do, and as those erode over time, we get to see more of the violence (and totalitarianism) inherent in the system.
And, for myself, I applaud people who use "democratic" in the sense implying that the most democratic society is one in which every tiny decision down to what to eat for breakfast is subject to vote. Not for themselves - because they're usually terrible people - but rather because they do us the favor of laying bare that once you establish the principle that population makes right, you don't have really anywhere to stop but an endless series of special pleadings.
Good point... in the long run, when everyone understands that words like "democracy", "justice", and even "liberal" aren't just synonyms for "good". But I'm tempted to take Scott's view for now, as it seems tactically better in present circumstances.
Sadly, I think the right answer to a lot of real-world questions is that principles are kind of useful but they don't hold in general, so special pleadings are unavoidable.
The special pleading happens when one interest group says of something, generally the common way things are done, "That's undemocratic (because our tiny minority doesn't get its way)" and then make appeals based on the good associations the general public has with "democracy".
That the basic meaning of democracy is "the majority gets to decide", and hence too bad 1% special interest group, you don't get your way, is what is not accepted. Instead of saying "we want/need accommodation or special treatment", it's presented as "we live in a democracy and hence our voices should be heard!"
It should be noted that in the original example I had in mind, such special pleadings include "please don't kill, rob, and/or enslave us". Because if you really, *really* believe in the principle of democracy, that's all fair game for the 51%.
A lynch mob, after all, is a perfectly democratic institution.
Civilization is actually built up around the government having a monopoly on legal violence. Not doing this is actively bad and leads to sky-high homicide rates and much worse outcomes. This is one of the fundamental reasons why libertarianism does not work.
This is why pluralistic democracy with codified bills of rights work far better than other forms of government, because it gives a public level of accountability for what the government is doing and lets people make adjustments while simultaneously making certain rights much more difficult to get rid of.
Indeed, the US government is deliberately set up to prevent a so-called "tyranny of the majority", where a majority can simply trample over everyone else's rights.
Of course, this only works so long as the public agrees that the status quo is worth preserving. It would be interesting to see just how resilient the structure really is, now that both the left and the right in the US increasingly proclaim that true democracy can't be achieved until the outgroup is utterly crushed.
This is precisely why populists constantly lie about how everything is awful forever - because the truth (that things have been getting better and better) means that they're wrong. This is why you see the far left and far right claim that society is going down the drain.
Aporia just put out a good piece on this https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/three-flavors-of-american-doomerism
On the former, firstly, you are conflating libertarianism with unplanned anarchy, and secondly, since the three states of affairs which cover almost the entirety of historical experience are (a) no controls on violence, (b) warlords competing to own the monopoly on legal violence, and (c) the victor of (b) having said monopoly, this looks much more like "this was deemed challenging and thus not tried" to me.
Much like every other governmental innovation was in its day; a practically isomorphic argument could be made as to why not having an absolute monarch is actively bad and leads to much worse outcomes, and thus it's fundamentally impossible for democracy to ever work - which would have seemed very credible right before the outbreak of democracy.
As for the latter - acknowledging that it is a single data point - it having been only just over a month from having had our pluralistic democracy's goon squad stomping through my house with machine-guns in complete defiance of the Bill of Rights's notional protections against such things, I can only laugh long, bitter, and hollow.
Nice explanation on libertarianism vs. anarchy.
But I don't follow you on "the latter" - to what, exactly, do the "goon squads" refer?
Sorry to be unclear - that was a reference to recent events in my life which, to avoid cluttering up the comments here with a tangent, I'll just say are summarized here:
https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-happened
(And which have confirmed my extremely jaundiced views on precisely how useless democracy, even with a bill of rights, actually *is* at protecting people from arbitrary state force.)
Oh, my God! I'm appalled. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm surprised. I've seen too much from Radley Balko, PINAC, and similar sources to be at all surprised.
Or you take this as a proof how much current 'democracy with bill of rights' is just broken right now. This does not disproof the concept if it works elsewhere, perhaps this proofs that of your democracy only the facade is left.
The US was founded as a libertarian state. It didn't work at all, which is why we discarded the Articles of Confederation and created the US Constitution with a much more powerful federal state.
The Founding Fathers wanted to create a more libertarian state but quickly realized it was unworkable so had to change course.
And indeed, the US federal government was not strong enough to keep the states sticking together until after the US Civil War.
This is all basic US history, which libertarians are in denial of. Having a weak central state does not result in good outcomes.
"A weak federal government with few powers over arbitrarily powerful state governments" isn't a libertarian system by any reasonable definition of the word, especially when some of those state governments use said power to back up their maximally anti-libertarian policies. You're thinking of states'-rights conservatives.
(Some of whom may call themselves libertarians, but people can call themselves anything they like.)
You’re confusing “federalist” with “libertarian”. The Articles of Confederation may not have been perfect - what is? - but it was supplanted because some wanted the federal government to have more power, not because the Articles “didn’t work”.
I agree with the use of "accountability" in a government context, where
a) There are pre-existing promises in the constitution which the government is not supposed to break and
b) The government is at least theoretically supposed to act as an agent for the public.
I'm less happy to see "accountability" more widely generalized, e.g. to situations where someone with private power has no analogous principal/agent relationship with the public and is violating none of our (vastly excessive) set of laws.
My personal preference is to arrange our society so that the median person is as free as possible. There are cases where private entities do things that reduce the median person's freedom. One example is Amazon's use of noncompete restrictions on their former employees. I wouldn't "hold accountable" Amazon for doing this, and I wouldn't villify anyone on their legal team for trying to tie the hands of their former employees this way, but I would, in the interest of the median person's freedom, make such constraints unenforceable.
In general, I'm not a fan of concentrated power, either governmental or corporate, but I don't see the people wielding it as "needing to held accountable" - I just want to see less concentrated power in the first place, more choices left in the hands of ordinary individual people. (Yeah, some of this tends to imply more laws - yetch!, but hard to avoid - and hard to arrange so that the laws themselves don't concentrate power.)
Totally, we can even go back to Edmund Burke in 1790. There are better ways to secure our liberties than to make them all subject to a democratically elected government. The more you want to protect something, the less you should centralize its safeguards. Democratic is not synonymous with "good". The British system with a limited power hereditary monarch, church power, a parliament, and strong private property is much more robust to attacks on the civil liberties they had. The consequences of a momentary fit of populist madness are mitigated.
This is simply false. The British have far more issues with civil liberties than Americans do by any reasonable measure.
I think of democracy merely as a way to obtain routine, peaceful changes of leaders. Other than that, it is not an expression of the "will of the people." Many people use the term that way, and you are correct that it then shades into totalitarianism.
I would add that the "routine peaceful changes of leaders" model does not require that the electoral system is perfect, but it does require that people accept the results. Like Nixon in 1960, as opposed to Trump in 2020 or Gore in 2000. And at some point it requires a government with limited powers, or else sooner or later people are going to want to fight over issues of succession.
Gore did accept the results, and in fact presided over the certification of the electoral votes making Bush President.
He was better than Trump in that respect, but the Florida challenge was needlessly divisive, and for years afterward Democrats said that Bush won by 1 vote (in the Supreme Court). That helped ratchet up tribal partisanship.
Did *Gore* ever say that about one vote?
To my mind the difference between filing available legal challenges--in a legitimately razor-thin election, in which who got more votes is still up for dispute--and continuing to dispute the election after all challenges have been resolved is a difference in kind, not degree.
I agree. No comparison between Gore and Trump makes any sense. Any politician would have demanded a recount given the freakishly close nature of the Florida vote. Not to have done so would have been inexcusable to everyone who had voted for him. And campaigned for him. I find nothing wrong with what Gore did nor do i find anything wrong with what Bush did or the Supreme Court.
I don't think Gore himself did, which makes him much much better than Trump. I believe that some 3rd party commenters may have made suggestions like "split Florida's electoral votes evenly" (which would give Gore the presidency, but obviously has no legal basis or precedent at all) or had positions that in practice amounted to "recount the votes until Gore wins" or "the court that has the authority to decide this case is the one that says Gore should win."
I think if we take the standard that democracy requires not just that the loser accepts the outcome, but that no random supporters say something self-serving about how their side really won, then very few of our presidential elections have been truly democratic.
Post-election studies basically found that the election with ballots as cast was genuinely inconclusive, and Gore would have won absent racially biased voter suppression limiting ballot access.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Post-election_studies
I say inconclusive because different permutations of different quasi-objective standards for counting give you different outcomes, and perhaps those are wrong also because the studies didn't get quite every single ballot.
Our ballot counting system, or at least the ballot counting system as applied in FL that year (with those ballot constructions and marking/counting technologies, etc) didn't have fine enough resolution to figure out who got more votes. It was a system failure, it's unsurprising and not blameworthy if it produced irrational behavior in participants.
And frankly, (obviously rigging it up post facto would be pretty skeevy, but) shouldn't we have taken that lesson going forward to implement some sort of proportionality (for divisible outcomes) or split/co-responsibility in the role (for non-divisible outcomes) in extremely close elections? I mean we fall back on randomization to pick a single winner when there are genuinely tied votes, for pete's sake.
So can we discuss election reforms instead of sniping at people caught in failures of unreformed election systems?
[EDIT - 3rd to last word read 'uninformed', I think probably it was supposed to be 'unreformed'. No offense intended to any well-read election systems, nor to any ignorant ones either.
The studies I saw did not even attempt to count the vast majority of ballots (and couldn't, given their limited resources)-- they were limited to counting machine-rejected ballots while assuming, somewhat inconsistently, that all machine-accepted ballots were tallied perfectly.
I don't see what your proposed fix buys us in return for the added complexity. Instead of Florida-style maneuvering to get a plurality, you get Florida-style maneuvering to reach or avoid the threshold for "extremely close election".
I'm not sure if this fits with what they're thinking, but I often advocate all States switching to the Maine-Nebraska system of allocating Electoral Votes. In the case of Florida 2000, they'd've only been contesting 5?-ish votes rather than the whole slate, which mightn't've been enough to swing the overall result.
Yes, sorry, you're right, those were recounts of rejected ballots. Arguably the ballots that the machines accepted didn't need separate recounting because the election was so close that an automatic recount was done a few days after the original tally? But yea I utterly mis-recorded that.
I want to clearly hedge that 1) There will always be a discontinuous threshold, it's not like we can fix that entirely, and 2) there isn't some deeply well-thought-out proposal here, what I wrote above is the full extent of it. But if we're sharing at all then we could actually share in ratios other than 1:1 to make the steps less steep and therefore weaken the incentive for expensive litigious maneuvering. Primarily I was thinking that the complexity buys greater representativeness? And if we're really lucky it militates against intense partisanship and ideological extremism? Eg it probably makes less sense to cast a 'vote against' or a 'hold your nose' vote if adding to someone else's pile doesn't reliably decrease that candidate's power, so maybe we reduce negative campaigning?
Other than the fact that we're 23 years out instead of 3, what difference is there between what Trump supporters say and what you are saying? They are saying that a different system (perhaps one that rejected more mail in ballots using the laws on record, instead of the COVID-era rules which rejected less ballots) would have resulted in Trump winning. You are saying a different system (with less racially biased voter suppression) would have resulted in Gore winning.
I was an adult in 2000 and clearly remember the gnashing of teeth from Democrats about how the election was stolen, so I'm less sympathetic to those that make a big deal about Trump's supporters now.
Trump is definitely acting differently than Gore and is behaving very inappropriately. In case that part was in doubt.
I think the thing Trump supporters claim that's especially problematic is not that the change in rules caused a change in results, but claims along the lines of, for instance, boxes of fake ballots were smuggled into election centers, Dominion voting machines were programmed to create fake votes for Biden, etc.—in other words, out-and-out election fraud.
I think I'm making an empirical claim and "they" are making a normative claim?
If you're saying that my claim sounds equally off-the-wall for lack of citation, you could just ask for the cite and I'd give you https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vote2000/report/ch9.htm . Note particularly the section about voter purges.
And, erm, Trump supporters attempted a coup about it, that's utterly incomparable to tooth gnashing and I stand by people who take exception to that.
"Better than Trump in that respect"??
Try to imagine Donald Trump ever having gone on the public airwaves and said this the day after 5 justices of the Supreme Court had summarily stopped all further reviews and awarded the presidency to his opponent:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/al-gore-concedes-presidential-election
How is this not Gore being better than Trump in that respect?
I think Paul was saying that "better than Trump in that respect" is a gross understatement of how much better Gore was in this regard.
It's the backhanded semi-equivalency that grates.
Gore, immediately after the SCOTUS ruling, telling a prime-time live audience of tens of millions that he had just personally congratulated "President-elect Bush", and would do his part of certifying the election results, and that "while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it", and more....yes he was better than Trump "in that respect". In the same way that getting one's appendix removed is better than having it burst inside your gut.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/algore2000concessionspeech.html
It wasn't needlessly divisive.
Routine peaceful changes of leaders doesn't even require any democracy at all. An oligarchy could simply engage in round-robin cycling of positions, selecting their successors as members in the oligarchy.
Could, but don't. There's Singapore, and one can make arguments that it's happened in Russia and China, but this kind of succession seems to be rare enough that it's not a form of political organisation worth pursuing.
That's rather presentist. Historically, kings have succeeded their fathers without civil war fairly routinely: "The king is dead, long live the king."
TGGP said oligarchy. I agree that monarchy has been one of the classic stable configurations that lots of different cultures have landed on. But monarchy doesn't enable *routine* peaceful change of leadership.
I read that to mean "not (representative) democracies" in context, but it seems we are in agreement.
Well, not _scheduled_ but pretty routine in the grand scheme of things.
Monarchy per se doesn't solve the peaceful change of leadership, but monarch as the front end of an oligarchy can, if the oligarchs aren't required to select, e.g., "the eldest son". IIRC in the Anglo-Saxon society they could select anyone who was a son or nephew of the current king, and I wouldn't swear they couldn't range a bit further afield.
The king was often dead because he was murdered. I am not a historian but this site
https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/people-politics/how-many-british-monarchs-have-been-murdered/
claims 17 british monarchs have been murdered. This does not count those who died on the battlefield. Considering that there were (according to Google) 63 english and scottish monarchs this was a dangerous (and not at all stable) job. Also, civil wars over succession were incomparably more common in monarchies than democracies: USA is now quarter of millenia old, and had just one civil war (and it was not even about succession). Monarchies or oligarchies equally stable I think are rather rare: (Tokugawa shogunate is one exception which comes to mind, and which survived for 260 years, though it was not completely peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dky%C5%8D_uprising)
France has had notably more civil wars since its original republican revolution at about the same time as the US (Wikipedia lists 7). I'm not sure using the US as your example of a democracy is any less cherry-picking than using the Tokugawa shogunate as your example of a monarchy. Also, four US presidents have been assassinated in office, which a similar annual rate as British monarchs, especially considering that you are counting two simultaneous monarchies in England and Scotland up until 1707. I acknowledge that it is a much lower rate in terms of murders per office-holder.
I think you need to read a bit of Shakespeare or the history of the Roman Empire. It's true that seems to happen in places we don't pay much attention to, and where we just accept the official histories...but I have strong doubts that it's really that calm.
OTOH, the Anglo-Saxon practice where a "council of elders" (I forget the requirements) selects the next king from a limited slate of contenders USUALLY worked. It guaranteed that the current power structure was already behind the candidate, and allowed any obvious bad apples to be skipped.
"Could, but don't"? That's how Malaysia works.
That's a really interesting example that I didn't know about. Thanks!
Hence “a way” rather than “the way.”
Routine change of leaders is better when read as change of leaders plural. I.e. the whole ruling party changes not just the individual in charge.
Which is part of why Popper favored first-past-the-post over proportional representation. The former allows people to "vote the bastards out" more easily, while the latter typically results in parties forming a coalition.
Given the outcome in China that system seems extremely vulnerable to a leader getting enough of an upper hand over the other factions that they can't stop him from dismantling it.
Your semi-regular reminder that, under the original ancient Greek classification, electing leaders is a mark of oligarchy; a democracy would choose its leaders by lot (for a fixed term, so you still get a routine peaceful change of leaders).
I have lots and lots of criticisms of Al Gore but lumping his response in 2000 with Trump's in 2020 is simply nonserious. On the contrary, Gore's very-public response to the 2000 election result once it was settled is one of the most important acts of statesmanship during our lifetimes.
I agree. There is also the point that if Florida hadn’t been close, Gore wouldn’t have invented a conspiracy theory about a stolen election. In fact, he had conceded before he realized how close it was.
I think "Trump in 2020 or Gore in 2000" suggests an equivalence where none exists, roughly like "unlawful behaviors such as armed robbery or jaywalking".
Gore lost by five electoral votes and Florida by about 570 votes, and decided to work within the system (sue in courts) and eventually lost and conceded.
Trump lost by 74 electoral votes and pushed lies about "election fraud" which incited his followers to try to stop the certification of the election.
ISTM there is some value in powerful people needing to care about what large numbers of people think about their actions, how those actions affect large numbers of people, etc. This won't necessarily give you good governance, but at least it means that the president/governor/mayor has to care that his people are starving or cowering in fear of criminals or whatever, so he has some incentive to want to make things better.
I also think making democracy into some kind of moral ideal is silly. It's a tool to get as good governance as we can, since we don't know how to live without a government and don't have a supply of incorruptible angels to put in charge of it.
"there is some value in powerful people needing to care about what large numbers of people think about their actions"
In my view, this is completely overwhelmed in practice by the ability of powerful people to game the system. The more faith we put into democracy, the more degrees of freedom that officials have to just do whatever they want. Constitutional checks were more effective than voting.
Or far worse, the often horrendously corrupt U.S. 19th century elections. In a way, elections work even when corrupt and fraudulent, as long as both sides have about equal access to it.
Yes, and that is a preventive against civil war. Sufficiently large majorities are going to get their way under *any* political system, if necessary by winning a civil war.
Far better to let them win bloodlessly via an election. Other than that (not inconsiderable!) benefit, I'm not sure there's anything very good about democracy - it certainly doesn't seem to lead to wise governance or honest leaders.
If you take this point of view, there's something to be said for limiting the franchise (or weighing votes) according to "ability to make trouble". It's probably why only landowners and men were allowed to vote - penniless peasants and women don't make civil war very effectively. Or children.
Agreed! To my mind, the main advantage of democracy (largely orthogonal to whether it is classically liberal or not) is by providing a mechanism for bloodlessly transferring power. This isn't _quite_ orthogonal to classical liberalism. There has to be enough freedom of speech for the opposition to campaign, and there has to be either a tradition or an enforced law for the party defeated in the election to at least more-or-less concede, and for the bulk of the populace (or, at least, as you said, potential troublemakers) to view the result as legitimate. I _think_ that that is enough to avoid civil war over power transfer.
The very large set of stuff that commenters have been putting into the classically liberal bucket: rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, trial by jury (oh wait, that has largely been lost to plea bargaining), freedom of religion, right to privacy (oh wait, that isn't in the constitution), freedom to bear arms, are all separable items, present in some more-or-less liberal nations and absent in others.
What? Historically many societies and nations have had routine, peaceful changes of leaders, and they have not been democracies, mostly monarchies. Whereas ever since Aristotle democracy has been agreed as the “rule of the many” phenomenon.
It can also help cut down on particularly egregious corruption, as this might annoy the voters sufficiently - you can't really get what you want through voting, but you can at least get _rid_ of people. Compared to a one-party dictatorships, it tends to result in more _varied_ rulership as well, and this is typically a good thing.
On the whole though, it's just a competition between elites as in any political system, with the electorate being wielded as tools in the competition. The system tends to mean that the losing side won't be persecuted and has a chance of getting back into power later, so this enabled a peaceful transfer of power. Without this, any potential transfer of power is a do or die situation, as the loser will be persecuted for certain, and this in turns makes a peaceful transfer a lot less likely.
There's a related trend that's becoming ever more annoying to me, where people seem to be confusing 'consultation' with 'getting my way'. If a decision, say in the city government about a zoning decision or a road use change doesn't go the way one wants, one can say 'There wasn't adequate consultation!' and have it published all over the local news.
No, actually, that the decision didn't go your way doesn't mean you weren't adequately consulted. Just as likely is that they listened to you and decided to you were wrong, or that they were going to prioritise other people's wishes.
That one's more a product of the specific veto points created by administrative laws like NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act) and CEQA (it's extreme California state version). The courts aren't allowed to strike down a zoning decision because it's wrong (that would be substituting their policy judgment for those of the People's democratically elected representatives), but they are allowed to strike down a zoning decision because the agency failed to follow certain byzantine processes to the letter. Alleging a failure to adequately consult with a necessary stakeholder is one of the easiest ways to throw a wrench in the works.
My personal definition of "democracy" centres on how much people can choose their government and how much that government is empowered to enact their will.
So I don't think a state religion is inherently more democratic than freedom of religion. But a system that allows the government to institute a state religion if that's what people want is more democratic than one that doesn't.
A system of direct democracy that requires unanimity is both 100% democratic and guarantees freedom of religion as long as at least one person wants it.
No downsides to such a system as far as I can see.
I would wonder if a "system of direct democracy that requires unanimity" can work for very large populations. As a marriage counseling has found, it does not work for groups of two.
Except no way to vote on a budget
Sure there is, just requires that 100% of voters agree instead of 51%. It's eminently doable.
There is exactly one way I know of to get 100% of citizens of a significant-sized community to agree on every detail of what the government should and should not spend money on.
That way is to butcher citizens who disagree until all of them have changed their vote and/or been butchered.
Would exile of the dissenters work too? :-)
No roads or vaccines or houses in such a system either. One person never wants it.
Only under totalitarian democracy.
Under a 100%-unanimity-required democracy that has limited powers, things like housing and vaccines could totally exist.
Prisons then. Guess who's vetoing that one.
The idea that these things can only exist by government fiat is troubling to me. Governments limit housing and suck at providing it.
A variant of such a system was in place in the Commonwealth for more than 150 years. Its main downside was the resulting paralysis; in time, in became nearly impossible to pass any new legislation. Many historians believe that this system was one of the principal reasons why the Commonwealth lost its independence at the end of 18th century.
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto
The Commonwealth also featured the Liberum Defecatio, which meant that nobles could lawfully commit slander.
So if the State is trying to impose a state religion, and 99 people vote "yes" and one person votes "no", there is freedom of religion.
That sounds great. But what about if the State is trying to get nuclear power plants built? 99 vote yes, 1 votes no, no nuclear power plants. We can argue over "are nuclear power plants safe?" but the downside is one person can hold up something. and maybe their motives aren't good: they are waiting to be bribed into changing their vote, or they are selfish about something, or they are making a bad decision.
It's tricky to balance between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, which is why present democratic systems are as described: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
To be clear I wasn't seriously proposing such a system. However, what if there was a clause saying the 99 could always secede with their share of the land and re-form as a state of like-minded people?
That was the system used in Poland-Lithuania. The rule of unanimity meant that nothing, however necessary, ever actually got done, especially once neighbouring countries realised they only had to bribe one single deputy to paralyse the legislature.
It seems that most of the commenters on this subthread overlook that fact that not all decisions in a democracy must be voted on. Private property, markets, etc. anyone?
What's the point of a "personal definition" of a word? Language describes the way people communicate with one another. Why use a word in a way that's different than the way it's used by almost everyone else?
Everyone has a personal definition for all but the most trivial concepts. Most people don't realize that they do until they run into someone with a different one, like with accents. Those who recognize this sometimes choose to make their definition explicit so disagreements can be more substantial than "is a sub a sandwich?"
Maybe if it's between two frigates it's part of one?
I don’t agree that it’s different to how everyone else uses the word. It’s just more clarified for edge cases.
What does it mean for the people to want something? A simple majority?
Are there any limits? Does it make sense to separate a public sphere, where we negotiate how to use shared resources, and a private sphere, where we can experiment or be different?
Kind of depends on how much the public chooses to care about an issue. If 30% of people want policy A and 5% want policy B and everyone else doesn’t really care either way, I count that as the people wanting policy A.
If it’s a contentious issue where virtually everyone has an opinion, yes, a simple majority works.
I don’t make exceptions. All limits on the powers of a legitimate government acting with the consent of their people are undemocratic.
There absolutely can be distinctions between spheres where government can let people do their own thing and spheres where societal values are enforced. But what those distinctions are is itself a matter that is open to democratic choice.
E.g. A society majority disapproves of spanking children. It doesn’t necessarily follow that spanking must be made illegal - people must also agree that this is an area where societal values trump parental discretion.
Re: spanking. Is that actually illegal now, or is it just some bureaucrat that said it would trigger taking the child away?
I think it might be illegal in some countries, but it’s not here or in the USA.
This framework has some hidden assumptions, or is incomplete. Are “policies A and B” mutually exclusive and exhaustive? Do “the people” want one or the other for purely intrinsic reasons, or as a means for pursuing some end that they might succeed or fail in accomplishing which is the actual desired outcome? Do either of the policies violate prior commitments?
But I am moving the goalposts, aren’t I?
If 30% want A, 10% want B, 50% don’t care, and 10% are diametrically opposed to both A and B for some reason, what does “the people” want?
Going further into the weeds, I think laws should be decided by some form of representative democracy. Many issues are messy and complicated, with many different possible options. Many issues are boring and arcane, with citizens mostly having no opinion or interest in forming one. But if you can form a government that retains the confidence of the people with how you handle the things they don’t have clear unified opinions on and is responsive to their concerns on the issues where they do, that’s good enough in my book.
Do you think laws should be decided by some form of representative democracy because this is an abstract principle that we know is good by some a priori argument? Or because that is what the empirical data seem to indicate? If the issue came under careful empirical study, and the results indicated that representative democracy was only mediocre at getting things right, would that change your conclusion?
“ if you can form a government that retains the confidence of the people “
Another difficult to parse concept. How do we know when the government does or doesn’t retain the confidence of the people? There are always at least a few complainers, and also at least a few fanboys. How do we draw the line?
How does it help me to figure out what “the people” want if 30% want A, 10% want B, 50% don’t care, and 10% are diametrically opposed to both A and B for some reason?
People are not a unified thing. We can at that best describe them statistically.
All of the complaints you raise are reasons why I think representative democracy is the way to go. It is a system where the people in charge are heavily incentivised to get the answers to these difficult questions right.
“ what those distinctions are is itself a matter that is open to democratic choice.”
Shouldn’t you say, what those distinctions are *ought to be* open to democratic choice? There have certainly been instances in history when those distinctions were not made democratically.
Can we know what ought to be without checking to see if it is supported by the majority? It is possible to interpret what you wrote as a sort of democratic positivism, where what is good is defined entirely by what is popular. By those criteria, when slavery was popular, it was good, and it became evil only after a sufficient number of persons were persuaded that it was evil. Or in a less extreme form, slavery was always evil, but when it was popular, the government was obligated to adopt it as a policy.
Presumably you do not mean to bite that bullet, but how do we pull it back from there? There seem to be some historical examples where popular policies were mistaken in important ways. Is there just nothing we can/should do to try to avoid that?
I guess the alternative/steelman is to think that we can know that the metaprinciple is true/obligatory independently of popular opinion, and then use popular opinion to derive the rest? But that admits that there are relevant criteria beyond popular opinion, and so does not preclude the possibility that there are more relevant principles that should affect the outcome.
No, I’m totally willing to bite the bullet of “slavery was always evil, but when it was popular government was obligated to allow it.”
If we want laws to simply reflect what is good and right, the clearly optimal governance system is to make me personally god-emperor and I can then rule on everything according to my own moral compass, which is of course the correct one.
But if we make the concession to reality that I may perhaps not be right about everything, or that there may be other people who disagree with me, or that it may be unworkable to have a system that tries to enforce standards that only the god-emperor believes in, you need a system that takes account of everyone’s views. Democracy does that the most cleanly.
Of course it’s possible for a mass of people to jointly agree to commit horrors together. But it’s also possible for a god-emperor to commit horrors. And the range of horrors that can win the support of one man is wider than the range of horrors that can win the support of the whole community.
What is the argument for biting the bullet, for saying government must do evil if that's what the people want? Government is exempt from morality? Government is merely an instrumentality, and so it can do for persons things they could not morally do themselves? These are a bit strawmanish, please supply the steelman.
The argument is that evil is in the eye of the beholder. I certainly would like to impose my own moral standards on everyone - for example, by banning the horror of murdering babies in the womb. To me, that is an evil greater than slavery ever was.
You might disagree with my morality there. Or perhaps you might object to my moral view that the stock market is evil. Or perhaps you might object to my view that emitting more carbon dioxide is the right moral choice as it will enhance the growth of plants and give us cheaper crops. Or any one of my other idiosyncratic views.
But if we aren’t going to adopt my moral standards, then whose? Yours? No thanks.
So maybe the best answer is for us to try to have a system that tries to account for everyone’s views as much as possible. We can at least agree slavery is bad? Ok, slavery is banned. Everyone else thinks we should reduce CO2 emissions? Ok, I lose on that one. Abortion is contentious? Ok, let’s have some elections and see who wins.
It’s a practical system for dealing with the reality that different people want different things.
Sure, it's more democratic. But it's not obvious that more democratic is a good thing.
Yes, the actual best solution is that I get dictatorial power to decide everything. But I’m willing to accept democracy as a second best solution.
Some egalitarian-minded people might think it is unfair or dangerous if individual people or tiny groups get a lot of power over others in society. Those individuals might get their power from non-governmental means, like running the world's largest social media website or just having a lot of money. The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media sites, or the ways in which they spend their billions of dollars.
On the whole I like the lines Scott is drawing in OP, but also have some sympathy with egalitarians who want to talk about powerful private actors being "held accountable".
The American federal government spends $60 billion per year on foreign aid. I'm pretty sure that does not include Ukraine.
No idea how much Bill Gates spends on "helping the global poor" but it's not that much. It may be better targeted, although that depends on your opinion of Gates' judgement.
It depends on Gates' actual judgment, not my or anyone else's opinion of it.
Attempting to generalize that, it sounds like you're proposing we use "accountable" language for everyone with power, regardless of how they got it, rather than only for agents who have been entrusted with power by some principal?
When you say "trolley problem type logic", I think you mean externalities? That is, costs of your actions that fall on people who aren't party to those actions.
Yes! You put it much better than I could articulate myself.
Glad I could help clarify, but I think I like the agents version better. It has clear answers for who you are accountable to (the principal) and why (an implied contract).
You could tell a story where powerful people are accountable to the collective for allowing them to keep whatever powers they've got, but at that point you're back to giving the government an implied veto on everything that everyone does.
We definitely do want the government to stop people from taking certain actions (e.g. murder). And perhaps that even means not allowing people to be billionaires; I'm not sure. But I'd prefer to have a story where the government is choosing to place coercive restrictions on people in specific cases that need to be justified by strong reasons, rather than a story where everyone's a slave by default and you owe the government for doing you the favor of letting you keep your money.
Not so much a slave as a hunter-gatherer or Mad Max nomad. Government's doing you the favor of encouraging that money exist at all, reliably retain more value than the paper it's printed on (a baseline Somali shillings fell to). "Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's," as the saying goes.
I'd be a lot more comfortable with billionaires existing if the business models involved, and broader distribution of wealth, seemed consistent with them having some proper personal claim to adding that much value, rather than effectively extorting a few bucks each from everyone else in the world by occupying the natural niche of a new public utility and then deliberately poisoning it.
How do we find the natural niche for a new public utility before profit-minded people do?
Go ahead and let profit-seekers find it first, prove the viability, scale it up, collect some rent and prestige for that legitimate accomplishment in making the world a better place. Only take the reins away and make it a public utility once they start to squeeze by charging more while delivering lower quality.
If the public sector grabs too quickly, that'll just end up subsidizing scammers and megalomaniacs with utopian plans which would fall apart if actually attempted.
Money does not require government - although fiat money does. As the government's power wanes, so does its money - which is what happened to Somali shillings, Confederate dollars, the Chinese empire's experiments with paper currency, etc.
Money does require government. Trade goods don't require government. Money is, in essence, a government controlled trade good. Value of that trade good is a separate thing. Government (partially) stabilize the value of the trade good "money" by demanding payment in money for services, like not stealing your stuff.
If you don't allow people to be billionaires, where does it stop?
There is no justification for taking some of a person's property, where you say "This much is OK, but any more than this is not."
It's justifiable if it is part of a reasonable system that applies to everyone, e.g. some form of progressive taxation is fine as a means to avoid billionairs aquiring too much money and power.
Such systematic rules is and should be set by a democratic elected government to defend the interest of the general public (that may not be in line with the interest of the billionaire) within reason.
Yeah it's not as if Jeff Bezos employs hundreds of thousands of people (millions, indirectly) and provides a plethora of goods faster and cheaper than otherwise possible to hundreds of millions. He's in it for himself, absolutely, but indirectly this benefits the public much more than politicians who supposedly (big if there) act in the interest of the general public. The marginal dollar Bezos keeps is much better spent than the marginal dollar he gives to the government.
Is that just a rhetorical flourish meaning that you think so little of the justifications you've heard so far that it's "as if" they didn't exist, or are you actually predicting that your philosophical opponents will be unable to articulate any justification at all?
I think that any justification devolves to "because we want it."
Whoever has the biggest guns does have an implied veto power over everything. How could it be otherwise?
Facebook only has power because users signed up for it and gave away their data. Isn't that being "entrusted with power by some principal", even if it's decentralized?
And by that token, there's also a decentralized form of accountability. We could each decide not to use Facebook any longer if we dislike what they've done with our data.
I understand that might not be the right solution when we're dealing with a company the size of Facebook, but I at least think it's worth thinking through when and why the accountability of the normal free market is insufficient.
Back when Elon was considering whether to buy Twitter, I remember others calling into question Twitter's accountability. It struck me as odd that a private company with private servers was being treated as a "public square".
I eventually realized the sleight of hand: the typical Twitter-user thinks they're the customer. But in fact, most users use the service for free. The actual customers are advertisers like Walmart and McDonald's. And therefore, Twitter is held accountable by advertisers. If Twitter-users want their tweets to be held "accountable (to the userbase)", they can spin up their own server, or sign up for a rival service where the userbase constitutes the revenue. It comes down to the Golden Rule: "he who has the gold, maketh the rules".
Obviously, Elon has attempted to make users shoulder more of the burden. And it has not been popular. Yet the userbase never seems to realize that, if users want Twitter to be accountable to the userbase, the most natural solution is to bear the costs themselves.
Who doesn't have power, including even very small amounts of it?
Coma patients?
"The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media sites"
They say that, but I'm not so sure it's true. Not that long ago people thought Twitter was too big to fail. Elon Musk is certainly putting that claim to the test.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/x-marks-the-motivated-reasoning-13450584
"I’ve lost track of all the things that Musk has done to Twitter that ought to have brought it down by now"
Give it time. His change to require logging into Twitter to view tweets was a massive blunder IMHO, as it isolates tweeters somewhat from the "outside world". Not everyone wants to be actively involved with it.
(I read somewhere a few days ago that he has since rowed back on this, but I'm still seeing redirects to a login page when I try looking at tweets from people whose feed I'm sure used to be visible without logging in.)
Of course, requiring tweeters to make a small extra payment for their tweets to be visible to non-logged-in readers might be the opposite of a blunder, an inspired move that would rake in vast sums, because no doubt every Twitter user wants their output to be visible to the largest audience.
The (unauthed) path to a profile is:
- via google, find a specific tweet that mentions the user
- open that tweet and then click the user’s handle
Even once you get there, its now sorted by popularity rather than time. Basically unusable. I’ve generally been impressed by spacex and tesla, so the poverty of the twitter situation is confusing.
Nitter ( e.g. https://twiiit.com/SpaceX ) seems to succeed at chronological feed, though (it did not at the height of the turmoil)
SpaceX is about solving hard technical problems, including some never-done-before, mainly with large and sophisticated customers. I am awed by what the team has achieved, and I am sure that Musk handling of SpaceX has high value above replacement.
Tesla also has some hard technical problems to solve, but lots of customers, but at least each unit sale is large. They achieved some impressive manufacturing feats, they sometimes have issues with «polish» kind of stuff when scaling up, and there are quite a few questionable customer service and advertisement positioning (Autopilot being closer to real prescribed use of autopilot than to what people think autpilot does, and Tesla doubling down without explaining much…) stories. Getting electric cars scale better than others helps, though.
Starlink is probably close to Tesla, smaller unit sales/subscriptions but also fewer dimensions people care about.
Twitter… is much more about mass-scale public relations with relatively low revenue per customer (be it subscriber or advertiser). And technical achievements are not really unique. And Elon Musk starts with a user base acquired using a specific kind of positioning. Yeah, so all the questionable positioning things are now the main story and not annoying side issues like for Tesla, and it is hard to offset it with unique tour-de-force, and there is no time for a technical tour-de-force… Well, maybe some repositioning will eventually succeed (but that takes time), maybe not…
Fwiw, Twitter sort of blocked me from anonymous use for months before Elon bought it. (You could see a handful of tweets before getting a mandatory login popup.) Then they removed that restriction for a while (you could x the login popup), but now it's back (nothing shown unless login, though I think you can see tweets linked externally). I sure did prefer the unrestricted anon usage myself.
Then again, it's now the same policy as Facebook and Instagram, isn't it? For better or worse.
It's a balance that other media has mostly failed at. How do you a) make enough money to keep the lights on and b) keep enough people looking at your stuff to keep doing (a)?
Paywalls so far are only working for a few newspapers and TV stations.
Has Twitter ever made a profit to the point of returning a dividend? Or has their stock value been based on "bigger sucker" theory for its whole existence?
I'm not saying Twitter is definitely going under. But it certainly seems more plausible than it did a few years ago (though I never took seriously the idea that it, or any other company, would be able to remain dominant forever).
>The egalitarians might say that those people are "unaccountable" for how they run their privately owned social media site
Ah yes, the same egalitarians who defend social media companies' "moderation" policies (i.e. censorship of insufficiently liberal viewpoints) on the grounds of these sites being...private property.
Yeah, the same people that whined about how evil it was for billionaires like Elon Musk owning "public squares" like Twitter only to gleefully flock to Threads as soon as Zuck winked in their directions.
To be fair, most of them have since flocked off.
Because this isn't 1930 and the (Western) left is no longer dedicated to opposing the corporations or the capitalist class on principle. Rather, they support the capitalists on their side in the Culture War (like Zuck), and oppose the capitalists on the other side (like Musk).
You can argue that this is a bad state of affairs, but I don't think there's any inherent contradiction here. It would be hypocritical if they wanted the government to intervene against Musk while giving Zuck a pass, but most progressives weren't asking for that. Initially, they wanted Twitter to reject Musk's offer, and now that he does own the site, they're just hoping that it fails. There's no hypocrisy in wanting (brand you like) to succeed while hoping (brand you dislike) goes out of business, that's capitalism working as intended.
I've never seen the Left defend Zuck, or consider him on the Left's side of culture-war issues. I don't mean to say this doesn't happen, because any possible combination of views exists on Twitter, but I'm doubtful that's a mainstream position.
Those same "some people" who are now saying that being a Twitter blue check only means that you have a name and address, but who previously were using their blue check status as "I'm right, you're wrong, and how you tell is because I have a blue check which means I'm an expert and a good person and graded reliable and better than you".
I'd love Reddit's Anti-Evil Operations to be accountable, who decided on that name for a start? If that wasn't putting a thumb on the scale from the outset, I don't know what is.
You don't have to be a woke scold to see the power difference between Mark Zuckerberg and the average schmuck on the street, to see the power that the former has over the latter, and to want to consider whether the former should have some kind of accountability for the impact of their actions on the latter.
What power does Zuckerburg have over you that he needs to be held accountable for?
I've read a lot of Twitter, both before and after Elon, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I never, and I mean never, saw anybody in with an old blue check say anything like what you're claiming. They might appeal to their authority as an expert on something, and back up their _existence_ with the check, but that's different. It's a big place and others might have seen otherwise, I guess.
I get this, but at the same time, the Biden Administration is a pretty small group of people with a lot of power over others in society. It sort of seems like the egalitarian folks you're referring do not actually mind having a tiny group of people wield great power over others; they just prefer that power be obtained democratically, which, as Scott mentioned in the OP, isn't as desirable as popular sentiment would make it out to be.
It seems useful to distinguish between the adjectives "liberal" and "democratic," as the two are sometimes conflated. Forcing the minority to follow the religion of the majority, per the wishes of the majority, is democratic and illiberal. This usage allows the terms to simply be descriptive without being value judgements. In this way, they can be used relatively consistently by people of different values.
>I think the word “accountable” should be reserved for people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them
This, however, seems like an unwieldy redefinition that is not at all consistent with common usage. People frequently refer to "personal accountability," using it basically synonymously with "personal responsibility."
It seems like the stated objection to the term "accountable" should also apply to the terms "responsible" and "responsibility."
Now I see that you alluded to this point in stating:
> I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
Other commenters note that the common denominator is people with power over others. The criminals are held accountable when they use their physical power to victimize others.
But fundamentally, (as Reich is very much aware) all actions that have an affect are "powerful." Defining "accountable" in terms of power that one has over others, doesn't preclude the application to things like private speech. Those who apply it there could say that more power may be vested in a blogger, than in some minor political figure.
Ultimately, I think the issue is that people disagree about what people's responsibilities are and who should hold them to account. But I don't see this being resolvable semantically.
Just as people disagree about e.g. whether "good parenting" requires parents to abstain from corporal punishment or to engage in it, but the semantic ambiguity is just an underlying value disagreement, and wouldn't be resolved by some declaration that "good parenting" means one or the other.
Exactly. There is a vast literature on the distinction between liberalism and democracy (or, between "liberal democracy " and "illiberal democracy"). See, eg, practicallly everything written about Hungary under Orban.
>It seems useful to distinguish between the adjectives "liberal" and "democratic,"
'Liberal' is a word bordering on meaninglessness, even moreso than 'democratic'. Especially since most people and organizations described as 'liberal' are fine with the imposition of beliefs onto minorities (or majorities!).
OP is referring to the other meaning of "liberal." https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/l/Liberalism.htm
...oh god, that's it isn't it. "Undemocratic"="You're not a Democrat."
Children with printing presses.
I mean yeah that's about 80% of the word's real world use (In the US)
Exactly this - real semantic agreement is downstream of real values agreement.
With that in mind, it seems to me that "hold criminals accountable" works as a concept because there there is a venerable enough tradition that we can assume complete consensus that society gets a say on whether murdering people is acceptable.
Remember when Scott would steelman an argument before disagreeing with it? That was a good rule.
yeah...I used to read Scott for the effort he would put into steelmanning his opponents before tearing them down. I don't know if it's just recency bias or if there really has been much less of him doing that, but it does feels like it.
The argument he is disagreeing with is pretty bad though. A streelman if that argument would be to not make it and to try to make your point a different way, but if he did that as a streelman it would be totally irrelevant to what is being discussed in the article.
This is one of the reasons I think steelmans are overvalued. Generally, it is important to respond to the arguments that your opponent actually makes, not an idealized argument that they might have made if they thought more like you. One of the other reasons I think steelmanning is overvalued is because it leads to people suggesting that you are obligated to do it, even in situations where it isn’t appropriate.
I think there's a pretty obvious sense in which he failed to steelman it. Unlike a book or speech, certain technologies are so powerful that it is easy to make an argument that only properly "accountable" entities should be allowed to produce them. We are fast approaching a world in hobbyists can produce deadly novel pathogens with easily attainable technologies and few specialized skills.
Part of the social contract is accepting that liberties have trade-offs. In a state of nature, the biggest and strongest man can kill, rape, and steal from anyone he wants. While in this scenario, he is most free, his freedom restricts the liberties of others. Thus, we have laws giving the government a monopoly on violence. In one sense, this is totalitarian, as we have removed a freedom that many cultures historically valued quite heavily. I think this is a good trade-off, and that it's analogous to the freedom to make home baked superpathogens. If what Scott argues elsewhere on this blog is true, so it may be with sufficiently advanced AI.
I'm not saying I agree with the above account, but its the kind of argument I typically think of Scott as entertaining.
Does realizing that many at the time presented the printing press as dangerous and so warranting suppression and centralized control in the hands of the established powers change your mind?
To reiterate, my objection is not that I think Scott is incorrect, it's that he failed to steelman in a way he often does.
But no, I don't think that refutes the steelmanned position. We regularly accept restrictions on some liberties (e.g. murder & stealing) to protect other liberties (e.g. not-being-murdered and not-having-your-stuff-stolen). Some actions have sufficiently large negative externalities that we accept they are better restricted than not. If you accept that unaligned AI could pose an existential threat to humanity (as I believe Scott does), limiting the freedom to create an unaligned AI may be a reasonable tradeoff.
My criticism is actually just restricted to your phrase, "unlike a book." Specifically, that all your arguments generalize farther than you (i.e., your hypothetical steelman) might like.
Same tech that enables home baked superpathogens could enable rapid institutional production of corresponding vaccines rendering them toothless, and deeper insights into immunology yielding lasting cures for allergies, autoimmune disorders, etc.
As in most areas, defense will probably be much harder than offense .
Fortunately in this case defense also pays better, because a well-treated population is a source of ongoing added value, while a super-pathogen devalues itself almost by definition - far too many free samples. Better compensation and an interesting technical challenge attracts more of the clever, ambitious, best-in-field types, which can then outweigh the intrinsic difficulty of the task.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/illegal-lab-with-infectious-diseases-and-dead-mice-busted-in-california/
Nobody knows what these guys were up to! (I'm pretty sure it wasn't superpathogens, more like an unlicenced lab that was doing or trying to do the same sort of work as licenced labs.)
I don’t think that is meaningfully related to the point he is making. If he included this sort of steelman in this post, it would have detracted quite significantly from the quality of the post by being massively off topic.
Scott has written extensively about AI in this past but given that this post isn’t actually about AI, the insistence that he ought to have included this idea seems pretty bizzare to me.
It directly relates to questions of accountability.
Can you explain what you mean by this? It’s sounds like you are arguing that if you can apply the concept of accountability to AI, then AI is an inherently part of accountability, but that is backwards.
"Part of the social contract is accepting that liberties have trade-offs. In a state of nature, the biggest and strongest man can kill, rape, and steal from anyone he wants."
Unless his victim has a pointy stick. Or his victim has friends who knows where he sleeps.
Here's one part, fairly randomly chosen, where I felt Scott didn't do justice to the argument.
"I agree that you can define “undemocratic” such that it includes anyone spending money or trying to improve society outside of government. But if you define it this way, and also try to correct undemocratic things, you get totalitarianism..."
This doesn't seem like a bad definition of democratic to me; it is a fact that some individuals have larger sway on society than others due to their money, and you could say that this is undemocratic. The issue I would take here is that *not everything needs to be democratic*.
Instead Scott has snuck in 'also try to correct undemocratic things', and uses this to show that it leads to a bad state of affairs. Alright, but what if we don't want to correct undemocratic things in such situations?
This might seem like a quibble to you, but my point is that it is a bit unkind to the person that Scott is quoting who defined democracy in this way.
It seems like he addresses this pretty directly:
> So either you should avoid defining “democratic” this way, or you should stop assuming that more democratic = better.
I’m also not really sure what any of this has to do with steelmanning.
You're right, also in that this doesn't directly have to do with steelmanning.
A better expression of my feelings would be to say, perhaps, that those who are arguing for the position that Scott is arguing against are clearly doing so because of some principle they feel is really getting trampled on. It's true that private individuals with a lot of wealth command more sway than the average person, and it's understandable that this goes against some belief that every person should have equal say in society - the same belief that democracy springs from.
Now some people note that this is a problem, that democracy is good. That's ridiculous, says Scott - democracy of this kind would lead to totalitarianism! A more considered answer might be that it's true - this is an unfortunate state of affairs that some people have more influence than others - what should we do about it? Is it really an undesirable state of the world, and if so is there some better steps we can take towards equity than shouting 'democracy' all the time? If not, why not?
I'm not sure if I've been clear enough about what struck me in this essay - it's true that the example above was a bad one, but it struck me because of the way he dismissed the other side's concerns. Even if their proposed solution is bad does not mean that there is no problem.
Steelmanning or sanewashing?
When I hear people talking about steelmanning like this, it really feels like they're simply annoyed Scott isn't making more concessions towards a view they generally approve.
I really like the term "sanewashing." Thanks!
Same here!
Speaking for myself, my own views on the issues being considered here align with Scott's, and I share the anxiety about people who want centralized control in the name of accountability, but technically a steelmanning is indeed possible here that is not "sanewashing", and doesn't seem to have been attempted. This was the case with that disability post also, but Scott made up for that one by quoting from enough comments that did the steelmanning to a good extent.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thought the disability post was unusually low quality.
To be fair Scott got a lot of pushback for it, and yet he published a good number of dissenting notes in his follow-up. I can't think of pretty much any other celebrity who does that.
It might be more persuasive to say what specifically what you thought Scott missed in the original argument.
When you write and publish stuff online (particularly under your own name, including venerable exceptions like "Scott Alexander"), you're always 100% accountable, because people can and will stop reading you the instant you stop being interesting.
We might keep reading just for the comments.
Democracy by itself is nothing special for the reasons you gave in the article. As the old saying goes, it's just two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. What we should value is LIBERAL democracy, because only this protects the rights and freedoms of everyone, including minorities.
Ultimately, the best liberal democracy is a minimal one in the sense that it allows the most individuals to chose their own path without requiring these individual personal choices to be submitted for voter denial or approval.
If the part you care about is just the "liberal" bit, why tie that to democracy at all?
Because some issues, as a last resort, can only be resolved collectively by voting. There has to be a fallback decision-making process when individual decisions may clash with other individuals' decisions.
It's the least bad option?
Despite being widely claimed (and believed), I consider that a dubious assertion, but that's actually not relevant to the point I was making: advocating for a "liberal democracy" overspecifies your preferences. If all you care about is the "liberal" part, why question the manner in which it is provided?
I also like democracy on moral grounds, I just don't think it's self-justifying. That's why I want a democratic government to still be constrained by a constitution or some informal equivalent.
Suppose I strongly believe we should drive on the right side of the road and you strongly believe we should drive on the left side of the road. How do you propose a liberal society can resolve this conflict without a democratic vote of some kind?
A council of around 15 self appointing highly respected individuals (think supreme court) all coming from the same "liberal" background who make all descisions.
This is a rib at Israel, right?
But also, are there example of liberal non-democracies that stayed that way longer than the reign of a single ruler? None come to mind for me, though I'm not an expert.
Singapore?
I don't know whether Humphrey Appleby is correct about Singapore, but, just on probabilistic grounds, I suspect that there has been at least one case of two generations of monarchs who happened to favor liberal practices (for their time - and what counts as liberal is still quite ambiguous today) in their realm.
My answer is that insofar as a government already exists (which I think liberalism presupposes), a say in that government is itself a fundamental right of self-determination. The human condition is about more than negative rights.
But it’s a really good question that I’ve been trying to work out for a good long while now (that is, way before you asked it).
Orwellian reasons, primarily. Over hundreds of years that word has accumulated universally positive connotations, so anything that can smuggle in the connotations of democracy, no matter how totalitarian, can claim political legitimacy and be believed by many.
I never found the "two wolves and a lamb" thing very persuasive. If society is two wolves and a lamb, then the wolves are going to eat the lamb. No "system of government" will change that.
- Liberal democracy is two wolves and a lamb writing a constitution where it says you can't kill and eat lambs, then the Supreme Court decides in a 2-1 decision that it doesn't apply to *that* lamb.
- A dictatorship is one of the wolves being the dictator and they eat the lamb. A dictatorship where the lamb is the dictator, there's immediately a coup.
- A stateless society is ... well it's what happens in nature. I.e. the wolves eat the lamb.
- Someone will say "The second amendment!" OK well if lambs could operate firearms they wouldn't fit as the weak ones in this metaphor.
But usually (insofar as wolves/lamb is a useful metaphor for human society at all), the lambs outnumuber the wolves, so basing power on raw numbers tends to be more pro-lamb than alternatives.
Also, if the lambs have firearms, so do the wolves. Of course, the lamb could get lucky, but the chances are still on the wolf side.
"Someone will say "The second amendment!" OK well if lambs could operate firearms they wouldn't fit as the weak ones in this metaphor."
Well no, it demonstrates that having multiple sources of power are better than one that can be captured and abused. It's not about the lamb being weak, it's about the lamb being outnumbered.
The problem with multiple sources of power is that when those sources of power are captured, then the abusers of that power are that much harder to root out.
This is just a consequence of the analogy being bad. In real life there ARE multiple sources of power, people aren't uniformly wolves or lambs. Taking the example at face value, if the lambs were stronger but outnumbered (EDIT meant to say if the *wolves* were stronger but outnumbered) - or perhaps alternatively if it was one wolf and two lambs - then again the wolf will eat the lambs.
In particular I'd say that democracy makes "having more people on your side" a (larger) source of power, the same way "having more money" or "having more capacity to commit violence" or whatever else is.
There's also the question of whether you're actually adding a cross-cutting power hierarchy, or reinforcing a preexisting one. Part of the appeal of democracy is the idea that it is cross-cutting, i.e., without democracy the power resides in a small number of powerful people. I think the way guns works here is probably complicated and varies depending on time and place.
“A wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him: “Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.”
“Indeed,” bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, “I was not then born.”
Then said the Wolf, “You feed in my pasture.”
“No, good sir,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.”
Again said the Wolf, “You drink of my well.”
“No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.”
Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.”
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.”
Real hot take: wolves are the good guys in the story.
It's not like wolves eat lambs just to be dicks about it, they have to in order to survive. Meanwhile the whole reason for this specific analogy - and not lions and gazelles or something - is that the *humans* are keeping the lambs. Y'know, to eat them. It's not really wolves vs lambs, it's wolves vs humans, fighting over the right to eat the lambs!
And unlike the wolves, we don't actually *have* to eat meat, ever.
What makes them better, or more deserving of survival, than the lamb, other than brute force?
Nothing, but the lambs are getting eaten either way.
As a cat, I am sympathetic to the arguments of predators, but I don't ascribe moral superiority being a carnivore, and I don't concoct transparently self-serving rationalizations for doing so.
To be clear, the bad guys aren't the lambs, they're the humans.
You don't need to take a side in predators vs prey, just a side in "non-human predators hunting" vs "humans doing factory farming"
I'm failing to see how the fable illustrates the moral. It appears to show that the tyrant may well fail to find a pretext for his tyranny, but he won't care.
<i>- A dictatorship is one of the wolves being the dictator and they eat the lamb. A dictatorship where the lamb is the dictator, there's immediately a coup.</i>
Unless the lamb can convince the dictator wolf to spare it. Historically minorities have often done better under monarchy or dictatorship than under democracy, because it's easier to convince one person not to oppress you than to convince 51% of the entire country.
"Ultimately, the best liberal democracy is a minimal one in the sense that it allows the most individuals to chose their own path without requiring these individual personal choices to be submitted for voter denial or approval."
Until the individuals go to court to have it made law that their individual personal choices be approved by society at large.
Where I struggle:
1. I encounter libertarians who want a constitution that strongly limits government or insist that the US constitution actually does limit government in ways that would make most of modern government illegal. They are saying that the population can vote a non-libertarian into power, but that leader would have no ability to do anything non-libertarian. This strikes me as undemocratic!
2. I have a hard time saying the US is undemocratic (or less democratic) because a majority cannot impose a state religion.
I struggle to reconcile 1 and 2. Thoughts from the crowd?
My only thought is that functioning democracies require freedom of conscience for the mechanics of democracy to work. If the government can arrest people for wrongthink, it can solidify power forever, so for democracy to survive long-term there have to be certain things (particularly related to freedom of speech and assembly) that the majority don't abrogate. Religion sort of falls under this banner.
1. Of course it's undemocratic! "Majoritarianism" is not generally a libertarian value.
2. Could you elaborate on why? The answer "yes, it's less democratic, but it's good because … something something fundamental rights, dangers of populist demagoguery" is pretty middle-of-the-road.
The US wasn't intended to be and never has been a pure democracy. The Constitution grants the government specific powers and the legislators and chief executive are democratically accountable (or at least that's the idea). Outside of the sphere of influence of government decisions are made by individuals and groups of individuals and the norms, institutions, etc. that emerge in society.
And we've spent the next 250 years whittling down those protections.
You can't maximize two variables simultaneously. So if you can imagine valuing two things (like personal liberty and majoritarian rule), they may conflict!
Life is sometimes too complicated to be solved using the Kuhn-Tucker conditions, and that's okay.
One problem with this is that "personal liberty" and "majoritarian rule" are in different categories. "Personal liberty" is an outcome of government policy, and "majoritarian rule" is a decisionmaking process for government policy. It is indeed possible that you could maximize both, but only if the majority wants to maximize "personal liberty".
And of course people have different definitions of "personal liberty" to the point that it's practically synonymous with "good". So this really comes down to people asking "do we want good government or majoritarian government", which only makes sense as a choice if you think you can wave a magic wand and get "good government".
I'm not sure it affects the calculus that the two are in different categories. By way of example, we could imagine I'm choosing a restaurant for dinner with my friends. I could make a choice and demand everyone follow me (a worse process, but perhaps a better outcome for me), or I could put it up for a vote and risk going somewhere I like less (a better process, but perhaps a worse outcome for me). I have to navigate this choice virtually every time I dine out and I suspect others do as well.
To your second point, personal liberty is certainly a good. It's not the only good. So if I want to drive on the left side of the road in a country that drives on the right, most societies will understandably restrict my personal liberty, because it conflicts with another good -- safety. Yet those same societies will decide against safety in favor of liberty on other issues.
You don't end up with one maximized good; you end up with a bundle of goods. Trying to decide what's in that bundle is the tricky part!
I think its completely fair to say “I wish the USA had a Constitution that would make the country more democratic, as well as allowing the federal government greater power over various facets of law in the country.”
However the Libertarians are correct that the Constitution which actually exists drastically limits the scope/purview of the federal government and sets up many checks against pure democracy being the sole mechanism for the operation of the federal government.
Libertarians are also correct that much of the modern federal government overreaches the powers vested to it. There’s example of all three federal branches assuming powers that are legally vested in the States. Judicial: Roe v Wade. Executive: Vietnam “police action” (presidential war powers more broadly). Legislative: Gun Laws. A libertarian may tend to take an absolutist view to the 10th Amendment, that all powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the state. I would agree that many of the alphabet agencies are not legal (Dept. of Ed for example).
Amending the Constitution is hard but its been done many times. However it exists so that the rights which were at the time of their enshrinement supported so overwhelmingly cannot be abridged with a simple majority willy-nilly. Its totally fair to complain about the US Constitution and hope to be free of its yoke. But the ways to do it are either by amending it with a supermajority, or deposing it from rulership via war/revolution. I would find both of those options as morally legitimate. However usurping it via bare-majority legislative process is clearly unconstitutional (illegal) and I find to be a cheater and crooks way of governing the state.
Long Live the Republic
We saw what the States did when left to their own devices (slavery, then segregation and oppression), so the central Gov is rightly always going to keep the leash short and yank it whenever necessary.
What if most people wanted slavery, and only a couple of states didn't? Sounds like you'd love to see the central Gov yank that leash and enforce slavery. SMH
The central Gov is usually more enlightened than the provincials. For instance, most US citizens in the early 60s probably didn't want the CIvil RIghts Bill. But the Gov knew which side of history would be right, and forced it through anyway.
A more recent example is gay rights and gay marriage. Voters continuously rejected these measures, so it took central Gov action to secure these minority rights.
Taking a greater scope. An empire losing influence is almost always bad for minorities in the regions it used to govern, the Balkans being a notable example.
On the contrary, the central Gov has been brutalizing provincials for millennia, from the ancients in China, Persia, Rome, Egypt, and pre-Columbian America, to the modern central Gov in... all the same places. Your specific examples are wrong and actually cut against your argument -- most Americans approved of the Civil Rights Act, and as for gay marriage you may recall that Obama was against it, even as many provincials from San Francisco to Dallas to New York just wanted the right to run their "provinces" in accordance with their values.
I'm not trying to change your mind here. Just consider that you should be a little less confident about your conclusions, and ask more questions.
>the central Gov has been brutalizing provincials for millennia
So given the option, would you prefer to wake up tomorrow as a provincial citizen of the Roman/Abbasid/Han Empire, or in the fiefdom of some local warlord after those states collapsed?
The terms usually given to the periods following the end of these strong centralized powers ("Warring States", "Dark Ages"), hints that utopia did not ensue.
And while Obama may have been (publicly) against gay marriage, he sure did appoint the kind of judges and officials who were likely to make it happen.
Gay marriage isn't a great example- at the time the Supreme Court finally made the decision there'd been substantial popular majority in support for a while, it was just the legislatures that were lagging behind (including the federal legislature).
Outside of a few coastal, liberal states, gay marriage was a losing initiative when put to public vote.
So you want a central government that will yank the leash only as long as it does the yanking to people you find objectionable - the provincials.
The problem with that is, when you build a weapon, you cannot be sure you will be the only one to ever use or keep that weapon (see the atomic bomb). As soon as there is enough of a shift, the state government will be "unenlightened" just like the grubby provincials and start yanking the leash on *your* collar.
Yup! Political winds are very gusty, and can shift unpredictably and with little warning. The "right side of history" is just the ideology of the most recent victor.
Why do you think that a central government is more enlightened than a provincial government?
By that logic, aggressively centralizing governments ought to be renowned for their enlightenment.
Slavery was federally/constitutionally legal and only illegal in one state at the time of writing the Constitution (Vermont). Furthermore segregation of the civil service was enforced federally by Woodrow Wilson after decades of not having de jure segregation in government or washington DC. So saying “the federal government was so racially progressive and the states are evil racists” is a false argument and its just propaganda they teach you in schools to advance the agenda of centralized power.
Furthermore the runaway slave act was passed federally in the 1850, but some states like Wisconsin refused to comply with it. State nullification of laws has been used for countless good, bad, and neutral things (subjective terms I know). States legalizing marijuana is nullification. Jim Crow is not nullification bc its an imposition of extra laws under purview of the state rather than a refusal to comply with a federal law.
Northern states banned slavery throughout the early 1800s by the same power that states legalized gay marriage in the early 2000s. It wouldnt make sense to say “weve seen what states do when left to their own devices and its bad bc they ban gay marriage”. No, gay marriage was already banned, they legalized it one by one. Slavery was already legal, they banned it one by one.
Basically, I think having power more decentralized to the state is not only good but its the Law, since the Constitution is the law. Doesnt mean I support every states law but Id much rather have 50 states than 1. Furthermore, the example of “states rights” that is always invoked is “Slavery/Jim crow” which shows that people arent really thinking through it historically or legally and instead just spewing talking points they learned in school
> Furthermore, the example of “states rights” that is always invoked is “Slavery/Jim crow”
Yeah, why would anyone reference the so-called "states' rights" issue that almost tore the union apart and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans?
Must be school indoctrination.
You're reading past the point. It was an issue of "states' rights" to operate a slave society. Apparently you think that's the only thing that any state wanted to do and was told no for.
Yeah, I'm sure some state somewhere wanted to make Klingon the official language or something, but next to slavery, all other issues absolutely pale into irrelevance.
1. I don't see how that's undemocratic. They're saying that the current government is illegal under our democratically-ratified Constitution, and has been for many years. If their claims about the Constitution is correct, then surely a government running rough-shod over the Constitution, without ever having been granted those powers by the public, is undemocratic. Even more so when you consider that [some of] the things they object to, like the Interstate Commerce Clause, the existence of the Department of Education, and various aspects of the New Deal, were (AFAIK, don't cite me) either decisions by judges, or executive actions. [NOTE: This is wrong. See below.]
2. "Democratic" as meant by Rousseau clearly (by "clearly" I mean clear to anyone meeting the minimal requirement of being more-logical than Rousseau) implies that the majority can do damn well what it pleases with the minority. "Force them to be free." That's the difference between the American and French revolutions. The American founding fathers probably said something to the effect that the Bill of Rights, and the electoral college, were meant to protect us from democracy. If they didn't say it, they were thinking it. Note also that Athens was the most-democratic state that ever existed, and it had a state religion.
Isn't just having a constitution kind of undemocratic, in that it prevents future generations (who never voted for the constitution) from enacting their will if they want something forbidden by the constitution?
Relatedly, if the majority of citizens wanted to change our government to an autocracy, would it be democratic or undemocratic to do so?
Since the Constitution is amendable, no.
On a related subject, I've never been able to find my copy of this Social Contract I supposedly signed.
So what if the constitution can theoretically be amended through a politically onerous process? The constitution makes it harder to enact any will of the people that goes against the constitution. It's main purpose is to restrict democracy.
If some country has a constitution that can only be amended if the entire population unanimously votes to change it, is it still democratic just because it's theoretically possible to amend, even though it's practically impossible? What if they only need 95% of the vote? Or 75%?
If a constitution can be changed easily, (say by a simple majority), it becomes pointless. The harder it is to change, the less ability the current populace has to enact their will, which is the reason for a constitution.
My point here is that lots of aspects of modern government (Social Security, Medicare, the NIH etc.) are extremely popular and a politician who ran on a platform of abolishing them would lose by a lopsided margin anywhere in the country, but libertarians want courts to mandate that these things be made illegal forever on individual liberties grounds. They're basically saying they should get their way on all important policies, whatever the public wants. I view that as undemocratic.
On the history, the basic story of the New Deal was that congress kept passing programs (it was not executive orders) that expanded government and the Supreme Court kept striking them down by 5-4 margins until FDR was reelected, at which point one justice switched positions and a couple conservatives retired. If this hadn't happened, court packing probably would have gone through. It's like the justices realized that they couldn't defy popular feeling forever.
Now in practice what would probably happen is that if libertarians somehow convinced the Supreme Court to strike down most of modern government is that either an Amendment would be rapidly passed to overturn the court's ruling (the American constitution is notoriously hard to amend, but probably for this it would be possible) or the elected government would just start ignoring or bypassing the Supreme Court (as largely happened during the civil war, and almost happened in 1937). It's ultimately very hard to preserve liberties in the face of too much opposition. For that matter, if almost everyone wanted a state religion and persecution of heretics, the ACLU would probably lose, no matter what the constitutions says.
And, contrary to the grandparent post, both the Interstate Commerce Act and the existence of the Dept. of Education were passed by Congress.
Oops. My bad.
"There's no point in having a Constitution because the government will just self-coup anyway."
And court packing is a self-coup, because you have to ensure that all subsequent administrations are yours once that can of worms is opened.
I wouldn't go that far. I think a constitution/court can make things moderately more liberal, especially around low salience issues. Ensure criminals have rights that 51% of the population would take away. Impart coherence on procedural issues. Notably the court interprets free speech/separation of church and state more consistently and strongly than the average person would. Fortunately the average person doesn't care enough to overturn the constitutional order to impost censorship or whatever.
What I don't think is that a constitutional court cannot restrain a large majority when that majority has strong feelings about an issue. Either the court finds a gentle way to surrender or gets overtly steamrolled.
While you are correct that the purpose of the SC is to be a roadblock in the way of mob rule, I think that the case for surrender in the face of the New Deal is a bit tough. And then you have the Civil Rights legislation, by which Congress legislated a whole new *category* of rights and began the process of rewriting the Constitution to change the "fundamental freedoms-possessing unit" of the country from the individual to the identity group, and the court didn't have the cojones to stop it.
On my original note, though, the reason court packing would be a self-coup is because it would pretty much subordinate the Supreme Court to the elected government entirely, and the next time the same party had Congress and the Presidency we'd have a one-party state for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for straightening me out re. the New Deal.
Re. things being extremely popular: We currently have a simulacrum democracy in the US--an illusory majority cultivated by the media, which has convinced most of the country that certain minority views are held by the vast majority of Americans.
I've often heard leftists puzzle over how come some thing that "everyone wants" can't seem to get thru Congress, or is blocked by the Supreme Court, where polls show that the thing "everyone wants" is opposed by at least half of all Americans (for recent examples, affirmative action in college admissions and legal abortion in most cases).
So there are two risks of representative democracy: that the majority will decide to do something awful, and that a minority will manipulate the media to convince elected representatives that the view of a powerful minority is actually the view of the majority.
I think the easiest way to think about it is that, yes, the US absolutely could impose a state religion, you'd just need to pass a constitutional amendment. Now that's a lot harder than passing an ordinary law but a democratic people can pass laws that inhibit their ability to pass laws in the future; we can do contracts, like the Bill of Rights, and we often do because stable laws are good.
The libertarian complaint, as I understand it, is more that people "cheated". The Interstate Commerce Clause, for example, is...probably not being used the way the Founding Fathers intended but no one held a vote or wrote a new amendment, the government just kinda...gave itself this power. The problem is that, other than libertarians, no one cares.
I mean, people find loopholes or invent new technologies or lead marches or...use all sorts on nondemocratic means that undermine the constitution. The 10th amendment, for example, is pretty dead letter. The 2nd, divisive as it is, is alive because a solid group of people really, really care. Even Zuckerberg and his ilk have to walk gingerly around online censorship, the 1st amendment, because a lot of people really, really care about free speech.
But, bringing this back around, the libertarians are right to point out that, legally speaking, a lot of modern stuff shouldn't exist, it didn't go through the proper channels because it wasn't popular enough. Instead, various actors found loopholes and got away with it because the great majority of Americans simply didn't care enough.
In a way, the civic religion *is* the state religion. The holy day is the Fourth of July, the sacred texts are the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, the icons are the flag and other symbols, and the High Priest delivers the sermon to the people every year in the State of the Union Address.
The *true* founding of the US was in 1619, those documents were all written a hundred years ago by white male slaveowners in a language nobody speaks anymore, and the "Stars and Stripes" flag is a global symbol of racism oppression, colonialism, imperialism and homophobia.
If we're pushing it back to 1619, then why not 1492? Or Vinlandia? Or St Brendan?
What makes the arrival of African-Americans more special than anyone else who arrived on the shores of the New World? They've supplanted the natives in their own turn.
He's being facetious, referring to one of the more facile of recent attempts to rhetorically invalidate the Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights.
The state religion point would be more persuasive to me if, in addition to being unconstitutional, a state religion wasn't colossally unpopular. If the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow "a state religion isn't unconstitutional" we still wouldn't have one.
Re MLK: read Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Very specific steps that lead up to civil disobedience including the willingness to accept punishment (jail); in other words being accountable.
I think you may have missed the point on charity being undemocratic. The criticism is not that donating to charity itself is undemocratic; the criticism is that the government effectively pays a third to up to half of every charitable donation through tax deductions, and that is undemocratic because it’s allowing private citizens, overwhelmingly very wealthy ones, to individually determine how the government should spend its money, generally in line with their own priorities and not the ones government would choose. If there were no tax deduction for charitable donations (as there isn’t in many countries), this argument would go away. As such, it’s an argument against the deduction, not against charitable donation.
The phrase "its money" is doing a lot of work there.
Whose name is on the dollar bill?
God's?
More seriously, I doubt you think if a billionaire did all his transactions in gold sterling he wouldn't owe any taxes. The US Treasury prints money and people use it because other people will accept it, but nowhere does it say that all US dollars are owned by the United States of America, and only leased to the holder at the Treasury's pleasure. If that was the deal, hardly anyone would use them.
I see why some people are frustrated that the government is failing to extract the maximum amount of money in taxes, (though I wouldn't equate that to the government "spending it's money"), but killing the tax deduction for charitable giving would do a *ton* of damage to charity as a whole.
And having the government actively pick and choose exactly what causes are "worthy" feels exactly the sort of democratic totalitarianism being described here.
"I see why some people are frustrated that the government is failing to extract the maximum amount of money in taxes,"
Is the U.S. budget deficit a problem or not?
"(though I wouldn't equate that to the government "spending it's money""
Why not? The effect of government subsidies for X and government tax breaks for X are identical.
Keep in mind that the bulk of charitable donations in America go to religion, higher-education, and political activism. Aid to the poor and cutting-edge scientific research are only getting a sliver of that.
>The effect of government subsidies for X and government tax breaks for X are identical.
And the effect of taxes not being higher than they currently are is also identical, and yet this doesn't typically count as the government subsiding private expenditure.
The math here doesn't remotely make sense. According to a quick google, billionaire philanthropy was 27 billion in 2022. So putting a 30% tax on that would raise about a billion dollars in a year.
Meanwhile, the 2022 annual deficit was 1.4 trillion and revenue was 5 trillion. So the 30% cut to charity by would decrease the annual deficit by 0.1% and revenue by 0.02%. (And to be clear, this isn't decreasing our actual deficit, just slightly slowing down the rate at which it increases!)
This doesn't seem like a good trade to me - unless you believe the government is 300x-1500x more efficient than the average charitable donation; but I sure don't.
Those tax deductions were passed by a democratically elected legislator.
Also, by your logic, *all* income spent by private citizens is undemocratic, because the government *could* tax everyone 100%, and by not doing so the government is "allowing" private citizens to spend "its" money in ways that that a majority might not support. Which I think illustrates the point Scott was trying to make.
Yea lol what a terrible argument. “All money is the governments you capitalist pigs!”
The implication of this is LITERALLY that anything less than a 100% tax rate is 'undemocratic', because by refusing to hike up tax rates, the government is 'paying' for people to have money of their own. You're saying that the government is giving away 'its' money by not collecting the 'full amount' of taxes when it provides a reduction is how much tax is paid due to donations. But the 'full amount' of tax a person would pay sans charity deductions is arbitrary, because it's whatever the current tax rate happens to be. If the government missing out on tax revenue through granting a deduction is equivalent to the government 'paying' the charity money, then leaving people with any post-tax income at all is equivalent to the government 'paying' people to have money (which they can privately spend as they please), because setting a lower taxrate than it could be is practically equivalent to granting a deduction with regards to tax revenue and private direction of funds.
At the very lest, it's absolutely unclear why getting a deduction for a donation is being treated differently to taxes not being say 33% higher than they happen to be at that place and time. If it's all the government's money, then any less tax being collected than otherwise could be means private individuals get to direct money towards what they choose instead of the government directly as a result of the government's tax rates.
If you say that it's different because tax rates are based on democratic electoral politics, well great, because the tax rate (or even what the government spends their money on generally) is no more 'democratic' then than the tax policy of allowing a deduction for charitable deductions!
Scott seems to have accurately represented Reich's view. Reich does *not* say that the undemocratic problem of charity would disappear in the absence of tax-exemption. He writes the opposite:
> Even if we eliminated all tax subsidies, we’d still be left with big philanthropy as an exercise of power. So it would still deserve our scrutiny. Sometimes the exercise of that power should be resisted...What is the framework by which we can distinguish between philanthropic power that is welcome and that which is to be resisted? The answer is found in the goals or ideals of a flourishing democratic society...
And it's not even like Scott should have attacked a steelman of Reich's position, rather than his actual position. Reich's actual position - that any individual decision that has an effect on others should be subject to majoritarian whims - is extreme, but at least consistent.
The defense that charity should only be limited in the case of tax breaks that nominally initially designate a chunk of income as "taxable" before "relinquishing" a portion of it on the basis charitable use, is not robust since it depends on this particular tax structure. If, for example, there were no income tax, (and instead just other taxes like consumption taxes, etc.) then the income would have never been nominally designated for the government, so that charitable contribution wouldn't be a relinquishment by the government, but I don't think that those attempting to steelman the argument would be okay with that.
Similarly, the same steelman argument against tax deductions that take money that would *otherwise* go to the government, would argue against any tax decrease, since that reallocates money that would *otherwise* go to the government. It also argues against not raising the tax rate to 100%, since *otherwise* the government would have money withheld that it could use in a majoritatian way.
The common denominator of these issues with the steelman, is that the steelman depends on the particular existing tax structure to define a default under which the government is entitled to money. But actually following the reasoning should lead to a 100% tax rate.
This, ultimately, is Reich's stance, in attitude if not in policy. That *all* actions that affect others, which includes spending any dollar, should be under the aegis of the government determined via majoritarianism, not in the purview of the individual.
This is the consistent version of the argument that Scott appropriately critiques.
I suppose one solution would be to remove tax breaks for charitable donations, but I expect that would be too unpopular to gain the public support required to pass it in a democracy. If you think otherwise, you're welcome to try to get the policy passed!
I'd be okay with eliminating deductions for charitable donations, but also it's not the individuals who use these deductions who write the tax code. A democratically elected government decides that this tax deduction should exist.
Charitable donation is no more undemocratic than buying a house with a mortgage, or contributing to an HSA, or many other activities that the government has chosen to subsidize. After all, I bought a house because it was in accordance with my own priorities, not because there was a democratic vote concluding I should buy a house.
Do you recognize any distinction at all between paying somebody money and not taking money from them?
a) It's not the government's money
b) Tax preferred status was determined by a democratic process. Therefor it is de facto "democratic"
I think you've labored harder than necessary to get to what seems a straightforward definition of orthogonal axes: totalitarian vs. liberal is about *how much* the government gets to decide about people's lives, and democracy is about *how* the government makes the decisions it is allowed to make.
Israel is currently giving a good lesson regarding your footnote 2; the proponents of the legislation to weaken the judiciary argue (accurately) that they are just making the country more democratic, finessing the fact that too much democracy is bad (tyranny of the majority, Madison's Senate as a "necessary fence" against "fickleness and passion", etc.)
The way you are using the term, I also don't think accountability should be limited to the case of a person who is vested with specific powers *by other people*. Parents are very accountable to their children before the children are capable of vesting anything. And to a certain extent people are accountable to other people generally. Not about everything, but in the sense that they are *not* free to do whatever they want without concern for the consequences to others.
Although, some use accountability more narrowly. The better term here could be *responsibility*, while accountability can focus specifically on a responsibility to *explain the reason for your actions". While I think people have some level of responsibility to other people, I don't think they have anywhere near as much accountability. As long as you aren't hurting anyone, you don't have to explain yourself. https://culture.io/resources/responsibility-vs-accountability/
I found the recent judicial reform proposals in Israel amusing for precisely that reason: it was hilarious watching people argue that the elected legislature gaining power over unelected judges was "undemocratic."
Or even just look at Trump - him, the elected leader, trying to get unelected bureaucrats to do what he wants was a sign of his lack of 'respect for democracy'.
Yeah yeah, demo = majority and cracy = rule, so democracy = let the 52% decide the 48% henceforth have no rights and pay all the taxes. As part of the two million liberals give or take terrified for their futures and children's futures here, I deeply resent your semantic pedantry and your finding our horror "hilarious".
The only reason anyone ever argues their vision is "more democratic" is that democracy has delivered prosperity and good outcomes. But whose democracy has done this? What positive results can we ascribe to your "democracy" where the majority elected officials get to enact any policy with impunity? None. It has not been tried here. It has been tried however in Turkey and Hungary. Maybe you see these regimes as role models; we do not.
The Israeli education system has, in fact, taken pains to raise students' awareness of these tensions. Generations of students here were raised on textbooks that plainly state the principle that democracy is a rule by majority, but it is not just that. It _can't_ be; that way lies madness. So first of all our wider interpretation of "democracy" is not coming out of nowhere, and second of all it is the only interpretation that doesn't inevitably converge into the Putin model where the majority has democratically elected to outlaw all criticism of the majority elected government. A democracy with checks and balances on majority rule is the only sane democracy, and the only democracy that has actually done the work to earn people's appreciation and goodwill that have made the word "democracy" so popular.
So, yes. the elected legislature gaining power over unelected judges is undemocratic. Specifically, their earning the power to tell unelected judges "we're going to profile people based on racial and religious criterions to decide who gets the draft and who doesn't, and there's nothing anymore you can do", or "we're going to re-appoint the finance minister who had to leave this exact same position a few years ago due to a bribery conviction, and there's nothing anymore you can do" -- that's undemocratic! If your personal dictionary takes offense to this, I would rather toss in the bin your personal dictionary than the actual system that has worked for us so decently all these years.
It sounds like YOU really dislike (representative) democracy, and for all the right reasons, having correctly seen it for what it is and what it entails, but have also decided to simultaneously believe "democracy is always good," so now you have to twist yourself into knots (sorry, it's still hilarious) trying to reconcile these.
You COULD admit that what you really want is a judicial aristocracy, but I don't expect you to do that.
But what if the judicial aristocracy started doing things he didn't like? How would he remove it, there are no elections.
At the end of the day people want what they want. They aren't too keen on how it gets done. They tend to want whatever institution is favorable to them to have more power.
They are slightly afraid of what other people might do to them and so the idea of being able to "vote the bums out" has some appeal, but that depends a good amount on whether they trust their fellow citizens enough to do it.
Well, at that point, he'd argue that the judicial aristocracy has ceased to be "democratic" (in this context, meaning "good for nebulous reasons") and support a military coup to make it so.
It's not a judicial aristocracy, because it isn't hereditary. Democratic processes always come into play in the appointment of new judges. So the judiciary is subject to democratic influence, but on a longer time scale. Which is a great firewall against the majority's tendency to get riled up and overreact to the issue of the day, or abuse the minority.
You're right, it would be a Judicial Oligarchy.
>Democratic processes always come into play in the appointment of new Judges
Not in Israel: If the judges don't want a nominee they can veto their appointment and there is no force in Israel which can force them to accept one, especially considering the leaders of the Israeli security orgs have all already pledged their loyalty to the court over the elected government..
To be more precise, if the judges *unanimously* do not want a judge, they can veto it. But this is also true of the legislature and various other combinations of stakeholders. So yes, selection requires supermajority, not just majority. But this still seems generally democratic to me. It is far from having the court completely in charge of its own composition.
From Wikipedia: Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President of Israel, from names submitted by the Judicial Selection Committee, which is composed of nine members: three Supreme Court Judges, two cabinet ministers,, two Knesset members, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. Appointing Supreme Court Judges requires a majority of 7 of the 9 committee members, or two less than the number present at the meeting.
If elected officials appointing judges is bad, why should they have control over security policy? Financial policy? Anything at all? Wouldn't it be better to leave it all to the "experts" just like you want in judicial policy?
You (rightfully) don't actually believe in democracy, you just want to use the word because it makes your favoured undemocratic regime look more legitimate to modern eyes. In this way you are similar to the propogandists of North Korea, Syria or Iran.
What if the experts don't produce the outcomes he likes. Then he will be back to wanting democracy.
That is like saying: "What if the Catholic doesn't like what the Pope says?" (yes I am aware of Sedevacantists)
His beliefs are based on what "the experts" say so it is impossible for him to disagree with them
I think elected officials appointing judges is better than the alternative of unelected officials appointing them (or of having them be directly elected: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Courts-Pursuing-Judicial-Independence/dp/0674055489 ). What's important is that once appointed the judges can't easily be *removed* by elected officials. Which means that they have limited ability to shape the court during their time in office, which makes it a good moderating influence against rapid surges in people's preferences.
Your points are well taken but you begin with an incorrect definition of democracy, saying "demo" refers to majority. It doesn't. The derivation is from the Greek for people, and this is what the word means in the US tradition -- rule by we the people. Everyone who's thought deeply about this subject differentiates between democracy and unrestricted majority rule. (What historically has been known as tyranny of the majority) Not that elections and majority rule isn't a part of democracy, but it has quite a few parts which aren't necessarily consistent and often may be inconsistent. For example:
--Selecting representatives by popular vote, most often majority but sometimes a plurality is enough.
--Limitations on power of government, especially the ability of people to organize outside of government control (without this, any "democracy" is just a sham) and access to information about what the government is doing and ability to discuss it. (Like, no secret police or at least, very limited)
--A defined set of personal rights that are protected by the government
--A large degree of inclusiveness in political processes of people governed
--Rule of law as opposed to rule by fiat, with laws being equally applicable to everyone in the same circumstances
I don't claim this list is all inclusive but I think all of these are pretty basic aspects of what a democracy means.
From this perspective, calling some particular government a "democracy" or not a democracy isn't usually very helpful. What is helpful is talking about what ways systems are democratic or undemocratic, recognizing there are compromises and tradeoffs inherent in the very essence of the thing (democracy) itself. In this sense Scott is entirely correct in pointing out that the majority rules aspect of democracy can easily turn into totalitarianism, what I at least would call tyranny of the majority. But that's not the only conflict inherent in the nature of what we call democracy. Individual rights conflict with majority rule. Limited government conflicts with the ability of the people to make rules or policies through representatives.
One thing that is not generally agreed is the role of popular initiatives to decide issues rather than representative government. Does a democracy require initiatives? We call systems where issues are decided by representative government "democracies" even if there's no initiative process. And I think we'd call a system where all issues were decided by initiatives "chaos" or possibly "idiocy" as the results wouldn't make much sense, though, this is just my own opinion as there are no such systems to speak of. So to me, at least, it's not actually about majorities deciding stuff issue by issue.
So, my final point is, a couple of other essential elements of democracy, given that it's government by people, are compromise and moderation, as the "people" are a group of, well, people, and democracy is a system for people to pursue life, liberty and happiness together, or something like that.
"What positive results can we ascribe to your "democracy" where the majority elected officials get to enact any policy with impunity? None. It has not been tried here."
The Israeli Supreme Court only asserted the power to strike down legislation in the 1990s.
Agreed, there have to be non-democratic mechanisms in place to protect democracy. Case in point in the US: many state legislatures, elected by democratic means, have gerrymandered their electoral districts to keep themselves in power even after losing the support of the majority.
I think the argument about unelected officials, from this side of the Atlantic, is that American elected officials like judges and district attorneys and sheriffs are then beholden to the local party; they need the party support to run, if they make decisions that are not in line with the party they will be punished electorally, they have to make compromises to get elected and that hinders their ability to administer the law impartially.
I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other: are the elected legislature gaining power going to ensure justice is administered without bias, or are they going to lean on the judiciary to make decisions that the particular political bloc want, even if that is not in the public interest?
Jed Shugerman has an interesting book about the (generally negative) consequences of choosing judges by election instead of appointment. https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Courts-Pursuing-Judicial-Independence/dp/0674055489
You also might be interested in Martin Shapiro's book that argues, at least in our federal system, courts with appointed judges are more democratic than our elected congress or president. https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Speech-Supreme-Judicial-Classics/dp/1452854866
I think the right interpretation of what they're saying is that the judiciary is the guardian of the democratic process. If those in power neuter the judiciary then they can e.g. change the election rules to no longer be democratic.
"Accountable" in this context means you have to act in line with the will of those you're accountable to or be punished (often by losing your power). Children can't generally punish or replace their parents, so parents aren't accountable to their children in this sense. Parents are free to ignore their child's will. Parents are responsible for their children and have certain obligations towards them.
There's some sort of relationship between these ideas and what NIMBY-esque community meetings with a lot of veto points on new building.
How?
“Democracy” became the word used by nearly everyone in the mass media for statements and debates about not only governance, but as shorthand for the end goals of governance. That was a significant error that has not been corrected, yet.
Democracy is not an unalloyed set of virtues, it’s a grouping of methods for governance. And it still appears to be the least bad method(s) for citizens of a state to choose as their method of governance.
The issue with using “Democracy” as an alias for the _actual_ end goals is: inarticulate debate that creates layers of confusion.
Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness. These are shorthand terms for some rather solid end goals. Human flourishing is another.
Personally I tend to consider Liberty as the most important secular end goal, at least at the level of evaluating among different buckets of end goals.
Its not an error. When they say “democracy” they are not talking about the end goals of Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness. Anybody intellectually honest knows that “democracy” is code for Absolute Power of the Regime
"The issue with using “Democracy” as an alias for the _actual_ end goals is: inarticulate debate that creates layers of confusion."
Hit the nail 100% percent on the head. It's pretty much code for "status quo that happens to benefit us". That's not a bug, that's a feature.
I'd say `democracy' is basically a way to decide who gets to run the country without a civil war. As in `we could have a war to decide this, but a whole lot of us would die and the side with the most supporters would probably win, so lets just do a headcount and let the side with most supporters run the show, and skip the death and destruction bit.' That's valuable in itself, but it doesn't have to come bundled with liberalism (and liberalism doesn't have to come bundled with democracy).
Meanwhile, the idea behind liberalism is `if two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner, it sure sucks to be the sheep. And you never know when political coalitions might shift leaving you the sheep, so lets put in some guardrails so that not being in the majority doesn't suck too hard.' This is also valuable. But to some extent it is in tension with democracy (e.g. unelected judges overruling elected legislatures).
Exactly. This is literally what politics is. Politics is factions vying for power over a state. The typical means this is done is by warfare. The US had a wonderful idea in erecting a Constitution that would allow us to vie for power through non-violent means. I much prefer democracy to constant civil war. However to forget that it is warfare by other means blinds us to the nature of politics. Furthermore, non-violent democracy is only tenable within a certain Overton Window, outside of which conflict is inevitable between irreconcilable factions.
>Meanwhile, the idea behind liberalism is `if two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner, it sure sucks to be the sheep. And you never know when political coalitions might shift leaving you the sheep, so lets put in some guardrails so that not being in the majority doesn't suck too hard.'
Not true at all. People described as liberal have no problem imposing their beliefs on political minorities. This is an extremely naive reading of 'liberalism'. It's much more true to say liberalism is just a different set of in-groups and out-grounds, and the same old support for helping the in-group and hurting the out-group.
This has lately become so obvious that the new (well, new-er) weasel word is "classical liberal."
He’s referring to the political-science definition of “liberal,”not the broad sense of “left-wing.”
Yeah, I mean liberalism as in classical liberalism or liberal democracy, not liberals as in a particular faction of the American left.
Every democracy is democratic in its own way. You're on sturdier ground with your point about accountability meaning that someone has given you some special or specific authority or power.
"So either you should avoid defining “democratic” this way, or you should stop assuming that more democratic = better."
I'd go with the second. The only way to make sure more democratic is always better is to define it as such. And then something like "a monarchy is not democratic" becomes an opinion instead of a statement about how that form of government works.
There are a lot of people who value democracy, but democracy isn't the only thing they value. So a clearer statement would be "more democratic = better, all else being equal." It's just difficult to talk this way because people (especially me) don't enjoy contemplating how they're compromising on their most cherished values.
Unfortunately, that seems to be inevitable. So long as you value two different things, there may be situations where you can't maximize both simultaneously and you'll have to choose one or the other.
A useful tool I have found in reading certain works on this topic: where it says "democracy", read "American". Or "America-friendly" if that scans.
Both words have the same problem with "being used as a synonym for 好 by Americans", and I find that making a substitution that relies on that tends to clarify what is actually being said.
The idea of Americans greeting each other by asking, "You democratic?" or calling food "democratic to eat" is certainly amusing.
True Socialist Brotherhood is when we democratically sit down together to democratically eat a democratic meal of food that is democratic to eat, Democratic Brother Democrat Erusian!
Alex, you have got to stop using ideograms or else provide a translation to ensure that you sy what you mean, because looking that one up gets me:
"democracy being used as a synomym for 'good; very well; nice; OK; alright' by Americans" which I don't think is what you intended.
I'm *assuming* you mean "good" but hey, maybe you mean "okay"? I don't know, because you haven't bothered your arse to clarify what you mean and are just showing off, with the bonus of good old-fashioned Orientalism at work! (Ah, the Exotic Orient with its exotic concepts that we Westerners don't have the subtlety to create ourselves).
Just like the Secret Age-Old Art of Ecky Thump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5UZgELC57g
The problem is that there isn't a short way to describe what I mean; or if there is I don't know the word for it. It is not the same as ṛta; and a word-vector description will descend too far in the weeds to be helpful. The vague sense intended is that when people say "democracy", they mean "positive coded, with any other ambiguity lost in translation and misunderstanding".
As far as "you can get away with Latin like *persona non grata* in English, but you can't get away with kanji" ... yes.
When you're using words/concepts from another language, in the writing system of that language, for an audience that will majority be unfamiliar with that language and will then have to look online for unsatisfactory translations, you are not making your meaning clear or expressing the point you want to make.
You'd do as much by just sticking in a black box instead of the logograph: "Both words have the same problem with "being used as a synonym for ⬛ by Americans", and I find that making a substitution that relies on that tends to clarify what is actually being said" is just as clear - or as opaque - as what you posted.
The problem is that via usage, one translation of "hao" is "hello, hi, good day" and do you really want to express "when people say 'democracy', they mean 'hi'"?
It would be like writing in Chinese for a Chinese audience, using "persona non grata" untranslated, and leaving some at least of your baffled readers to go online, see an idiomatic translation, and wonder why the hell you are talking about door-to-door salesmen?
I will agree, I know exactly what that character means and I had to do a double-take.
I think the terminology we have simply doesn't cover all the variables, probably because it's advantageous to many proselytizers and would-be leaders if the terminology is thoroughly confused.
Let's set up 2 axes here:
- to what extent are people to be told what to do or not do, punished for disobeying, etc.?
- WHO decides what people will be required to do or not do?
When we're talking about democracy, we're really talking about who, not "how much".
Democracy - The People (TM) decide.
Theocracy - The Deity, decides.
Aristocracy, Oligarchy etc. - A limited group of especially powerful people decide
Dictatorship, (Absolute) Monarchy etc - The Leader, King etc. decides.
In most cases, authority gets delegated, with varying amounts of principle/agent issues. E.g. I've never seen a Theocracy where the deity expresses Its wishes independent of Its clergy.
Some democracies have traditions of leaving individuals free to decide many things for themselves. But it's still a "democracy" if we all vote on what each of us get to eat for breakfast, or even if our elected representatives delegate that decision to a civil service bureaucracy.
It's kind of similar with accountability, except more pluralistic. Assuming the government (TM) doesn't hold a monopoly on decisions, there will be things that have results not mediated by the government. If I post offensive drivel on substack, and literally no one wants to read it, I'm held accountable by having neither an audience nor a blogging income.
The language we need here would involve something like "limited government". Government can be limited because tight control is impractical. (Slow communications, lack of reliable surveillance). They can be limited because of checks and balances. (Sure, the King is absolute - until enough nobles get mad enough to rebel, or someone assassinates him) They can be limited because everyone agrees that certain things should be matters of individual conscience. (I fear this tends to be unstable.)
Except "government" isn't the right term. If 99% of the population agrees that certain behaviour justifies murder, all the government needs to do is keep out of the way. You need not have an official theocracy for apostasy to be violently hazardous to one's health.
At any rate, I think your discussion above would be more useful if you started with the meanings you intended, not the thoroughly overloaded terminology.
"E.g. I've never seen a Theocracy where the deity expresses Its wishes independent of Its clergy."
There's the very tangled example of Pope Vigilius, a 6th century pontiff who was intriguing against his predecessor (who ended up exiled and starved to death) and intriguing with the Byzantine Empress Theodora who offered to make him pope in return for his support on Monophysitism (the heresy that there is only one nature in Christ, and that is the divine one):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Vigilius
"Empress Theodora sought to win him as a confederate to revenge the deposition of the Monophysite Patriarch Anthimus I of Constantinople by Agapetus and also to gain aid for her efforts in behalf of the Monophysites. Vigilius is said to have agreed to the plans of the intriguing empress who promised him the Holy See and 700 pounds of gold."
Vigilius ascended to the papacy through tricky and indeed irregular means, but once pope, he abandoned the Monophysites. Since the Emperor himself wanted certain concessions made in declaring writings heretical, in order to try and impose unity on the Eastern Church and bring the Western Church into conformity with it, Vigilius' stance is all the more remarkable and is considered an example of the Holy Spirit preserving the Church from the teaching of heresy. Vigilius is not an edifying character but he could have paid off his imperial patrons by imposing the changes they wanted, yet he did not. The end result was that he was pretty much arrested, marched off to Constantinople, and it took eight years before he was able to get back to Rome and then he died on the way:
"Vigilius refused to acknowledge the imperial edict and was called to Constantinople by Justinian, in order to settle the matter there with a synod. According to the Liber pontificalis on 20 November, while the pope was celebrating the feast of St. Cecilia in the Church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, and before the service was fully ended, he was ordered by the imperial official Anthimus to start at once on the journey to Constantinople. The pope was taken immediately to a ship that waited in the Tiber, in order to be carried to the eastern capital, while a part of the populace cursed the pope and threw stones at the ship.
After his transfer to Constantinople, Vigilius wrote to his captors: "Do with me what you wish. This is the just punishment for what I have done." and "You may keep me in captivity, but the blessed Apostle Peter will never be your captive."
...Vigilius sought to persuade the emperor to send aid to the inhabitants of Rome and Italy who were so hard pressed by the Goths. Justinian's chief interest, however, was in the matter of the Three Chapters, and as Vigilius was not ready to make concessions of this point and wavered frequently in his measures, he had much to suffer. ...Thus at the end of a sorrowful residence of eight years at Constantinople the pope was able, after coming to an understanding with the emperor, to start on his return to Rome in the spring of 555. While on the journey he died at Syracuse. His body was brought to Rome and buried in the Basilica of Sylvester over the Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria."
So this is one case where the deity was not made to express wishes of the clergy, when said wishes were bought and paid for 🤷♀️
It still came to us via Vigilius. Maybe the Holy Spirit inspired him, but no one can know that for sure. Maybe Vigilius sincerely believed he was doing God's will, at some cost to himself. But God didn't show up, visible to anyone but Vigilius, and express His wishes.
People with power somewhat regularly do dumb things, which end badly for them. (Elon Musk is a current poster child for this.) Maybe Vigilius was as self-destructive as Musk, with no deity involved.
Vigilius could have made the Deity say what he wanted the Deity to say, but he didn't. By not doing so, he pissed off the Empress who thought she had bought and paid for him, and displeased the Emperor who had the power to have him flung on a ship and brought from Rome to Constantinople.
That's the point of difference between what the original claim was, and what happened in this case.
> You could, in theory, define “democratic” this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism ... I first noticed this during a discussion with Rob Reich ...
It's worth noting that a great many classical political philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle on, noted that democracy has a tendency to devolve into tyranny due precisely to this dynamic, and that a non-democratic regime can therefore be more free for its citizens. This sounds paradoxical only if one conflates participation in government with freedom in non-government affairs.
The framers of the US Constitution were deeply distrustful of both undemocratic governments and democratic governments, and including both democratic and undemocratic elements in the structure of the U.S. government. America is the world's oldest democracy, but it's special sauce was a norm for respect for the individual (including a Bill of Rights) that set many areas of life aside from the purview of government.
I wonder if they had anticipated the following quote. I also read third-hand that Adams thought the govt. should be torn down every 10 years and rebuilt which sounds good and may have been possible in the 1700s.
"The Founders [of the U.S.A.] wished to achieve a national majority concerning the fundamental rights and then prevent that majority from using its power to overturn those fundamental rights. In twentieth-century social science, however, the common good disappears and along with it the negative view of minorities. The very idea of majority—now understood to be selfish interest—is done away with in order to protect the minorities.
…
This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought.”
--Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 1987
So who was the British prime minister when independence was declared?
"The title of oldest continuously functioning democracy is more hotly contested. Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man all have local parliaments founded in the ninth and 10th centuries, when Vikings pillaged, plundered and set up legislative bodies on the sea-islands of far northern Europe. Iceland’s national parliament, the Althing, dates back to A.D. 930, but it spent centuries under Norwegian and Danish rule. Man and the Faroes, meanwhile, remain dependencies of the United Kingdom and Denmark, respectively.
The United States is among the oldest modern democracies, but it is only the oldest if the criteria are refined to disqualify claimants ranging from Switzerland to San Marino."
When I say "accountable," I'm talking about having recourse if someone abuses my trust. But are there people besides public officials that we reasonably repose some trust in?
In the Puritan colonies in 1700s New England, people expected they could trust other people to share their religion, and reinforce their shared social norms of obedience to God. That shared norm gets you a very different "accountability": the accountability of the scarlet letter.
Today, nobody reasonable thinks they're entitled to that kind of deep social norm matching with their neighbors. But that's a statement about our society, not a permanent statement about morality.
In today's society, "accountability" is mostly about elected officials, because they're the ones who have trust they might just get away with abusing. Other societies have done things differently.
"Today, nobody reasonable thinks they're entitled to that kind of deep social norm matching with their neighbors."
Circa 2020-2021 woke Twitter (or X, I suppose? 🤔) begs to differ.
You missed the 'reasonable' part.
I'm amused to note that your set of representative non-freedoms you attribute to a totalitarian system were pretty much SOP for some or most classes in the Middle Ages.
"a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom."
- Essentially everyone was required to be Catholic, and participate in Catholic rituals regularly.
- Noble heiresses married whoever the king told them to; this was generally a good source of royal/government income.
- Peasants' children were peasants, period. Nobles' heirs were assigned the job of a fighter, officer, courtier, landlord etc. (The latter could perhaps resign their title, and might get away with it if their alternate career was something deemed worthwhile, like religion. But religious careers were supposed to be assigned to younger sons. )
I don't think we can call any medieval country totalitarian - there wasn't anywhere near enough of a central government.
So I find the choice of examples here amusing.
I think "the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism" is literally true, in the sense that democracy is two wolves and a sheep making dinner plans – it just sounds off because the connotations of democracy are halfway between "government by majority vote" and "government that aggregates preferences in an ideal utility-maximizing way". "Not regulating x is undemocratic" connotes "I think regulating x would raise total utility, so not to do it would be a coordination failure"; "regulating x is totalitarian" connotes "I think regulating x would lower total utility, so to do it would be tyranny of the majority."
Democracy is a process. I happen to think it's a good one with positive moral foundations, but democracy isn't self-justifying and can be used immorally. That's why you still need a larger moral framework within which democracy operates.
Exactly. Consitutional Democratic Republic. Remove any one of those pillars and a free nation you’ll no longer have.
An excellent point. Democracy can only be as good as (a majority of) its participating population. If one votes for something for selfish reasons instead of it being the best thing for the population (in their opinion) then it breaks down.
Two wolves prefer lamb for dinner, but it's also a short-sighted vote, since they soon won't be able to make that choice.
>I think the word “democratic” is most useful when applied to the structure of a government; a government where the military can overrule elected officials is less democratic than one where they can’t. I would avoid using it for discussions of the size of government
This seems a little awkward and inconsistent with common usage. Such usage would imply that voters going to the polls to choose leaders is "democratic," while the same voters also voting on ballot measures is not "democratic."
Furthermore, it seems to clash with the preferred definition of "accountable." That definition states that:
>people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them (elected officials accountable to voters...
The "accountability" of elected officials to voters seems to refer to the former performing the will of the latter, although this is left undefined.
So if "democracy" includes the selection of the officials, and "accountability" demands that the officials follow the will of the people, and majoritarianism is the net will of the people, then why does this definition of "democracy" not demand majoritarianism, which was the problem it was trying to solve?
I think Yarvin’s model of the three types of political power—monarchic, oligarchic, and democratic—captures things well. None is inherently good. Democracy unchecked by the other two is just mobocracy. The democratic urge has a natural ally against oligarchs in the monarchic power or executive authority. In this way we see that overstrong central authority is one of the main failure modes of populism (the other being anarchy).
While he argues this is what happened in the US, I don’t think he would say it is inevitable. A democracy can instead become a centralized dictatorship (see fascist Italy and Germany; a dictator is even better at organizing than competing oligarchs). A democracy can also stay “purely democratic” and collapse into anarchy. The US’ pathway is not inevitable, but the colonies’ distaste for kings in part made it most likely.
It’s more common on small scales, like a club where people stop caring about votes and just do what they want. Given sufficient time and interest someone will emerge to become oligarchs or monarchs; it’s not a stable condition but it is a real one.
Yarvin isn’t *persona non grata* here like he is at .. a lot of other places. But i must point out that model was invented by Aristotle over two thousand years ago.
Thanks for the correction!
I'm not convinced at how the terminology is wielded here. If a democratically-elected government enacts reams and reams of legislation detailing every aspect of life and, in every case, it legislates that the people can freely choose what to do, is that totalitarian? In fact, it is already the case that "nobody [can] express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology without government permission," since the government is sovereign and each time it DOESN'T revoke permission for something, its inaction implicitly grants it.
By reducing complex political systems to competing ideologies, you end up actually equating democracy and totalitarianism.
Democracy and Totalitarianism while not equal are extremely correlated. In James Burnham’s ‘Macchiavellians’ he argues that more democracy leads to more totalitarianism. He terms it Bonapartism and argued its the inevitable endstate of claiming the people’s will to be the source of sovereign authority. I very much agree with this assessment, I think we’ve witnessed the drift in several examples in our lifetime, and I thank God we dont live in a more democratic society. The US Constitution’s strict limits on democracy are the reason a free world exists today.
" In fact, it is already the case that "nobody [can] express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology without government permission," since the government is sovereign and each time it DOESN'T revoke permission for something, its inaction implicitly grants it."
I disagree: that point of view is already totalitarian in nature, believing that the State (like an omnipotent God) has rightful power over everything and only chooses not to exercise it in some cases. This is in contrast to the American system where the consitution specifically denies that the State has the power to do certain things (Article 1, Section 9) and specifically states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It's a clear delineation: the State has the power to do these things, but not all things.
The idea that the State has the de jure right to decide what religion I should practice, or what ideas I should express, or how I can spend my money, or whether I can own property at all, is a totalitarian idea. If the State has the right to control all those things, but chooses not to, then it is a totalitarian state still.
The constitution is not imposed and enforced outside the ordinary means of governance; the constitution is an instrument of the government. Though it is done via the constitution, the state voluntarily relinquishes its power over certain activities and, in so doing, recognizes that it is its power to wield. Sure, the mechanism of the constitution is used to make it difficult in practice for some specific government to usurp political norms but it is not impossible in principle.
The way you frame it suggests that it is totalitarian simply for a state to be self-determining in every aspect. You make out as if it's the case that the state does not have the right to decide what religion you should practice but where does your freedom of religious practice come from? You can say the constitution and then I would again point to the first part of this reply.
The Constitution is imposed and enforced outside of the United States government, because it is the instrument by which the United States government was created. That's what it does, and what it's for. It precedes and creates the state, not the other way around.
And yes, the state does not have the right to decide what religion I should practice. A state that claimed that right would be immoral, as it would violate my human rights. Our human rights are not created by the Constitution, only recognized by it. This is explicit in the text of the Constitution itself: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In other words, just because it's not written in the Constitution doesn't mean it isn't a human right that you as a citizen have. How could that be the case if the Constitution is the source of those rights? The authors never intended the constitution to be where our rights come from, only where some of our rights as humans are enumerated.
Or, as the Declaration of Independence put it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
The State has the powers that the people choose to grant it: it does not have unlimited powers, that the people then choose to not use.
Democracy and accountability become tyrannical due to the flagging character of its leaders and citizens. Maybe lured by wealth and advantage over other states to the neglect of socially responsible traditions(4). Maybe a more primitive nation is forced to modernize(5). As community decreases govt. authority must increase to maintain order. Then, of course, we have the corruptive nature of power.
In short, for a society to be healthy you need:
1. A minimum number of people with the temperament, skill and position in society to be leaders to be examples of character(1)(2).
2. A culture backed by traditions, etc. that encourages character to be present, understood and valued by the masses(3).
Footnotes:
[Disclaimer: I am not assigning blame with the following but supporting relevant generalities.]
(1) “But in any society, leaders who aren’t willing to make sacrifices aren’t leaders, they’re opportunists, and opportunists rarely have the common good in mind. They’re easy to spot, though: opportunists lie reflexively, blame others for failures, and are unapologetic cowards.”
― Sebastian Junger, Freedom
(2) "The history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arises when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favour of money and political power. And contemporary history is the hideous record of what happens when political bosses, businessmen or class-conscious proletarians assume the Brahman’s function of formulating a philosophy of life; when usurers dictate policy and debate the issues of war and peace; and when the warrior’s caste duty is imposed on all and sundry, regardless of psycho-physical make-up and vocation.”
--Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945
(3) "Kant argued that men are equal in dignity because of their capacity for moral choice. It is the business of society to provide the conditions for such choice and esteem for those who achieve it. ”
--Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 1987
(4) "The renovation of the Ka’ba transformed the fortunes of Mecca. It also eroded the tribal ethic. Tribal life had never been egalitarian. An individual’s moral worth was, as in most ancient societies, defined by his or her social status. Nevertheless, the ethos of the collective good ensured that the tribe took care of every member. Mecca’s growing affluence acted as an acid to this philosophy. The riches from the Ka’ba accrued to only a few families and helped create an ever more stratified society. The weak, the infirm and the dispossessed were denied not simply access to the new-found wealth but to the protection that came from the old tribal ideals too.”
--Kenan Malik, The Quest for a Moral Compass, 2014
(5) "The problem of adjustment is acute for both the coloniser and the colonised. For the former imperial powers, they have to get used to their new circumstances and formulate a new role for themselves in a changed world. For the new countries, they must rid themselves of the illusion that now they can go back to an idyllic past when there was a satisfying society – sometimes of natural socialism – which the white man came and destroyed. Romanticism, however natural, is fatal to progress. What has happened is irreversible, and the choice before each of us is what to make of the future, not how to re-live the past.”
--Lee Kuan Yew, The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew, 2013
I think this is overly charitable. The people saying Substack authors aren't accountable aren't using a bad definition of accountability, they're just stupid and/or lying. Anybody selling a product on a free market is necessarily accountable -- if their product is bad enough, their customers will stop buying it and they'll lose money. Claims of "lack of accountability" only make sense in a context where someone has the ability to coerce people into using their services.
"they're just stupid and/or lying"
Not at all. They are just maliciously obfuscating the meaning of the word to avoid saying the dreaded words "censorship" and/or "coercion". Never assume stupidity when willful malice is as good an explanation IMHO.
That's the "lying" part, I would say.
Also, I'm kind of confused by the claim that Martin Luther King wasn't held accountable to anyone for his decisions of how to protest, given that he was repeatedly arrested for protesting in ways that the government didn't approve of.
“people saying Substack authors aren't accountable aren't using a bad definition of accountability… if their product is bad enough, their customers will stop buying it”
I think that's the ethically right course of action but it may not go the way you expect (Acts 5:27). A convincing story of universal Truths to a receptive audience can change the course of history. So can telling a desperate crowd what they want to hear – per every charismatic despot of history.
“Democracy” is a really good example of the Hegelian dialectic in action. It’s not actually coherently definable; you can’t express everything the word does without contradicting yourself. You can make up your own, coherent, definition, but it will miss some facet of the real word.
So, for instance, democracy means both “people have rights” and “people have to obey a majority of their neighbors”. We call it “undemocratic” for El Salvador to lock up people without due process, and we also recognize the power by which that’s being done as “democratic”, ie, derived from a fair election.
The cheap way to talk about it is to say that democracy is “in tension” between conflicting ideals. The interesting analysis is to dig into the archaeology and figure out what we’re trying to achieve by synthesizing these multiple contradictory ideas into one thing.
Here's another example!
https://delauro.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/delauro.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/final-3.8.23-delauro-schakowsky-mcgovern-letter-to-biden-administration-on-two-state-solution-compressed.pdf
Israel is considering a change that would give the Knesset, which is an elected representative body, more power over the Supreme Court, which is unelected. Some US politicians call this "damaging the nation's democratic institutions". If the Knesset, a democratically elected body, were to overturn Supreme Court decisions, that would "jeopardize Israeli democracy".
They're saying this because "democracy" also means "a system of checks and balances", and they're concerned that this will give one party too much power. And that's sensible! They're talking about democracy in a totally normal way, that people understand just fine. But you just can't encompass this way of talking if you don't accept incoherencies and contradictory concepts co-existing in a word.
I'm still trying to grok the continental/Hegel worldview and found your posts in the disability thread super interesting.
But I feel like the point you're making is pretty at home in a more Analytic tradition as well - isn't it just Wittgenstein family resemblance/word games stuff? We can't actually create necessary and sufficient conditions for most words that we use, and pretending that we can and then trying to use those conditions to reach new conclusions is just playing word games. Scott has a lot of posts on this theme as well.
What is the Hegelian dialectic brining to the table here?
(To make my tone explicit: this is meant to be curious and inquiring, not combative.)
Thanks! That's a really smart observation. I think you're right that there's not a huge difference between Wittgenstein's word games idea and Hegel's dialectic idea. They're both ways of getting away from scholastic syllogistic thought, and accepting the sometimes-contradictory nature of the concepts we deal with in real life. I think the difference is in focus, or context.
Wittgenstein is like another Kant. He's building out a rigorous system that reaches its limits and then stops. And some of the details of the system he builds out are super useful for addressing lots of different problems, including the problem of how to deal with words like democracy. He also introduces a skepticism about how far philosophy can go, which is also very Kantian.
I think a Continental philosopher (like Deleuze, who I think called Wittgenstein an "assassin of philosophy") would see Wittgenstein's work as almost a proof that Continental philosophy is needed. Wittgenstein's skepticism and rigor in the quest to be right have eroded away all of philosophy's usefulness. He's left sort of futilely trying to police language.
There are two problems with that: It renders philosophy useless as a human activity; and most likely, he's only running into problems because he's uncritically accepting certain ancient binaries which were never real in the first place (maybe like the "meaningful / un-meaningful" binary, in Wittgenstein's case.) I can imagine Deleuze holding up Wittgenstein as exactly the kind of dry root-branch thinking he wants to replace with creative rhizomatic thinking.
But I can also imagine Deleuze really appreciating Wittgenstein's idea that a word is best understood as a game between people, that it doesn't have some nature other than how it's used. That feels Continental, to me.
So, in sum, Wittgenstein found a clever way to solve some old problems and speak more truly about democracy; Hegel moved philosophy toward a mindset where the thing that you do when you use philosophy (Continental philosophy, at least) to discuss democracy doesn't really have much to do with truth. That's exemplified, in my mind, by Deleuze, who's openly contemptuous of anybody who would try to evaluate his books as "true" or "false".
> I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that, or serves as a bludgeon that would-be dictators can use against an independent judiciary.
Yes; this sort of hypocrisy is quite common in political discourse. But I'll even go further and say that democracy is highly overrated as a system for solving problems, and saying that the correct to "X isn't democratic" is very often, "good." David Friedman gives the classic explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpn645huKUg
Sarah discusses this here as "unilateralism" and "multilateralism": https://srconstantin.github.io/2019/09/16/against-multilateralism.html
You can have a totalitarian democracy, sure, that doesn't make it not democratic. This is a silly way of understanding concepts- you've begun by assuming that democracy is intrinsically good or not totalitarian, which is not at all true. That's why we distinguish between democracy and liberalism. Conflating democracy and freedom is just bad political philosophy, and really an elementary error. Political theorists have made this distinction all the way since Aristotle, and the concept that democracy must be good or not totalitarian is an entirely modern imagination that has sprung out of popular political rhetoric.
>and the concept that democracy must be good or not totalitarian is an entirely modern imagination that has sprung out of popular political rhetoric.
Yes, weird that Scott is arguing against the common, modern use of the term and not some supposed "true" definition of the word back in ancient Greece.
You misunderstand, I’m not claiming that the only true definition of democracy is that of Aristotle; I am using the technical definition ‘rule according to the will of the people’ (a definition that would include both Aristotle’s concept of demokratia and politeia). This is a procedural question, and can be either good or bad in practice; it is neither in the abstract
Quite right. Democracy is tempered by liberalism. Democracy is good only up to the point that it (unreasonably?) infringes on the rights of the individual.
Contra the other person who responded below, you can’t really understand political philosophy at all if you don’t have that distinction down
I think it is a mistake to use MLK as an example of "good" change. Having racist opinions is an important personal freedom. Many racist opinions are correct, for instance; and can be important for self-protection and the protection of one's community.
Whites at the time had very real fears that when blacks moved into their community, they would be so violent as to force whites to move; I read a book about someone's experience in Baltimore when blacks were displacing whites; it simply wasn't safe for whites after a certain point. Whites were forced to flee to the suburbs, selling their homes at a loss, in order to not have their kids beaten up or themselves mugged or raped; and yet according to the dominant narrative, it is whites who are to blame for all of this, not blacks. Michelle Obama: "y'all were running away from us." Yes; for good reasons. Normally if a group moving in forces another group out, we consider the group who is forced to move out as the victim. Why does this not apply when it's blacks moving in and whites moving out? Clearly the powers that be have something against whites and favor blacks.
But MLK didn't stop people from having those views or even expressing them. MLK's views were positively conservative by today's standards and mostly amounted to preventing discrimination in commercial activity, voting rights and in not having the government choose to support racist institutions.
> preventing discrimination in commercial activity
I.e. supporting the abolition of people's freedom of association. Don't pretend like wasn't an act of supressing people's freedoms. If you want it banned, fine - but don't call it 'commerical activity' to act like it's not restricting anyone's rights.
And MLK explicitly supported affirmative action, which literally means discriminatory hiring policies. You can say that's a good thing, but it's literally racial discrimination by institutions.
I don't see why that is much more of an imposition on rights than other commercial regulations.
Personally, I think those regulations served a practical purpose but now exist primarily to express a moral attitude and in an ideal world maybe be repealed (once the boycott will land the other way they aren't so needed) but I feel the same way about regulations that require hairdressers to have such and such accreditation or the like. Or laws which require a car to be sold via a dealership. I mean that every bit as much prevents me from choosing who I contract with (if I want a car I can't choose not to contract with car dealers) as anti-discriminaton law does. So as far as the cost/benefit of rights vs benefits go they are far from the top of my list of laws that should go.
I agree that there is an area where this intersects with free speech concerns eg what if you want to run the KKK dinner and I agree that when expressive content is at issue extra care should be taken. But those are facts about implementation that reflect nothing about MLK or his concerns. I doubt that kind of thing was even on his radar.
More broadly, I think it's important to be cognisant of the system we actually have and recognize that even if in some ideal world a rule wouldn't exist it doesn't necessarily follow that it's better if it doesn't exist in this world.
For instance, in an ideal world we wouldn't have rules that punish people for smoking weed. But it would be a worse world if we just repealed the bans on marijuana for white people (even if for some dumb historical reason the law had been written seperately to impose the same punishment on whites and non-whites).
I'd argue the same is true for restrictions on commercial transactions. Even if in an ideal world you'd live in a libertarian paradise in a world where we tolerate all sorts of regulation for all sorts of reasons singling out racial discrimination law as the place we won't accept any regulation of commercial transactions (and they are hardly the only law demanding certain offers be available if you offer something to someone else) would be worse.
It's very difficult to speak about this subject in a vacuum. There would be zero need for any sort of CRA-type legislation if not for the relatively unique historical-sociological circumstances of the US.
Jim Crow was an exploit of the manner in which the US system preserved individual rights, essentially a mass conspiracy to disenfranchise and restrict the freedom of a group of citizens.
The restriction of freedom of association in the Civil Rights Act was necessary to prevent a second Civil War.
The problem is how broad-scoped it was (cf. Hanania's analysis, which is essentially entirely correct). If it had come in the form of a Constitutional amendment stating something along the lines of "Congress shall have the ability to make laws prohibiting the restriction of free movement and commerce based on race," it would have never metastasized into what it is now.
Even better, potentially, although I think it would need very specific wording to make this non-nebulous enough to avoid the pitfalls of the current CRA: "Congress shall have the power to intervene against mass conspiracies to deprive people of their customary individual rights based on race."
In fact, that's the motte of the pro-CRA argument: "what, you want to go back to Whites Only signs?"
This isn't just a problem with definitions. It's a deep seated problem with our desire to signal our moral views that's being exacerbated by the internet.
If you really want to say X is bad then the most effective way to signal that is to demand some kind of consequence or punishment for doing X. If you say, X is bad but people should be allowed to do X there will be suspicion that you don't really think X is that bad. I fear the internet is making this pressure worse.
We created a number of technologies to limit the harm from this tendency. For instance, legal norms/rules like the 4th amendment which make it harder for the government to punish behavior without a victim to complain. Sure, we say it's about privacy and that's a nice bonus but the focus on government violation (as opposed to people secretly reading your papers) and use in prosecution suggest a substantial interest is limiting the ability of the government to punish some kinds of behavior.
As we move into a more digital interconnected world I fear we'll need new technologies to manage this issue. Principles that we regard as sacred which can be appealed to allowing expression of disapproval to come apart from calls for consequences.
On a related note, I’ve made this point when discussing communism.
Marx, and to a lesser extent most socialists, want “the market” or “the economy” to be subject to “democratic control.”
This sounds great. We replace this large, unaccountable system of “the market” with a system accountable to the government, and through the government, the people.
But in practice, this means deeply interfering in the individual choices of nearly every single person in society. This is the petty tyranny of the homeowner’s association telling you what color you can paint your house--but for every single good and service in society.
I’m not sure I agree, however, that we should simply declare that democracy and accountability are inconsistent with totalitarianism. There is a reason that philosophical liberalism insists on protecting individual agency, and that many classical liberals supported democracy primarily as a means to that end.
John Stuart Mill’s famous treatise “On Liberty” is often interpreted as attacking the supposed morality of the majority or of the democratic will, and insisting on the freedom of the individual in the face of these.
"This is the petty tyranny of the homeowner’s association telling you what color you can paint your house--but for every single good and service in society."
And yet there are humans who want to live under a homeowners' association. Can't say I understand it myself, but they do.
You might be able to salvage "hold criminals accountable for their actions" by noting that many crimes consist of unlawfully doing things that normally only people vested with extraordinary authority are allowed to do. Criminals take people's money without their consent, kill people, and imprison people. Government officials also do all those things, but (at least theoretically, in healthy societies) they are supposed to only do those things in lawfully delineated circumstances that promote the general welfare.
And Scott agrees with Alexis De Tocqueville. Which is good company to be in.
I suspect you were a bit uncharitable to Rob Reich (pun intended). I don't even have to read Reich to know that he must have been referring to tax breaks, which at least to some extent mean that effectively people are able to redirect a fraction of their taxes to causes of their choice.
Reich explicitly states that the problem is *not* tax breaks: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/bad-definitions-of-democracy-and/comment/21488578.
It seems like a mistake to compare people’s freedom “to express an idea, release a new product, or invent a new technology” to people’s freedom to do about risky AI tech as they want.
In the former case, the impacts are smaller. Less people have a stake in it, or have a lesser stake. The acts of “expressing an idea”, “releasing a new product” or “inventing a new technology” are unlikely to hurt society and the larger populace. In situations with potential societal harm like AGI, or high stake situation like wealth redistribution, the public should have a say in it.
So I would define democracy as: a more democratic society gives people more say in things they have high stakes in. Your freedom to express your opinion has high stake to you, low stake to others. So a truly democratic society should give you the freedom to express most opinions. It matters less what others want because they have low stake in the situation.
Same idea for accountability. People are accountable to others if their action harms others. People are accountable to society if society has a high stake in what those people do (eg criminals). People cannot be held accountable for expressing non-hateful opinions because society has low stake in what a person says. But the person himself has high stake in what he can say.
Accountability should not correlate with “vested power”. If my action screws over a number of people immensely, then I am accountable for my action. We could understand this as “I entered a legal contract to not violate laws in exchange for access to public services”. I was “vested with the privilege to access public services instead of having to live in the wild”, so legal accountability automatically exist. Social accountability can be understood as “I entered an implicit social contract to be nice to others, in exchange for others being nice to me.” I was vested with the privilege of being treated nicely in society. If I violate my terms of the contract bigly, and do something bad others also have a stake in, there’s social accountability.
People should be accountable for their actions whether or not it harms others. It's the escape from accountability that is the problem, like blaming "external factors" when a bad policy fails, and the politicians get re-elected anyway.
Recent trend? "Make 1984 fiction again" T-shirts have been selling like hotcakes for years.
This issue is also very well known in academic political theory, and is one of the first things discussed within the 'democracy' section of introductory textbooks. The general strategy to resolve it is to decompose a concept into multiple dimensions - for 'democracy', Swift (2019, pp. 291-305) breaks it down into 4 such dimensions: 'directness or indirectness of the decision', 'accountability of the representatives', 'equality (of opportunity) for influence' and 'scope of authority of democratic will'.
With this kind of conceptual analysis, when someone says that the government having control over more areas of people's lives is more 'democratic', they are saying that it is so on the 'scope of authority of democratic will' dimension. You can also start an evaluation of the value of democracy with much greater granularity (no longer is it simply a question of the amount of 'democracy' that is optimal, but instead the degree of each dimension of democracy that is optimal).
An implication is that it is theoretically possible to have a totalitarian democracy (which is a situation where there is large scope of democratic decision, while the government also scores highly on the other dimensions)., thus agreeing with Scott's analysis. And we also have a theoretical reason to believe that this is unstable and will likely collapse into a totalitarian dictatorship because the large scope of democratic decision allows the people to vote themselves out of democracy (because the scope of decision-making is so large that it includes modification of the democratic procedures themselves and the suppression of rights that are essential to maintaining the other dimensions of democracy).
References:
1. Swift, A. (2019). Political philosophy: a beginners' guide for students and politicians. John Wiley & Sons.
SA discovers liberal democracy
Democracy when my side wins: Liberal democracy
Democracy when my side loses: Populism
Eh, this isn't Scott's first brush with the topic. I suspect the post represents a specific reaction to a recent experience.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/05/acc-entry-are-islam-and-liberal-democracy-compatible/
A modern liberal democracy is a carefully tuned and integrated package consisting of democratic procedures for electing officials (note that those officials usually have no legal obligation to follow their promises, but since there is always next election they have a strong incentive to act in the interest of people. Also, those who are outside suffrage are invisible to polititians, except as possibly a nuisance, hence suffrage as wide as possible is important), independent judiciary, constitutions, constitutional courts and international treaties which, not only set the rules of the game, but also guarantee basic rights of people regardless of vagaries of current elections and prevents tyrrany of the majority, free press and freedom of expression which both controls other power centers, but also ensures efficient information flow (there is a reason why many dictatorships are divorced from reality), freedom of activities of citizens unless there is a very good reason to ban some activities, which ensures effective allocation of resources, elasticity and exploration of possibilities necessary to meet future challenges, and it is also a basic human right. Take even one piece of this package and the whole system quickly degenerates into its opposite. While I agree that liberalism and democracy on one hand and totalitarianism and authoritarianism (in the strict sense) are correlated but not the same, but there is a very good reason for this correlation, and why our current ideal system is called "liberal democracy". Some people are under illusion that we can have democracy without liberalism/liberty or liberty/liberalism/libertarianism without democracy. They are sadly (and sometimes dangerously) mistaken.
I agree with the article but I want to point out that if your AI has the chance to literally kill everyone, then that has reached the point where you should probably involve a democratic process and shouldn't just go ahead unilaterally. (This of course doesn't apply to weaker AI systems.)
The practice of winning political victories by subtly and silently redefining words goes all the way back to Plato's /Politeia/ (always deliberately mistranslated as "Republic"), which begins with Socrates saying they're going to figure out what "justice" means, and ends with Socrates discovering that it means that everybody does what exactly and only what Plato tells them to, or gets killed.
I'm still bitter that when people today say "liberals", they mean authoritarian leftists.
Roussea famously said that we need to be forced to be free.
This sounds like a contradiction, but arguably not if you take a broad definition of freedom.
Freedom can mean the freedom of an individual to make their own choices, or for someone to vote and participate in a collective decision about what kind of society to live in.
Notably, the two trade off against each other. For example, if each individual has the freedom to decide how much noise to make, then the individual has lost the ability to participate in a collective decision of how noisy they want the community to be at night.
This isn’t a comment in favour of Rousseau, just explaining the way I’d explain a Rousseau-like position which might not match his actual view.
Your overall point is why the term "liberal democracy" was invented. Democracy without protections for individual rights, without a "right to privacy" (in the sense of a right to make decisions about one's private life without government interference), is as oppressive as dictatorship. Neither Orbán's "illiberal democracy" nor the CCP's "socialist democracy" achieves the goals that motivate pro-democracy activists, and they should be reminded of this regularly.
That said, even in the liberal tradition, your right to swing your fist ends at another person's face. Thoughts and speech are traditionally considered your own business, but when you take actions in the physical world with physical consequences for other people, those people get some input.
And this gets really muddy in the context of computer code, where something that looks like speech can be converted to physical actions without the involvement of another agent. It also gets murky in the context of creative AI, where speech can be generated by something that isn't a free-speech-rights-holding agent.
I tend to think that regulating this stuff is likely to be worse than not regulating it, at least at this stage. But it's not immediately obviously illiberal for democratic institutions to consider the questions: *are* these technologies infringing on individual rights? *Do* they pose unacceptable physical risks to the general public? *Is* a LLM's speech an expression of its owner's free speech rights?
As a practical matter, I think making an argument for how these questions should be answered is likely to be more valuable than arguing that they shouldn't be asked.
hey there, love your article, but i think there are a few things that need to be addressed.
1: Address counterarguments: you should address counterarguments to strengthen your points. By presenting opposing viewpoints and explaining why they may not align with your position, the article can come across as more balanced and open to discussion.
2: Streamline the writing: The article can be viewed a little to dense to follow at times due to its length and intricate ideas. Consider breaking up the longer paragraphs into smaller, more digestible chunks. anyways keep up writing the good stuff. cheers
> I think the word “democratic” is most useful when applied to the structure of a government
I disagree, somewhat. If a private army decides to set off a war with a neighbouring country without asking anyone, that seems undemocratic. Similarly if anyone uses force to just overpower the government in making a decision. It's not surprising that the term gets extended to government-y decisions (the kind that people would _expect_ (and want) to be made by the government exclusively) even if not literally made by the government itself.
On AI... Yeah, it also seems right. Under the assumption that unchecked AI progress results in the end of democracy and the transfer of all power to someone's alien creation, I think "undemocratic" fits.
Possible typo: "The only society that doesn’t leave space for the person trying to make the world better as they understand out outside of the existing governmental process is - again - totalitarianism."
This sentence is weird to me. Usually people say "as they understand it". I think the "out" is supposed to be an "it".
This post reminds me of the discussion of democracy in
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-sadly-porn
Personally, I find TLP has grown on me over time
I believe that you will run into difficulties if you try to strip the 'punishment' sense out of accountability. I think that a sizeable number of people want the ability to blame, punish, make suffer, scapegoat and humiliate. 'Indulging my inner sadism' and 'enjoying a little cruelty' is the whole point. It just sounds so much better when called 'I want accountability'.
This comes very much to the fore when you are trying to reform an institution or organisation. Clearly, if some powerful people are 'a law unto themselves' and can violate laws and norms without reprisal, you have a setup that is ripe for the abuse of such power. But as a practical matter, abuses of power often are the result of a cover-up. And often the things being covered up are, at the bottom, tiny mistakes and peccadillos. It turns out that people involved are very frightened of what will happen to them if the accountability police get a hold of them, because they in no way trust that they will treated fairly by those that come to judge them. Instead they may feature as scapegoat of the week. Seems that their power, too, is seen as 'unaccountable'.
Well said! Yes, a lot of accountability police look very much like sadistic control freaks.
The money to religion analogy doesn't work, because they're not the same. Money is a state invention, with the entire system of property fully regulated and enforced by the state. There is no conceivable pristine natural state of it where every individual can just do their own thing and not bother anyone else. (Arguably, in practice, there's no such state possible for religions either, ever since universalizing ones arose, managed to impose themselves as a social requirement and made it their point to slaughter the infidels. But at least it's easy to imagine. And, now that some states are protecting it, it may not be natural anymore, but still, kinda works.)
The conceivable natural state for property relations? Commons everywhere. This, of course, far from high-modernist government controlling everything, but even further from antisocial individuals appropriating earth's resources and government assisting them and preventing you from stopping them, with violence. Even if the "appropriating resources and preventing you from stopping them, with violence" applies to government all the same, "at least they're democratically accountable" is in fact a valid argument (even if the accountability is, in practice, very poor, because in the alternative it's being compared to, it's non-existent).
Of course the problem is, all of this is motte and bailey. Democratic motte is [humans need to cooperate and peacefully resolve their differences], the bailey is [give all power to bureaucrats]. Accountability motte is [we need to update our trust in humans based on bad things/decisions they've made], the bailey is [panopticon where you cannot stray from the line even for an inch, and you have no say in setting the rules].
We need those mottes, really really need them. But of course, it's not surprising they're not convincing when they're so often used as a cover for the baileys. But bear in mind, there are many terms like this. One of them? "Freedom". We really need that one too. But with a bailey of [assholes with coercion-backed rights to resources can do anything they want and you're unable to stop them], of course people will eventually go "nah, fuck your freedom, we need to make those more democratically accountable".
I don't know the way out, but (everyone) please be aware of the problem. As the saying goes, "Knowing is half the battle."
> Money is a state invention
> The conceivable natural state for property relations? Commons everywhere.
This is a common belief among certain left wing ideologies. But it's not true. Archeologists and anthropologists both agree concepts of property and media of exchange are human universals present in all times and places. The idea of primitive communism or a time before money or property is little more than a myth. And that's without getting into non-state currencies or how the commons themselves were a state creation.
Now, this doesn't mean we've always had industrial capitalism or the joint stock corporation either. But the idea that the "natural" state is a universal commons without money is just objectively wrong.
>Archeologists and anthropologists both agree [your claims here]
I mean, all the info we have about times past is just conjectures. My beliefs against yours, you disagree, can't be helped, whatever. But this, this is just ostensibly, patently false.
Unless, of course, you disregard all the people who do not in fact agree as left-wing ideologues and not real archaeologists and anthropologists, in which case I'm tempted to interpret your "both" as "all two of them".
Also, first, of course there was a time before money. Like, does this simple statement even require explanation? Second, "primitive communism" (which has nothing to do with commons conceptually, so if that was in response to what I said, just nope) is just an idea that societies operating near subsistence level are naturally less economically unequal (which, conceptually self-evident, there's nothing to get rich on), and living near subsistence level is widely accepted as the norm for most pre-civilized history. (I guess it's kind of ironic that the most famous contemporary criticism of the notion comes from David Graeber, otherwise best known for a book describing how much of what was anachronistically interpreted as evidence for money is better conceived as purely means of accounting - you can take a guess which of these two theses was controversial.)
> I mean, all the info we have about times past is just conjectures. My beliefs against yours, you disagree, can't be helped, whatever. But this, this is just ostensibly, patently false.
Finding cowry shells as currency means my 'speculation' has more evidence than yours. Or do you imagine there was a central mint pumping those out ten thousand years ago? You said money is a creation of the state. What state was there then?
> Also, first, of course there was a time before money. Like, does this simple statement even require explanation?
I said media of exchange. Currency, as in coins, was invented at some point (and in fact we know when and where). But money predates currency. Graeber's thesis, while again popular with the left, has been savaged by academics and he notably could not get such a thing through any form of review.
Look, you clearly have beliefs that you think are obvious and don't require any kind of justification or investigation. I understand there's a three to four century long tradition of inventing a state of nature and then using that to justify modern political preferences. But there is a knowable reality here and if your beliefs really proceed from what you think happened five thousand years ago, rather than just being an ex post facto justification of what you already wanted, you should look into it. Beyond Graeber and into people who actually care about the archeology or ethnographic accounts.
The first attested use of shells as currency is imperial China.
But again, the past is fundamentally unknowable. I can't prove some ancient necklace wasn't actually money, so I don't expect I can stop you from believing it was. But the present is verifiable. You can check what actual anthropologists are saying. (Like "of course real societies don't work like markets, the economist founding myth of barter is bullshit, that's basic stuff we always knew". To which the economists reply "hey, we know that too, you're accusing us of arguing from spherical cows, those are illustrations, not factual claims about past societies".) And verifiable means substantiable. If you make an outrageous claim like how a distinguished scholar, a specialist in the field, "could not get [something] through any form of review", you should really have some kind of proof ready.
But, whatever, that was at least an implicit concession that you do in fact, to quote myself, "disregard all the people who do not (...) agree" [with your worldview] "as (...) not real archaeologists and anthropologists". Why, on the other hand, would you refuse to concede you've written precisely what you've written, just a day earlier? "The idea of primitive communism or a time before money or property is little more than a myth." Your words, verbatim quote. There is a possibility to say "okay, that was a bad phrasing, let me try again", it would not detract from your point and made this conversation much more constructive. At this point, I'm not even sure if there's a point to referencing anything you said in my response. But okay, let's try. "Money predates currency" - okay, for some definitions of currency that aren't just synonymous with money, and if you believe in primordial barter. But what it, purely logically, definitionally, cannot predate, is commodities. And that alone is putting us very far into the history of humankind, very close to the present, far closer than your "human universal" claim - again, verbatim quote - would allow.
> The first attested use of shells as currency is imperial China.
This is simply not true. Again, I ask you actually look into the relevant research.
> You can check what actual anthropologists are saying.
In fact I do. And you are rather misrepresenting it.
> If you make an outrageous claim like how a distinguished scholar, a specialist in the field, "could not get [something] through any form of review", you should really have some kind of proof ready.
Outrageous? You could disprove me by showing how, for example, A History of Debt passed peer review. Of course it didn't because it couldn't. You're clearly using claims and terms to avoid actually engaging with the relevant claims.
> Your words, verbatim quote.
I admit I don't understand how this serves as a 'gotcha'. If you would clarify what you mean I'd respond. As I said from the first, humans can exist under diverse economic systems. But I don't know which one you're referring to here.
> Your words, verbatim quote. There is a possibility to say "okay, that was a bad phrasing, let me try again", it would not detract from your point and made this conversation much more constructive.
What bad phrasing do you think I've had? Again, please be specific because I don't understand.
> But what it, purely logically, definitionally, cannot predate, is commodities.
There's the Marxism. The reification of labor into commodities as some form of evil. Unfortunately Marxism, like Locke and Hobbes and the like, invented a prehistoric past that just coincidentally agreed with their current theories. But no, it is invented rather than any reality.
>You could disprove me by showing how, for example, A History of Debt passed peer review. Of course it didn't because it couldn't.
No such thing exists, to my knowledge, so of course it couldn't. But if you're referring to "Debt: The First 5000 Years", then certainly, I would assume it did not pass peer review, because books, as a rule, are not being peer reviewed. (Do I really need to be explaining this?)
And look, you were not making some off-hand nitpick here. You were constructing an elaborate argument around it being "notable" that Graeber "could not get such a thing through any form of review", for which reason you advised me to disregard it and read "people who actually care". (With at least a strong implication that those are people with actual expertise and credentials, the kind of people who rejected his theses when he tried to run them through peer review.)
And again, he was a life-long academic, something that's impossible without having a long history of peer reviewed publications under your belt, and specifically, an anthropologist long specializing in the very subject he was writing about. It would indeed be very notable if he "could not" (as in, attempted and failed) get something through a review. But - that's not what happened, is it?
> Your words, verbatim quote.
>I admit I don't understand how this serves as a 'gotcha'.
You: [a statement] is a myth.
Me: Nah, [a statement, direct quote] is obviously true.
You [right after quoting me]: I said [something else entirely].
Again, you might have said "I meant [something else entirely]" and avoided this conversation. But now that I think about it, your reply makes more sense if I assume you did not even register the point I was making and responded to something else entirely. But those were two very simple, very direct sentences, is it too much to ask for them to be interpreted exactly as written?
>There's the Marxism.
What? The word "commodity", a basic economic term? You can replace it with "fungible goods" if you want. But do you actually want to, or do you want to find an excuse, any excuse, to just not register what I'm trying to explain to you?
It is worth considering the origins of the state when thinking about the term 'democracy'. Why do people allow themselves to be subject to the control of a government? Because they trade some of their freedom for the security of the state, this is the social contract. Using the freedom/security trade-off to reflect on the example of someone's freedom to give to any charity, there isn't a justification to take away this person's freedom to donate and give it to an elected government. I think there's a difference between justification of state control over different parts of people's lives and what counts as making decisions more democratic.
I think the word “democratic” is most useful in the sense of “liberal democracy”, where individuals have rights that way heavier than the votes of the majority. I’ve often heard “democracy” without protections for the rights of minorities and individuals as a “dictatorship of the majority”. It’s the role of the courts to make sure the other branches don’t overstep.
Liberal democracy is what we typically mean when we want to defend democracy, and so I think any definition of democracy that doesn’t include these is suspect. But not everyone sees/understands/agrees. I completely agree that there are bad definitions of democracy out there, and I think people who claim something is undemocratic often need to be challenged on their understanding of democracy – as you do here. Rule of the people and rule of law must mean more than just the will of the majority.
I don’t think MLK is the best example for any of this. He, and much of the rest of the civil rights movement, engaged in civil disobedience, deliberately breaking supposedly “democratically” enacted laws (spoiler: they weren’t), and getting jail time and the wrong side of billy clubs for it. They were most definitely being held accountable. Civil disobedience is not a democratic way of doing things, but may, paradoxically be necessary to enact or uphold a democracy. (Hence, the liberties.)
I am very much a proponent of liberal democracy (at least until AI throws up a better alternative), but I acknowledge that there are problems and difficult discussions to be had in a liberal democracy too. Like how much does a country owe its citizens and vice versa? (Which goes to tax law, entitlements, military service, etc.)
I think I have lamented the world’s lack of a truly anarcho-libertarian alternative in this comment section before. Just so that people could vote with their feet, if they think the compromises reached inside the liberal democracy are too expensive for them, or are too skewed towards dictatorship of the majority. (I.e. if they think taxes are too high; and/or they don’t want to contribute to x, y, z spending; etc.)
I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not saying liberal democracy means everyone has the right to do everything. That’s more like the libertarian society I say does not exist. I’m talking about rights like human rights, roughly along the lines of the liberties outlined in the bill of rights and other places: Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc. The whole life, liberty and pursuits of happiness thing. When specific liberties come into conflict with each other, as they often do, someone (like the courts) need to adjudicate.
When it comes adjudicating civil liberties in the courts in the 50s and 60s, it was the rights of people to be treated as equals that weighed heavier, not necessarily the opinions of the majority.
Well, no. You’re not exactly wrong, but not exactly right either. The degree to which the constitution passed by a democratically elected legislature is debatable, even though the ambitions were in order. Some state and federal laws were, but those had to comply with the constitution. And some amendments to the constitution were. And you’re right in spirit, in that the laws and the constitution had to be interpreted by democratically elected people and appointees and employees of the government... But that only goes to show that the system is complicated.
No one is claiming the conflicts that come up aren’t often difficult to resolve, but the basic philosophy behind liberal democracy (small l, small d) is easy enough to grasp. And it’s not as new a concept as you make it out to be.
I am not sure whether you’re strawmanning me on purpose or are not trying very hard to understand, but I’m not going to engage further. If you want to understand my position, there are centuries of good writing and thinking on the subject, but start by reading the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia pages on liberalism and liberal democracy.
> I think the word “accountable” should be reserved for people who are being vested with specific powers being held accountable to the people who are vesting them (elected officials accountable to voters, managers accountable to owners, charities accountable to donors, etc)
I think this has some disadvantages in the case of governments.
Like let's take businesses as an example. It seems to me that similarly to how you feel one can talk about charities being accountable to donors, one could also reasonably talk about businesses being accountable to customers, for things like product safety and product quality.
But often, the government is offering some sort of service. In those cases, wouldn't there be some logic in talking about the government being accountable to those it offers the service to?
What you are missing in your point that totalitarianism can be construed as "democratic" (which is indeed being made by Russian and Chinese pundits) is the dimension of "time". One of the painful lessons of German history is that a democracy where elected leaders are free to do anything that a majority want them to do at that time, quickly ceases to be a democracy. "The will of the people" needs to be constrained by checks and balances - a constitution, a strong judiciary - otherwise people soon find out that their will is no longer relevant when they find they've voted a psychopath into office. (See also "the paradox of tolerance".)
So yes, it's always a balancing act, not just between majorities and minorities at any given time, but also between people and their future selves, and pure democracy is neither good nor stable. That needs to be stated explicitly, so we can discuss where to draw the boundaries, instead of engaging in buzzword tennis.
My read is that this is a pretty weak strawmaning.
In the first 3 paragraphs, you argue that one view of democracy can be that the 50.1% rule without limit on the 49.9%, conflating it with majoritarianism. I'd be very surprised if more than a small minority of people advocating for more democracy view it this way. I believe that most of the people would agree that more democracy would also mean more protection of the right of the minorities such as their freedom of opinion, speech and religion, as well as the protection of their ability to influence the political life of the state (via allowing them to vote for example). Hitler got elected democratically, the enabling act of 1933 giving his government full power was voted by the vast majority of the assembly, but it doesn't mean in any way that his power was democratic at all.
You argue that one can decide to not define democracy like that. But in the rest of your piece you completely conflate the concept of democracy with majoritarianism. Moreover you assume a democracy can be totalitarian, while the later has been defined as an opposite of the later. It seems then cheap to try to assimilate the two concepts to support your claim, I believe it'd be much saner for the sake of the discussion to create a different word for the concept you name here as 'totalitarianism'.
Some people view charity as undemocratic not because individuals are able to choose which charities gets the funding instead of the government, but because the wealth distribution is so skewed that only a handful of people are able to decide where this money goes. One can argue whether this unequal distribution of wealth is a terrible thing or not, but the critic of current's charity system (and it's funding through tax subsidies) is not focused on disabling individuals choosing where the money should go. I think Piketty for example advocates having a specific part of the budget of the state allowed to charity, and having each people choose their preference to which to redirect this money. This money would then be distributed uniformly according to each citizen's preference, not according to the preference of the richest nor according to the preference of the 50.1%. I fail to see the totalitarian aspect of it.
It’s sort of like “racist” or “sexist” but in reverse, where even if something is objectively correct, and is also sexist, you have to explain why it’s “not really sexist” because it’s true. Like “saying that women have smaller brains than men isn’t sexist, it’s a scientifically proven fact.” No - it is both sexist and a scientifically proven fact. Those are not mutually exclusive. But because “sexist” is just a euphemism for “something that is wrong and bad,” you have to play word games to avoid those connotations.
No. Democracy is defined very vaguely as the exercise of the power by the people, in opposition to autocracy where the power is exercised by a single individual, or plutocracy where the power is exercised by the most wealthy individuals.
When speaking of democracy nowadays in Europe, everyone takes the liberal democracy definition of it. I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case in the US, but my insight here is lacking
It's this vagueness that Scott uses here to strawman any person advocating for more democracy as a proponent of majoritarianism, whereas it's not what most of them advocate at all.
I'm honestly too unfamiliar with this specific example (as well as vastly annoyed by the Common Law system) to reply to it now.
I already gave an example of that related to philanthropy in my original comment.
Edit: Sorry I read your reply to quickly. In that case it would indeed give more power to the majority and remove some for the minority, but without disempowering it entirely at all. Assuming that the minority had too much power (somehow plutocratic), it can be viewed as an attempt to balance more fairly the original distribution of power, without falling into the dictatorship of the majority (which I thought is what we all agreed is the issue here) as wealthy individuals would still be able to indirectly give money to the charities they want, just a lesser amount of it.
Agreed. Virtually anything "taken to the extreme" is a bad thing, so that smelled a lot like strawmanning. Just because I disagree with the current form and expansion of charity does not mean I'm totalitarian. To imply so serves no useful purpose, but if that line of reasoning is useful after all, then I might as well say that advocating personal freedom, *taken to the extreme*, would lead to absolute libertarianism. That would not be much better than totalitarianism.
Also see:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-philanthropy/
To become a billionaire philantropist, you have to become a billionaire first, and you can hardly become one without violating democratic principles first: exploiting your workers and/or the tax laws. Most billionaires, when they're not outright criminal, steal a little from everyone and, among others, then want to get all the social credit through their philantropy. It does not take a totalitarian to find that objectionable.
>you can hardly become one without violating democratic principles first: exploiting your workers and/or the tax laws. Most billionaires, when they're not outright criminal, steal a little from everyone
Spend less time on reddit
“Exploiting” in the morally-neutral, purely descriptive Marxian sense? Or in the more common “this is unfair and bad” sense? A common trick of socialists is to try to smuggle in the connotations of the second sense while only providing evidence for the first sense.
I mean in the Amazon warehouse worker sense.
You mean offering positions which people can freely take or leave at any time?
The use of "democracy" to sum up something that needs to be defended by stopping the people's elected representatives doing things, seems confusing. See Orban, Israel's Supreme Court, Trump, etc. I can see you might want to oppose the decisions of the people's representatives, but why use the word democracy to represent what you want, when the people having power is literally what you oppose? And why is the phrase liberal democracy used so often, when individual freedom is also something which you seem to think has, in general, gone too far?
I think democracy has, to a lot of people, come to mean rule in the name of the people by an educated elite, plus rule that aims not to hurt people, plus rule that involves people having a lot of power to tax their neighbours, and stop them doing what they want. A mixture of a state religion, niceness, conservativism, and socialism. Which is entirely defensible.
I suppose this mixture of beliefs might have come to be associated with the word democracy because the places that are ruled in this way tend to be democracies. Basically, because this mixture of beliefs is how people want to be ruled. Or at least it is for as long as things are getting better for most people, most of the time - as they have been in the West for most of the past 75 years. If this stops being the case, then you get the odd phenomenon of the majority of the elite rallying against democracy in the name of democracy.
“Hold criminals accountable to their victims”. To victimize someone is to be vested with unusual power.
Famous brazillian artist/journalist Milôr Fernandes has a relevant quote:
"Democracy is when I'm the boss of you, dictatorship is when you are the boss of me."
For AI regulation we conveniently have a bunch of network-effect/exclusivity-contracts using companies — larger than some state governments — using their dominant positions to fight for complete control over a new sector. Except maybe Facebook/Meta who seem to count the (actually good) outcome of «let it split into a thousand small pieces» either as acceptable or as extremely implausible. OpenAI seems to be closely enough tied to Microsoft.
Antitrust laws exist for that, and in general applying higher standards of behavoir to things that have become larger than many state governments turned out to be a reasonable idea.
MLK… once he started building a movement, he built a movement for a specific purpose and ran it for that purpose (antitrust laws are much stronger on the power-repurposing; if anything, it's the political party that run afoul of the intent of antitrust laws, a proportional system with narrower party platforms and explicit coalitions is indeed better)
Of course the actual quality of specific call to actions might not rise to mentioning antitrust law…
(It would be nice if Khan's FTC succeeded at least at reminding people that antitrust laws exist, and exist for a reason)
> I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
Its not democracy that holds criminals accountable, it's the rule of law.
Everyone donating to their favourite charity seems like the pinnacle of democracy to me - a distribution of goods according to the distribution of preferences in the population.
Only if ones ideas of democratic are very closely tied to the winner-takes-it-all-democracy they live in would they think that outcomes of every democratic process need to be uniform.
It's probably meaningful to make a distinction between a liberal democracy and a merely electoral one. It's quite democratic for 51% to oppress 49%, but this merely shows that it's only liberal democracy we should truly value (although this doesn't make the electoral one completely meaningless - after all, it's somewhat better if 51% oppress 49% than if 25% oppress 75%).
Add "everything else being equal" if you feel you have to, sure.
You might not care, but surely it's preferable to oppress few people rather than many?
Then why does the procedure (“Democracy”) matter at all, if the outcome is the only thing they really care about?
Democracy - at least of the liberal kind, but even illiberal democracy is probably better than autocracy - is a good way of getting a good outcome. That's the whole point.
'Liberal' and 'democracy' are literal synonyms in the west today. "illiberal democracy" in the traditional sense of the term is now labelled 'populism'.
"Politics is not about uniting people. It’s about dividing people. And getting your fifty-one per cent."
—Robert Stone
"Democracy" can also be analysed as a set of institutionalised insurance-arrangements. Both normatively and empirically.
The insurance-theory of democracy works at two levels: the level of elite competition for power, and the level of citizen-ruler relationships.
First, democracy insures competing would-be rulers against the risk that they will be violently suppressed or killed should they lose the battle for office. In exchange for being protected in this way (plus having the right to attempt to conquer office again four-five years from now), competing would-be rulers accept that they cannot do everything they want if they win the internal power struggle in the state. (European elites in particular often had to learn the hard way that being insured against oppression if you lose is worth the price of not being able to do everything you want, unrestrained, should you win.)
Second, democracies also insure ordinary citizens against the risk that they will be violently suppressed by whichever elite that rules the state. Secret ballots at regular intervals install the fear of losing power into the heart of rulers, reducing the probability that they will use their power to suppress ordinary citizens.
The insurance-theory of democracy may at the same time explain the existence of constitutions, the rule of law/Rechstaat and special legal protection of minorities, as these aspects of a political order serves as insurance against the risk of tyranny by the majority. Killing several empirical birds with the same analytical stone, so to speak - and resolving some of the tensions Scott and/or several commentators point out.
For example: You never know if you may end up in some identifiable minority yourself one day, which provides a majority with an insurance-motivation for accepting constitutional legal safeguards against suppressing present-day minorities.
When someone wins an election by campaigning on an issue and wins (especially if they win decisively) they will often claim they have a "mandate" from the people. Let's assume for a second that the issue really was salient to voters and they really had a reasonably formed opinion about it.
So say Ron DeSantis wins by 20 points and decides that he's going to pass universal school vouchers which was a big part of his campaign. He gets the legislature to vote overwhelmingly and then signs it.
Then the Florida Supreme Court comes along and says "no, public education is a fundamental human right and taking money out of the system like this violates that right. Also, some parents will use it to indoctrinate their children or become a public health menace." Or whatever. They strike the law down.
I think we would all consider that "undemocratic" and the members of the court that did that "unaccountable" if there was no way to remove them.
You can copy paste this onto literally any issue that you can think of. Maybe you prefer things to be undemocratic and unaccountable one some issues and not others, but you understand the principal.
Of course I could probably come up with some example where you would be sympathetic to the court. Maybe Adolf Hitler comes back from the grave, runs a successful political campaign and gets a lot of votes, and decides to do the things he did before. If the Supreme Court stopped him everyone would probably say they were doing their job. We would say that despite being an election he intended to end democracy, and despite the court not being accountable to the will of the people it's accountable to higher principles that are in the peoples best interest.
I just don't know if there is a way out of value judgements on all this stuff.
C.S.Lewis wrote on this subject in 'Screwtape proposes a toast'. From the point of view of a devil of course, so not to be taken without salt:
"Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.
Such was our counterattack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counterattack takes a different form.
Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.
You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.
The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you."
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks."
The Devil simply understands marketing, emotional manipulation, and how to justify the means for the ends. Some other things similar to "you're not against democracy, are you?" are:
- Think of the children!
- Healthcare is a basic human right.
- Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- We must [do/avoid] [something] at all costs!
Absolutely everything has advantages and disadvantages. One cannot give to a charity of any sort without reducing someone's personal wealth. One cannot eat without having a living thing killed. When one drinks water, one introduces impurities into it. Yet I would not argue against any of these things, since the advantages, in my (and most others) opinion outweigh the disadvantages.
This is all just the conventional wisdom, no? It's why the term "liberal democracy" exists?
I would say almost all mainstream parties in wealthy democracies are ideologically liberal democratic and would essentially agree with the principles Scott outlines in the post. On controversial policy questions different "liberal democratic" values are often in conflict and the broad principles don't compel one particular outcome.
>Most liberal democratic countries do not have free speech, freedom of association, etc.
What, at all? Im.pretty sure all have freedom of association in the political.sense, and only restrict it where it overlaps with private discriminatory behaviour.
I think liberalism has won so comprehensively in many of the democratic countries, that when most people say 'democracy' what they really mean is 'liberal democracy', and it can be good to highlight that these are different things sometimes.
Having said that, I think some form of democracy is desirable for any liberal state - after all, for legitimacies sake, people should have a stake in their government, and democracy (while imperfect and with it's own pathologies) is still a better check on the powerful than many other forms of government.
'Liberal' and 'democracy' are literal synonyms in the west today. "illiberal democracy" in the traditional sense of the term is now labelled 'populism'.
This doesn't seem true based on google Ngram viewer? "Illiberal democracy" is used now more than ever (liberal democracy also still widely used).
You get quandaries like this when you're trying too hard to preserve the taxonomy of your heuristics. It's laudable to strive toward that sort of perfection, of course. Democracy and accountability are just ideas; what you're searching for is a tidy encapsulation of all their good qualities - the ultimate steelman.
Like I said, that's an admirable pursuit, but most of the time we've got to modify our heuristics to spec, accounting for things like scope. The answer turns out to be a lot of duct tape pretty often.
This is the best commentary I've read about the current situation in Israel. I just want to acknowledge that. Scott is the best at narrowing down and clarifying exactly what the important issues are - I'm going to be sharing this one with friends and family.
Please make it very clear that Scott is strongly in favor of judicial independence, even if he thinks "democracy" is not the right word for this value.
Also, you should probably share Scott's "Dictator Book Club" series as well. Bibi is not currently included, but depending how things go, he likely will be...
I think that's clear from the footnotes, but you're right, worth stating.
Though I agree fully, one correction: "I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad"" - Nothing "recent" about it, tale as old as democracy ("Pericles - democrat or tyrant"). In my looong life, "undemocratic" was always "bad". (or is it "has been" - English tenses have been fiendishly tricky, always).
These aren’t difficult terms:
Accountability is the opposite of independence, but it’s a Russell conjugation (“we must defend the independence of the civil service, whilst fighting unaccountable bureaucrats”). It’s also a two-place predicate (“accountable to whom?”). Whether it’s good or not depends on what you’re talking about, but the arguments journalists, judges[?], or private individuals to be accountable to/dependent on the state should ring alarm bells for wanting to subvert democracy, whilst wanting congress to be unaccountable to/independent of the electorate would be an attempt to establish an oligarchy.
Democracy is government policy and/or the composition of the government matching the preferences of the population (you may need to insert some caveats about causation to avoid Gettier-casing popular dictatorships). Only a tiny fringe of people want to ban private charity, so banning private charity would be undemocratic. The alternative is, “most people would think your tie’s pretty ugly, so you wearing it is an attack on democracy.”
I don't think there is an issue with a definition of "democracy" which considers state religion voted by the majority of people to more democratic than freedom of religion. The issue is only when we assume that "more democratic" automatically means "more liberal" and vice versa. Liberalism isn't the synonym for democracy. There can be illiberal democracies and liberal dictatorships (Ataturk Turkey is a good example, I think). Such are not very stable but possible.
Likewise, "more democratic" doesn't necessary mean "better". We often need to find compromise when more democracy and some other of our values. When we are talking about "liberty" in particular, I think a good heuristic is to side with more liberty for private things and with more democracy for public/political ones. The line isn't clear cut. but it doesn't have to be. The less something is private and more political the more reasonable it is to sacrifice liberty for democracy and vice versa.
I also don't think that talks about accountability should be reserved only for some people with very special powers. Obviously, great power requires great accountability. But it's a spectrum, we do not need to cut off all the accountability when the power is just moderate.
The goal is maximum human freedom, not maximum democracy. Institutions should be subject to the safeguard of democratic control when they have direct coercive power over people's lives: in descending order of importance, the state should have elections and plebiscites; employers should have unions and/or codetermination and/or a direct co-op structure; and Internet platforms should either have user input on codes of conduct and moderation decisions (Wikimedia is a great example) or a robust set of viable competitors allowing users to vote with their feet.
Regular charity isn't coercive and shouldn't be anyone else's business, but the Gates and Chan Zuckerberg and Soros foundations do "charity" at a scale where an individual gets to effectively set public policy with moderately coercive effects on researchers, farmers, students, etc. This should be addressed, perhaps by preventing individuals from accumulating billions of dollars.
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of that to my comment. Insofar as this is true, you also have the negative freedom (freedom from coercive obstruction) to sleep under a bridge, defecate on a sidewalk, or use drugs on a park bench. I'm guessing you also have the positive freedom (freedom to achieve goals) to sleep in a bed, defecate in a toilet, use drugs at home or in a licensed establishment, and pursue your good in countless other ways unavailable to the indigent.
Charity and other forms of redistribution, when done well, can empower donees to exercise more positive freedom. Taxation-based redistribution has the downside of slightly decreasing the negative freedom of rich taxpayers, but this is generally a Pareto and absolute improvement in freedom because the rich are dramatically freer than the poor (negatively and positively), and a marginal dollar matters much less for a rich person's ability to pursue their good than for a poor person's.
Ah. The standard liberal line is that coercion should only be used as sparingly as possible to provide a larger net benefit to others' freedom, without violating human rights in the process (e.g. imprisoning but not torturing murderers, taxing but not eating the rich); or, with great caution, paternalistically, where there is high confidence that it will ultimately cause a net benefit to the victim's positive freedom.
I gather you're advocating for involuntary institutionalization of the homeless, on the theory that this will improve their lives. Under a liberal framework, which I'm defending, you're not allowed to argue this by substituting your judgement of what makes a good life for theirs, nor by complaining that you find their exercise of human freedom annoying, but only by arguing that they themselves will eventually come to agree that being taken off the streets and forced to stop using narcotics improved their life.
I tentatively agree that this is plausible for certain people and certain forms of institutionalization (especially those that offer things like toilets, beds, and skill training with minimal coercion attached). But "the people living on the streets of San Francisco" is far too diverse a population for institutionalization to be defensible as a blanket policy.
The great strength of liberalism is that it allows large, diverse, productive societies to function according to a minimal consensus in which nobody has to worry about the state oppressing them just because some of the people in their cities consider people like them a "blight".
The great weakness is that there are always people who—because of their wealth, gender, race, ethnic identity, religion, or some other combination of factors—think that their in-group's interests could be better served by blowing up this consensus and using the state to crush their inferiors. When this has happened, these people have often been surprised to discover who ends up wearing the boot.
This is part of why I phrase what I, personally, would prefer, as maximizing freedom for the _median_ person in our society. The bottom 1% are sufficiently dysfunctional to damage themselves and those around them. The top 1% often have incentives to do things like impose Amazon's non-compete clause, which typically damages the freedom of many people below them socioeconomically.
"The goal is maximum human freedom" I agree. Thank you for noting that coercive power is present in _both_ the state _and_ employers, and that they both need to be checked in some way for the average person to retain freedom. ( possibly not in a majority vote way - there are various types of checks that can be used )
Yeah the Athenians tried unlimited democracy for a bit, but this resulted in lots of people being exiled and some being killed for basically holding the wrong opinions. Then they had a tyrant or two and when they went back to democracy it was more limited.
Most democracies since then have learned that lesson. It's the reason for Franklin said "a republic" instead of "a democracy". It's also the reason your Constitution is mostly limits.
A republic is a form of democracy. It’s often less restrictive in populism than other forms of democracy like constitutional monarchies.
Aren't 'populist'/'popular' and 'anti-populist'/'unpopular' (or arguably Burkian?) exactly the denotations needed for discussing policies as opposed to governance structures?
[I'd have thought someone else would say this, so maybe I'm missing something?]
At any rate these bounds on uses for 'democratic' and 'accountable' both seem straightforwardly correct to me. 'Accountable' seems interesting in relation to 'responsible'. Accountability is one mechanism of enforcing responsibility, maybe, with responsibility the actual end-value? Certainly, distinguishing means from ends helps clarify whether more of something is inherently desirable.
Here in Israel, we protestors have been fighting tooth and nail to keep our independent judiciary; and we've been doing that under the banner of "democracy" (or rather "DE-MO-KRAT-YA!!"). This on the grounds that protection of individual rights and liberties is an integral part of the concept of democracy, and that without the Court we would have no such protection. I am saddened to read that you see that usage as "Orwellian".
I think it is also the case that democracy, in the sense of people choosing their leaders, cannot really be maintained together with totalitarianism. The same unchecked power that the government uses to control individual lives can also be used to modify the election rules in their favor, and to eliminate other checks and balances on their power. Hungary seems to be a good example here.
Finally, there's a more troubling question: how much can we weigh the voters' choice in the context of totalitarian rule? I thing the Chinese government is in fact very popular in China. Controlling how people think is just not that difficult if you're allowed to punish dissent. If there was a country where the government controls speech but allows free elections, the ruling party would usually win (as long as there's no major disaster that they can't cover up). Would you still call that "democracy"?
I think the point here is why do you have to define a judiciary with the power to veto the elected legislature in favor of individual rights as being “integral” to democracy, instead of just saying “I think it’s good to have a judiciary with the power to do this”?
> If there was a country where the government controls speech but allows free elections, the ruling party would usually win (as long as there's no major disaster that they can't cover up). Would you still call that "democracy"?
Yes? Assuming that people can run for office and freely vote without serious restriction (or repercussions), that seems pretty obviously democracy. "Democracy" isn't just a synonym for "good government".
Controlling how people think seems not to be too difficult in ANY country, if you use the right methods. In the United States, those methods appear to be touchy-feely platitudes, empathizing, and identifying with the listener. Faking sincerity helps a lot.
Do you think the US government successfully controls how the people think? Then why is it so rare for either party to win more than two elections in a row?
The majority of people, yes. I think nowadays politics is more like following team sports, so you support your "team" and boo the opposing one.
It is not rare for a party to win two elections in a row. The incumbent still has a tremendous advantage. Trump was the first president since Bush (senior) NOT to win a second term.
Here in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a second term despite terrible economics, promising to fix the roads and giving up when the legislature didn't approve additional funding for it (surprise), and stupid draconian executive orders during the pandemic.
Yes, it's always been like team sports, or any other tribal division. Each tribe has a few people who tell them how to think. But you pick which tribe to belong to, and the government, often unhappily, lets the opposing tribe's leaders do their thing. That would not be the case without protected rights.
What I don't understand is how people can back a particular party line so consistently. They must do it without thought. It has been documented, I believe, that if you say [your popular party member] backs [opposite the party line] then most people will be in favor of it, which means the actual party ideals don't mean anything.
As far as consistency, how can people be pro-abortion and anti-capital-punishment? Or the reverse?
Why is it one may safely conclude that, if someone supports affirmative action that one also supports gun control? Or vice versa? Or if someone is against gay marriage then they must also be against welfare?
"As far as consistency, how can people be pro-abortion and anti-capital-punishment?"
nit: This is more-or-less my position (albeit I'm only weakly anti-capital-punishment). My point of view on abortion is that I don't consider a fetus (or, really, a newborn) to be a full person, so I consider the woman's right to control her own body to override any rights of the fetus. My point of view on capital punishment is that (a) given how few people the USA executes, this gets too much airtime (1/1000 of traffic deaths would be about right) (b) as a taxpayer, since it costs more to execute someone than to keep them imprisoned for life, and no enhanced deterrent has been demonstrated, it isn't worth the extra cost.
"The same unchecked power that the government uses to control individual lives can also be used to modify the election rules in their favor, and to eliminate other checks and balances on their power. Hungary seems to be a good example here."
Hungary is an example of... what? "Media bias?" "Gerrymandering?" The same things you hear about in most democratic countries?
The CCP are popular because if their economic policies, and a certain amount of nationalism - China is becoming a world power. In general China is more authoritarian than totalitarian - at least for the Han Chinese majority.
If you have ever lived in a authoritarian state (or a corporation) it’s just a matter of keeping your head down in public and not condemning the regime. And even then some criticism is allowed, and private conversations are not necessarily monitored.
The problem with democracy right now is lack of confidence in institutions.
Alas, true as presented, but it depends on the most extreme definition of democracy - essentially mob rule democracy of the wolves voting to eat the sheep kind.
No country's democracy actually works like that. It's a bit of a straw man argument. The U.S. Constitution spends a lot of words delineating the branches of government and what their specific responsibilities and limitations are. Thanks to mostly Virginia slaveowners, who really, really cared about having a national government that couldn't interfere with their way of life, we have the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments). Edge cases and changing circumstances have yielded the rest of the Amendments.
The point is that the rule of law supersedes the rule of the mob in a functioning democracy. Of course if we elect a President and Congress who declare themselves above the rule of law....
This post could serve as a decent summary of The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies by Ryszard Legutko. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Demon_in_Democracy.html
With respect to "accountability" I would make a distinction between what the word used to mean, and what it has come to mean. The old fashioned sense is that it is having to live up to the terms of an agreement: you were hired to be the dog-catcher, and have you done exactly that in an effective way? If not, you will be replaced.
In other words, accountability judged behaviour in a specific performance-related way. But now it tends to mean not just policing behaviour, but thinking and how thoughts are expressed. We are perfectly comfortable with policing behaviour, from parental control to police departments. That's the price we agree to pay for living in a society rather than as loners. But we were free inside our own heads and were shocked by the idea of 'thoughtcrime' in 1948 (yes, I did mean 1948). The outward expression of thought, speech, is increasingly restricted on the grounds that it is not only offensive to say the wrong thing, but actually violent to do so.
Does anyone think there would be reluctance on the part of those who have bought into the new orthodoxy to restrict our thoughts if they could, to make us "accountable" for them? We already see elementary schools teaching politically orthodox views rather than the three 'R's.' We watch with a mixture of concern and horror as the mayor of London hires behavioural psychologists to design his latest campaign ("Maaate") to push behaviour and speech—thought will follow—in his desired direction. It is a perfect example of the new accountability, with any incorrect utterance to be immediately corrected by the disapproval. I don't mind my behaviour being policed, as it affects other people directly. I'm willing to tolerate the speech of others that I disagree with, as long as they give me the same tolerance. But I really don't like the idea that my thoughts are to be molded into acceptable forms via "accountability."
"We watch with a mixture of concern and horror as the mayor of London hires behavioural psychologists to design his latest campaign ("Maaate") to push behaviour and speech—thought will follow—in his desired direction. "
Which is simply the logical follow-on from the Nudge unit which was then spun off to be a profit-making private business of its own; don't you just love the free market? Especially when it can be spun as being socially aware and for the greater good?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_Insights_Team
"The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also known unofficially as the "Nudge Unit", is a UK-based global social purpose organisation that generates and applies behavioural insights to inform policy and improve public services, following nudge theory. Using social engineering, as well as techniques in psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing, the purpose of the organisation is to influence public thinking and decision making in order to improve compliance with government policy and thereby decrease social and government costs related to inaction and poor compliance with policy and regulation. The Behavioural Insights Team has been headed by British psychologist David Halpern since its formation."
Nudge Theory. Hitler only had Mein Kampf, the poor fool!
I read this right after this article:
https://washingtonspectator.org/understanding-tescreal-silicon-valleys-rightward-turn/
"TESCREAL ideologies tend to advance an illiberal agenda and authoritarian tendencies, and it’s worth turning a very critical eye towards them, especially in cases where that’s demonstrably true. Clearly there are countless well-meaning people trying to use technology and reason to improve the world, but that should never come at the expense of democratic, inclusive, fair, patient, and just governance."
Scattered thoughts at random:
(1) "Reich flirted with an argument that charitable donation is inherently undemocratic: people are allowed to donate money to whatever causes they personally want, instead of giving it to the government to be distributed via the elected government’s budgeting process."
Oddly enough, this was one of the things that got up my nose when I first heard about Effective Altruism. Not that they wanted to do charity, or even do charity right, but all the self-righteousness about "the common people just give their money to whatever tugs at their heart strings or their local church, they don't even consider what is the most effective use, they should be Said And Led by Us".
I won't say it was totalitarian/authoritarian, but it flirted with the edges of "if they won't be good of their own accord, they should be *made* to be good". And then in a few years time EA went off on their own little round of wasting money and getting involved peripherally with scandals. Well, looks like it's hard to be right, doesn't it?
(2) "But once people are supposed to be “accountable” for their personal lives and ordinary decisions, you’re being totalitarian again."
I disgree mildly with this; we *do* expect ordinary people to be accountable for their actions, hence laws about "no, you can't bop Steve over the noggin and take his stuff" or "no, if you're married to Jill, you can't go off and marry Jane at the same time" or "no, even if the megacorporations are really really rich, you can't stroll into a store, load up on goods, and walk out without paying, that is still stealing and no, it doesn't matter if they have insurance and expect theft anyway". Which leads into:
"I realize this rules out some venerable usages like “hold criminals accountable for their actions”, but I’m willing to change this to “punish criminals”.
I disagree more strongly with this because (a) holding even criminals accountable gives them agency; they are people, who make choices and decisions, and can be reasoned with or appealed to and rehabilitated, with punishment as the last recourse for the incorrigible (b) "punishment" strips that away and now we have only things reacting to stimuli in Brownian motion and as GKC put it better than I ever could:
"That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment."
Accountability yes, even if it leads to punishment; punishment on its own, no.
(3) I appreciate the distinction made between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Totalitariansim need not be authoritarian, and authoritarianism need not be totalitarian. I've been accused in comments elsewhere of being authoritarian, and it's not unfounded. I am aware of channeling my Inner Saruman, and I've had to fight hard against those instincts. Again, GKC puts the temptation wonderfully: this is beautiful and orderly and prosperous, but it's wrong - there's a worm in the apple (it's a long piece so I'll attach it to this in a separate reply).
It really is a hard struggle, and I don't think people without those instincts about "rules are good and I like rules because rules make it easy to know what to do and what to avoid" realise that.
(4) "Completely separately from the totalitarian thing, I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that, or serves as a bludgeon that would-be dictators can use against an independent judiciary."
I think people toss about the terms "totalitarian, authoritarian, democratic, free, good, bad" too easily. It's true that people are polarised now, and are using these terms to bash one another over the head. "You're a totalitarian fascist nazi, I'm a democratic caring citizen".
"When people were trying to get Substack cancelled back in 2021, one common complaint was that, absent a boss who could fire them if they said politically incorrect things, Substack writers had no “accountability”.
I'm smiling a little at that, because way back when "politically correct" was the "woke" of its day, the people criticising/complaining about (and people did complain, sometimes unjustifiably, rather than criticise reasonably) PC were met with "all political correctness means is being polite, that's all" with the implication that surely everyone knows to be polite if they were raised properly. and if you're objecting than you just want the liberty to be rude and mean without consequences (the same way that "critical theory is not being taught in schools, but if it is, all critical theory means is teaching kids about slavery, why are you objecting to that?" gets a run out today).
The Authoritarian Temptation, from "The Ball and the Cross" by G.K. Chesterton, the chapter 'The Dream of MacIan':
As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly talked about equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot be equal."
"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in his place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our kings have come back to us."
"The Stuart——" began Evan, earnestly.
"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart and yet older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost by insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ever he shall return."
"But now——" said Evan, in a low voice.
"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you," answered the other. "But in England the king enjoys his own again. The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but free at last of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called being a citizen."
...As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations. The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed, and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward; and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple crown of swords.
As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but picturesquely clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large numbers; but it required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in order. The mounted men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than steel. Only in one place—at the corner of Bouverie Street—did there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely, across the shoulders with the flat of his sword.
"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply. "The old man was moving as quickly as he could."
"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said the man in white, with a slight smile.
"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
The other did not answer. Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park, he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own ignorance. And I am not sure," he continued, turning his back on Evan and looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, "I am not sure that I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an individual."
Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling suddenness and stared at the other's back.
"Discipline for society——" he repeated, very staccato, "more important—justice to individual?"
Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
…"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into subordinates."
MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and unaccountable eagerness. "Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, "go on!"
"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid and——"
"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals; I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong; everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is not the rightful king who has come home."
"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice, "because you are going to see his Majesty."
"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
"Do you desire death?"
"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
"From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?" said his companion, sternly. "You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of the swaying ship.
The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to hide an awful smile.
"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not God?"
MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are. You are not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once."
The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
I've also found that the word "democracy" functions more and more as an incantation. Democracies came about in the West as a system for elites to influence and change governments without resorting to force or constitutional crisis in countries which already had a fairly solid rule of law in place; for literally millennia, western societies lacked democratic arrangements but maintained the rule of law (to which even Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors bowed). The key term here is "rule of law." Without it, democracy is a sham and a Chavista shitshow, with oligarchies competing to see who is more effective in lying to peasants (see, as an example, pretty much every democracy in the developing world). Democracy is just a cherry on top of well organized societies with the the rule of law. So my proposal would be to stress "rule of law" much more than we stress "democracy." Another proposal: every time you are tempted to write "dictator," write "despot" instead. It's much more correct. A dictator is a temporary leader for an emergency, all the way from Roman times to Spain's Franco. I know that's not what Webster's says, you can blame semantic shift for that and many other terrible sins on language that make discussion more difficult. The right word is "despot."
"I've also found that the word "democracy" functions more and more as an incantation."
That's why dictators/despots/presidents for life everywhere use it as a means of pretending that they are not dictators; we had legal democratic elections and I won fairly with 98% of the vote. It's a sham, because "democracy" excuses everything. You can't come interfering in the internal affairs of our country because the regime is 'democratically' elected, and this holds up until the West decides that it's in our interests to intervene, when the strongman is no longer useful to us.
Without a question. You now have to declare yourself a democratic leader to gain legitimacy, same as in the past illiterate tribal leaders called themselves basileus, khans, or caesars/kaisers/czars.
"to say that courts overruling elected officials is “more democratic” than them not doing that,"
Here's where my cynical side kicks in: when they do it in a way *we* like, then it's democratic; when they do it in a way the other guys like, then they need to be abolished.
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/white-house-set-aglow-with-rainbow-pride-119490
https://www.vox.com/culture/23559583/roe-abortion-dobbs-reproductive-rights
If you control the polling centers and voting machines but not the courts, of course you’d be gung-ho about “Democracy.” But you can easily imagine the narrative if it was reversed: it would be the great battle between the constitution and civil rights versus “Populism.”
Accountability is interesting in terms of freedom. If you say something your subscribers don’t like and they all unsubscribe are you being canceled? If being canceled a violation of your right to free speech?
If you own a wedding cake bakery and you make some offensive statement that alienates your potential customers, are you being canceled? Are your rights v being violated?
It seems the public is conflicted about this.
Good points and I agree with this.
Note that the most famous early democracy, in Athens, was kinda totalitarian, in that the assembly could vote Socrates to death for basically having unpopular ideas.
Today's “democracies” aren't democracies in that sense; they're democratic republics. The democratic part is about how we choose the politicians who run it.
Socrates was put to death for supporting a dictatorial regime that overthrew Athenian democracy with the support of Sparta and then began putting people to death, stealing their stuff, and otherwise acted tyrannically. Plus another of his students plotted a coup and then defected. His unorthodox religious beliefs were just an excuse for this.
He also wasn't voted to be put to death in the assembly. He was voted to death by a jury in a trial.
So wait, what is the term for the social system that optimizes for individual autonomy regarding their own lives? Anarchy?
Yup. North Korea perfected democracy.
The weimar Republic was also democratic. We tried democratic socialism in germany after that.
Confusing elections with democracy is a part of the problem. The Holy Roman Empire had an elective monarchy. That it was elective doesn't make it democratic. According to Aristotle, only what we now call "direct democracy" is democracy.
In Aristotelian philosophy, what we have now in most of the world would be elective aristocracy, since we choose a few select group of people we suppose are the most suited to held power.
I think the problem of "accountability" you are describing is what Nassim Taleb refers to as Skin in the Game. As a legal principle, it should be clearly stated and applied case by case in the constitution, code laws such as trade code, civil code and so on. I think the civil law system is much more suited to apply it than the common law system.
And in the specific case of the USA, the difficulty to rewrite or greatly ammend the Constitution coupled with the virtual control of the Suprem Court over it makes it more difficult to update it democratically.
If some dude was running around the streets of my town shooting people, I would not say it's "undemocratic" that he has chosen for citizens to be dead without it having been voted upon as a society. But the social contract from which gov't derives its legitimacy requires it to stop malicious actors, and if it doesn't it loses that legitimacy. The gov't has a quasi-monopoly on the socially acceptable use of force, and society votes on what private uses of force are and aren't allowed, and we only accept this because basic defense of the citizenry is a foundational obligation not up for debate.
I think AI presents the same problem. A bunch of tech dudes are out there working on a doomsday device that is going to kill and/or enslave every citizen, it's the government's job to defend us against that, to send SWAT teams into the AI developers' offices and server farms and start smashing and de-gaussing everything in sight, just as MI6 would dispatch James Bond to demolish the villain's secret underground lair. The problem with Drax's newly-invented nerve agent that will wipe out Earth's population to be replaced with his genetically superior moon colonists isn't that we didn't get to vote on this new technology.
The only reason to call it "undemocratic" is if you're trying to persuade a center-left normie and need to speak to them in the language of CNN Panel-ese. "AI is like the January 6th rioters" might be the secret code to getting something done about it.
On "accountability", I worked for many years at a county-level elected office, and people were constantly getting upset when they didn't like that official's decision, and would demand to speak to his boss. They could not wrap their heads around the fact he didn't have one, they really conceive of government as some giant single corporation where everybody except Joe Biden can be told what to do. It never occurred to them that elections were accountability, or that oaths of office were accountability-- y'know, all that "democracy" stuff.
What social contract? Did you ever sign this contract? I know I didn’t.
This usage of “contract” has always struck me as odd, because it leaves out the most important part - actually signing the thing!
I would be much more okay with this if there was a literal social contract - when you turn 18, the government sends you a form that you can choose to opt into or out of, granting all the supposed benefits of the social contract in exchange for the yearly theft and indefinite coercion. But this doesn’t exist! No one ever *actually signed* the thing.
Today seems to be my day for quoting from "The Ball and the Cross":
"It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.
...I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
..."The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. "Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution happen?" he asked.
"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract."
Also, apart from being an involuntarily-entered contract of adhesion, it's one that can only be terminated with one party's consent, which party can also rewrite any clauses of the contract at any time without notice, and which is also the sole judge of any matters relating to the contract. Oh, yes, and it can only be terminated, even with that party's consent, if you have previously entered into a similar contract with one of the other oligopolitan suppliers of the same services.
Considered as a contract, the "social contract" is possibly the most absurdly leonine contract ever assembled, which would be instantly voided on the grounds of unconscionability, duress, and what-the-fuck by virtually all the legal systems which it supposedly supports.
It's not meant to be perfectly legalistic, you can't pop open Black's Law Dictionary or the ALI's Restatement of Contracts and just apply it literally. It's an analogy. But if you DID crack open those books, you would find that there's such a thing as implied acceptance, where the parties are both acting as if that's the deal and they're bound by it. While the government acts like a predatory robber gang in many regards, it nevertheless has acted as if preserving public order and using force to protect the natural rights of its citizens was part of the bargain. The basic deal of gov't is the same as the romanticized movie vision of the mafia, this one group maintains exclusivity over a territory and skims off the top, while also protecting those people from outside forces like rival gangs, and keeping a semblance of peace by providing a way to resolve issues. And just like the mafia, government knows if it abandons that power, somebody else will move in to take it.
This is why the inaction in the face of the 2020 riots and ongoing drawdown of policing are uniquely dangerous to the social contract, the gov't wants to keep skimming but will let gangs or mobs control areas within its borders. If a street gang credibly offered protection from shoplifting for a fee, that would be more attractive to a shopkeeper in the area than paying for police that won't protect their property.
In the face of an existential threat, the abdication of its obligation is even more damning to the government, and is the sort of thing that gets them overthrown at higher levels than local neighborhoods. If the government is going to let Sam Altman or some other dork enslave or exterminate us, they've failed on such a fundamental level that anybody else offering to keep us free has a plausible case to replace them. But most of the people who expect that doom to befall us think the window of time will be very small, so there may not be a chance for our government's failure to give competitors an opening.
I think accountability is a useful concept for private actors, it just looks different.
All of our actions have externalities. They have costs and benefits that accrue to people besides ourselves, even when they are not outright crimes. Society should have some mechanisms for evaluating them.
For example, in my judgment, the current trend of environmental protests that involve blocking roads and defacing works of art are harmful and counterproductive to their causes, though I could be wrong. But it does seem that a healthy society would be able to challenge those who organize such stunts and in some sense hold them "accountable" for whether these actions are having their intended effect.
Private actors should probably have a longer leash than government actors. MLK's activism would survive such an investigation, but maybe it wouldn't be so clear early on (particularly since the goal of such actions is to move public opinion). And I am finding the current trend of government officials declaring themselves above criticism to be maddening.
But I do think it's a useful concept even for private actions, even if it has been a but overused.
If you read the book "The Problem of Political Authority" by Michael Huemer the confusion around these words becomes clear
We ascribe a special moral authority to the state, state actors are allowed to do things that ordinary people can't do - why can't I hold you accountable the same way? I demand you show me your order books, report to me to get permissions etc. In fact these processes exist in voluntary businesses transactions all the time, yet for some reason we think if governments say "we say this is how it has to be" that is somehow justified - we do this because we implicitly assume we confer these special rights to a sovereign through some kind of process (e.g. democracy, social contract)
The longhouse is a kind of democracy I suppose. I mean, I think you’re getting at the public-private distinction, which itself can be democratically decided. I agree with you that some people have a bad and inflated sense of what should be public and insufficient appreciation for the private. But they’re just wrong, not undemocratic. I get that people in favor a greater private sphere want to define a kind of minimalist private bundle as predicate to true democracy, thereby calling some private bubble to be “democracy.” Something like, free speech is “democratic” even when minoritarian because we can have a meaningfully democratic decision without it. But you can turn that logic around and say, free abortions are “democratic” even if unpopular because they enable meaningful female participation in democracy. Which I suppose is find, but we haven’t clarified anything we’ve just moved the issue to what public policies or private space we see as sufficiently necessary to what we as meaningful democracy.
> the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”
I don't think it's that recent...
The best example of democracy outside the political sphere is gang rape. If, say, 80% of participants believe the activity should continue, then not only is it moral and correct (according to the worldview that democracy is good), but also opposing or resisting is immoral.
It was a mistake to replace one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away.
I don't think this follows from the idea that democracy is good. Rather it follows from the idea that democracy is the only good. By way of analogy, I might say that a Crunch bar is good. Yet I won't sell my car in exchange for a Crunch bar, because my car is also good.
When you value two different things (i.e., when two different things are good) you may sometimes have to make choices between them. That's pretty noncontroversial in economics, but in morality we don't like to admit that sometimes we have to compromise. But that's what we're doing.
In your example of the gang rape, we value personal liberty more than we value democracy. And that's okay! That's not because democracy isn't good -- it's because democracy isn't the only thing that's good.
This is an important point, that helps clarify what people (should) mean when they say "we're a Republic, not a Democracy!" But I've also noted, empirically, that people who are very attached to that slogan are also very interested in replacing civil service protections with a greater role for political appointments, so that democratically elected leaders can root out the "deep state". It's interesting that protection against democracy seems to be something that people across the political spectrum are all committed to in some places but not others.
I think there's also an interesting question to be raised about whether "democracy" needs to occur through elections, or whether sortition (i.e., randomly calling people up for government duty, like in juries) should count as "democratic" in just the same way (after all, it still makes government subject to the will of the people - in fact, even more directly in many cases).
I thought the Civil Service Act of 1883 is when a lot of government employees got removed from the political appointment process, and that this act is what President Garfield was assassinated over.
But the point is that trying to put the deep state under the power of elected officials is trying to eliminate some of the republican features and replace them with democratic features.
Because representatives of the people are governing, rather than directly elected officials, or people in inherited positions.
Because he was duly appointed by elected officials, and was largely immune to further political interference.
I feel like it would be easier to think clearly about this stuff if we made more of a separation between different ways that government power can be wielded by unelected people. A civil service that is largely insulated from political forces is very different from some roles in the government being inherited, or from the way judicial oversight by judges with lifetime or very long term appointments works in the US, or a system of government where the military is largely self-governing (including managing its promotion decisions internally) and the top generals get seats in parliament, or where some roles in government are sold to the highest bidder or awarded to the most successful businessmen. All those are ways to step back from democracy and have some other source of power in the government, but they seem extremely different to me.
Yes this all seems like helpful discussion to me.
>But the point is that trying to put the deep state under the power of elected officials is trying to eliminate some of the republican features and replace them with democratic features.
Sure, this might be a critique of people appealing to republicanism who support this....to the same extent it's a critique of democrats opposing this.
A critique of people who prefer pure democracy, not a critique of members of the Democratic party, which, despite the name, is not committed to pure democracy.
I thought only Switzerland and the ancient greeks prefer pure democracy?
I think most people in politics are using arguments as soldiers. So most people want more democracy when that would help their side and less democracy when too much democracy would harm their side.
In theory, these are significant problems with democracy and accountability, but in practice, those problems are strawmen used by people who want special (usually partisan or ideological) exemptions from both. Democracies are capable of collectively deciding on the degree of individual freedom they grant, and historically have made choices in a reasonable range, though not always in the range that, say, radical libertarians or radical socialists consider acceptable. (Hence their antipathy towards democracy when it interferes with their goals--although not when it supports their goals, of course.) People with more mainstream views often also see restrictions on democracy (judicial review, for example) as a healthy counterweight to what they view as the dangers of excessive democracy; such people are invariably the first to scream, "tyranny!" when those same counterweights end up weighing against their own preferences.
"Accountability" is a bit trickier, because it's so vague as to be meaningless unless a specific monitor is identified. ("Democracy" can arguably be defined as "accountability to the voting public", for example.) In practice, though, the intended monitor is almost always obvious, and the real argument is about whether that monitor is appropriate, while those who use the term generically are implicitly thinking of themselves and their friends and allies as accountable to no one, and everybody else as accountable to them.
I'll ignore the rude ad hominem and focus on the latter part of your question: certainly, most humans in modern democracies consider the range reasonable, because that's what they vote for. Moreover, when governments shift out of that range, they lose popularity and get voted out of office, which suggests that their out-of-range choice is viewed as unreasonable by most people. As for "most humans in history", the vast majority never had any experience of living in a democracy, and assumed forced submission to a brutally autocratic ruler of one flavor or another to be the entire feasible range of human freedom, so I don't consider their views on the subject to be terribly relevant.
Accountability is fine, the marketplace, natural laws, etc. make and keep all accountable for their actions.
The accountants, the Karens, the would be social and duly elected or appointed barons are
another kettle of fish.
I feel like I agree in principle with the sentiment that, if "democratic" means "rule by the people" or "the final arbiter of authority over a jurisdiction should be the residents/citizens/whatever of the territory," I love how "democratic" it is to circumvent the Congressional appropriations process with charitable giving. I think the tax exemption for charities, in this perspective, is actually brilliant. So I'll give the example when that makes me nervous:
It really weird me out when scientists do things like, "we know that any technologically superior alien species must be peaceful, so let's broadcast our position in the galaxy as broadly as possible so they can find us." (https://xkcd.com/1377/) Or, "We're just going to solve climate change by spraying the upper atmosphere with sulphur[, probably plunging the whole planet into an ice age considering how badly we understand climate models." [Quote modified to illustrate out how sill I think this idea is] (https://gizmodo.com/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-sulfur-climate-change-1849931460) That's definitely a problem. Maybe some theory involving non-ergodicity and the possibility of large-scale ruin needs to be made formal? Like, "Sexual pairings are your own business (provided it's consensual)" or "You should be able to practice your religion (except if it involves sacrificing people)". We could have, "You should be free to pursue your objectives and goals in competition with others (except if it's literally going to end the world)." (I'm not saying AI will, but I understand the problem if people think it would)
Some ash in the atmosphere starts to look more attractive when the alternative is halting *literally all human economic activity*.
There are ways and ways. Extract CO2 in a factory process can be ramped up or down if (when) you misjudge the rate you need? You do you; I don't need to have an argument about what parts of global warming is right or wrong. Put sulphur in the atmosphere in an irreversible process that may cause (has historically caused) an global ice age that wipes out all life on Earth if (when) you misjudge the amount of sulphur to release? I have a problem. That outcome would be significantly worse than global warming. A solution that requires an absolutely accurate answer in a whole class of problems (complex dynamical systems) we know we can't solve, that's not a good solution. If we can't even answer the Collatz Conjecture, I feel like our approach to the solution to global warming should be more incrementally controllable.
Same with aliens. If we don't know whether the reason we don't see aliens is if there's interstellar predators that everyone else is hiding from, maybe shouting isn't the best strategy. The possibility of complete ruin means ideas like "expected value" pretty useless.
Totalitarianism is seen as the opposite of democracy as it prohibits opposition parties. Very weird argument. Government is decentralized so it makes sense for certain things to be part of govt. Democracy has to do with giving people power to deliberate and is a good thing (and again is the opposite of totalitarianism).
It’s a check on govt. If the ruling party doesn’t act in the interest of the people, then an opposition party will take power
A constitution is what protects minority rights. The check is that if the formerly majority power starts not acting in the interest of the majority, they will lose the support of the people and lose to an opposition party.
It's not a perfect system but when one branch over-steps its power, it typically does lead to backlash against that branch. The SC has had both more and less power over time and it partially depends on how it's acting. Currently, John Roberts doesn't want the SC to overstep its power for fear its power will be reined in again. If a president is seen as overstepping his power, then the public can hold him accountable by voting him out or his party out during the midterms. The constitution also gets amended at times which impacts which rights are protected.
In electoral dictatorships, the army is the check on the ruling party. And in these countries, the government's policies are much closer to what the populace supports, largely because the ruler has to keep the army happy and the army is comprised of (lower-) middle class citizens who tend to have typical views on things.
Scoff all you want, but what you're describing results in the farcical situation of in the US the congress incumbent reelection rate being 5-10x higher than it's approval rating.
Reelection rate has to do with most US congressional districts being safe districts given our first-past-the-post voting system. There are many states and localities adopting ranked-choice voting which helps reduce safe districts and decreases the polarization inherent in a FPTP system.
Military men tend to be more right-wing than the general populace. Also you have coups which often aren't in the interest of regular people. Laborers tend to be more leftist, while the military tends rightist.
From my listening to NPR, "Democracy" means "rule by Democrats."
"When people were trying to get Substack cancelled back in 2021, one common complaint was that, absent a boss who could fire them if they said politically incorrect things, Substack writers had no “accountability”. Here it’s painfully obvious that “accountability” is opposed to people retaining ownership of their own output, to them working for themselves instead of a megacorporation, and to them keeping control of their own lives. A society where every writer has “accountability” is totalitarian - or, if you don’t like that word for something that might lock in merely corporate rather than government control, at least it would lack a flourishing private sphere.""
It should be abundantly obvious by now that many civil libertarians turned into totalitarians the moment they got the whip hand.
Yes, just look at the ACLU. It's farcical that they still even have that name.
As taught by Weber: "A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." So the most appropriate definition of "democracy" would be:
- A state where (almost) all adults can vote on which people get to authorize the dispensation of physical force.
This doesn't tell us what uses of government force are legitimate, i.e. it doesn't tell us whether or not using the power of the state is acceptable to restrict the number of available religions. But as long as a legitimate vote is held deciding who gets to authorize violence on behalf of the government, the nation can be considered democratic. Anything beyond that is a political question and has little to do with "democracy" per se.
The state does not have a monopoly on violence in the US. I'm much more likely to be the victim of private violence than state violence in most of the country, especially in urban areas.
But only because the state allows (and in the case of one political faction, explicitly endorses) that. They could send the military in at any time - they just choose not to.
The key word in the definition is “legitimate”. What you describe is illegitimate use of violence.
You are right, but it sounds like you don't understand why.
Classically educated people understand the basis for society initially started with the need to curb violence (which is the natural state, but very destructive against long-term survival).
Starting with superstition based structures (i.e. prophets of delphi), moving to might (kings/tsars, unelected nobility), and then finally to current forms of government whose constitutions recognized natural rights to property and contract; and that some other rights were traded for similar civil rights under a rule of law which enforces those civil rights equally to the greater benefit of the whole. The basis for what we the rule of law.
If you think about it like a stack, that bottom layer (violence) is always present; when the top stack layers fail; everything reverts to the lower stacks. This is why protests worked at one point, people in charge were responsive to those they oversaw because they know the danger of ignoring law (which isn't just something someone passes but derives its authority from its predecessor documents drafted by the governed; but this is largely no longer being taught in any real understandable way.
Older generations know this, but newer educational material seems to intentionally obfuscate and misleads without rational basis. You'd be surprised how clear so many taught subjects are from books prior to the 1950s.
If you have a (successful) monopoly on the use of force, ultimately what is legitimate does not really matter...
I think to some extent "accountability" is a word that's become kind of a stand-in for the desire to punish people for engaging in behavior that is deemed not to be pro-social. As Arnold Kling likes to point out, people have a strong desire to reward cooperators and punish defectors (ie, reward pro-social behavior and punish those deemed...not pro-social, since anti-social doesn't seem like quite the right word here). There are good historical reasons this instinct exists, but there's also a mob mentality lurking not so far in the background here, which is, um...generally not so laudable. As such, I share Scott's reservations about its use and perception as generically good.
> stand-in for the desire to punish people.
Gordon that's wrong, and that new definition is a corruption of language that quickly leads to sophistry, dissembling, and worse;
Accountability is simply the relation of an obligation to reasonable or expected demands that may or may not be voluntarily enforced. Its a common element in contracts.
Incidentally, redefining new words to have multiple meanings that conflict is an element of newspeak as it is described in 1984 referring to tactics used by communists to manipulate the perception of the prolets such as the naming of the "Ministry of Plenty" (whose role ensures no one receives sufficient nutritious sustenance to be satisfied).
Its best to not invent new things when common meanings already exist to describe appropriately, and to also resist all such attempts at corruption.
The only benefit for someone engaging at that level is to confuse, mislead, and manipulate; all things deceitful people do to enrich themselves over others without any rational basis.
Complicated situations almost never have a simple optimum. I strongly feel that PARTS of government should be democratic...and other parts not, at least in the short term. Perhaps all of government should be democratic in a multi-decadal time-frame.
OTOH, when circumstances change, adaptations are needed. How should they be done? One can guarantee that only some people will see the problem...and one can nearly guarantee that those people will not agree on the proper solution.
For a specific example, social media is fracturing society, because fostering "engagement" is profitable, and the easiest way to foster engagement is to treat important topics as sporting contests. The news doesn't help with it's "tell both sides of the story" attitude to whether the sun will rise tomorrow, but social media is where the real push comes from. But who would you trust to fix the problem? The first amendment is pretty clear, and it clearly needs to be changed if you're going to address this through government. (I think that the change is that corporations should not have the RIGHT to free speech. And that those who are paid to speak on behalf of a corporate sponsor should be required to ensure that the listener was aware of who their sponsor was. But I don't think our current legal system could be altered in that direction. It clearly bends in the opposite direction.)
So though I think of myself as relatively libertarian (small "l"), I'm not opposed to some regulations to ensure certain kinds of accountability. And I'm pretty sure that our society (as a mass entity rather than as individuals) does not agree with me.
"It might sound like I’m arguing that it’s okay for small things like your private life to stay undemocratic and unaccountable, it’s only big things that change society which should be subjected to democratic scrutiny. I’m not sure I believe this." Well, I sure hope not.
if you're a fan of the EPA, then you're a fan of bureaucratic oversight of negative externalities.
This reminds me of a relevant passage from C. S. Lewis. In 1959 he published the essay "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" in the Saturday Evening Post. It was a sequel of sorts to his famous "Screwtape Letters" and has Screwtape giving a speech to a graduating class of devils. In it Screwtape addresses the proper diabolical use of the word "democratic":
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/screwtape-proposes-a-toast-SEP.pdf
"Thanks to Our Father Below, the threat (of liberal democracy) was averted. Our counterattack was on two levels. On the deepest level our leaders contrived to call into full life an element which had been implicit in the movement from its earliest days. Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.
"Such was our counterattack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counterattack takes a different form.
"Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.
"You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate."
Here here.
ASI is supposed to rule the whole world someday, if I understand correctly. AI development is a path toward a new government, and that will be the effective constitution of the world for a long time, maybe for the remainder of human existence. If anyone should be accountable to the people, I would think it would be the government. So at some point, the development of AI should become accountable to outside interests (outside of its developers). The stakes are higher here than with Orwell, King, or Gates.
Democracy is at its core a populist idea that can be implemented in such a way that can be self-defeating. Illiberal democracies are a good example of that. The Founders Fathers understood this which is way they saw democracy as a means, not an end by itself. The goal was the decentralization of power to prevent tyrannies. As long that's the premise, democracy can be implemented in a good way to achieve that purpose.
I think people conflate government and society. For example, thinking that the Constitution (or at least the principles behind it) tell us that we should have a religiously-neutral society, and keep religion to our private lives.
I've never been able to come up with a good analogy but I think a government is something a society has, not a way of being a society.
What's going on is that a government is really just a glorified security company. But nationalism has led people to conflate the nation with the nation-state, and added in a bunch of woo about "the will of the people" (whatever that means).
This really suffers from lack of steelman and lack of conceptual clarity. The points many make about "liberal democracy" are exactly on point. The contrast is not between democracy and totalitarianism. You can have democracies that are totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever. Democracy refers to the extent to which those who are governed have some say in who those are who govern or what laws are authorized. The scope of that democracy can be relatively unlimited, which may lead to totalitarianism, or it can be limited, by a constitution, a monarchy, or even just by tradition.
That some clowns day democracry means that philanthropists should be restricted in what they can do with the money is a strawman argument. There are always clowns arguing this or that; they can and should be ignored.
So you're criticizing him for responding to actual arguments that people are making (that you don't like) instead of inventing 'good' arguments to argue against? Ffs....
It’s the equivalent of responding to arguments that the moon is made of green cheese.
Something that would be appropriate to do if the majority of the societal elite believed that the moon was made of green cheese.
I must have missed where the majority of the social elite believes that "democracy" means " I can control someone else's philanthropy." But I've been busy.
There really is no need to steelman. The objections to this regarding "liberal democracy" fail because, outside of Scott's pedantic definition, "democracy" is used as a cheer line meaning "what progressives want." If Trump or Orban are elected that is a "threat to democracy" as is Brexit, Bibi not letting wildly left wing judges in Israel pick their replacements, etc.
Not to mention the repeated attempts by purveyors of democracy to undermine democratic processes in recent years.
This has happened on both sides, obviously, but only one is called an existential threat to democracy.
I think this piece dovetails nicely with a piece I wrote a few years ago about Skepticism and the freedom to doubt institutions: https://whitherthewest.com/2019/02/13/the-heterozygote-advantage-and-the-crisis-of-authority/
I'm not sure that conspiracy theorists are particularly skeptical - they're just skeptical of outsiders. As an example, the members of Jonestown were unbelievably skeptical of the American government, of organized religion, of multinational corporations, etc. But they weren't particularly skeptical towards their in-group and they ended up committing mass suicide.
In my experience, conspiracy theorists will believe really flimsy claims from people in their in-group, while refusing to accept even the most rock solid claims from their opponents. That's not a triumph of skepticism, it's blind loyalty towards one's tribe.
And on the other side of the coin, you have the "skeptic community" which is now largely defined by believing in every single thing that the government tells them to believe and ridiculing anyone who questions the mainstream narrative on anything.
I don't see the problem with that? Skepticism shouldn't be defined by what you believe - it should be defined by questioning your beliefs.
So if someone says that 2+2=4 because they were taught that in schools, I wouldn't call them skeptical. If someone says that 2+2=4 because that's what their tribe believes, I wouldn't call them skeptical either. If someone says that 2+2=4 because they've been unable to disprove it, then I'd call them skeptical.
Three people - identical beliefs - only one skeptic. Why should we care if skeptics believe the government? Shouldn't we focus on how they got to that belief?
Sure, but this "skeptic community" consistently accepts literally anything that the government and intelligence agencies tell them, despite having absolutely no reason to believe those things, simply on the basis that there's "no evidence" not to believe them. "Unless you have absolute proof otherwise, never question anything that you are told by the authorities" is not the mindset you'd expect from a "skeptic," thus the irony in the name.
I think we're defining evidence differently. If I met someone who said "Oh, I was in Paris last week", I'd probably believe them. After all, they're telling me what they did, which they would likely have personal knowledge of, and testimony based on personal knowledge is a form of evidence. Of course, if someone else countered, saying "Hey, you weren't in Paris last week, I saw you at your house in Brooklyn!", then we'd have conflicting evidence. Maybe we'd want to get physical evidence to resolve the dispute, but that's not always possible.
So what do we do? In the American legal system, the trier of fact determines credibility. They'll decide who they think is telling the truth.
That's not believing someone without evidence, that's choosing between the evidence that exists on both sides. And that's sort of inevitable - virtually any contested question is going to have evidence on either side. Being skeptical can help you pick which evidence to credit, but it doesn't resolve the basic problem.
Otherwise, life would be pretty boring, no?
Completely sidestepped the point he was making. The “authorities” are not individuals making casual claims about their personal behavior. They are dictating policy and norms for millions of individuals.
The problem is you're treating "democratic" as if it's a meaningful word. It isn't. It's just a another word that means 'liberal'.
This is exactly why the word 'populist' exists as a pejorative, and why things that have no obvious connection to popular will or electoral politics are frequently called 'democratic'. 'Populism' is essentially when an elected politician implements or talks about an issue that has large scale public support but which isn't liberal, even though this is far more 'democratic' in the traditional sense of the word than most of what gets called 'democratic'.
“Democratic” has become a word that means “good”
Re: “hold criminals accountable for actions”. To me this still is a consistent usage of “accountable”, if framed as:
All human beings are vested with authority to be free within the laws of the land.
Perhaps awkward in the sense that it defines freedom as a special right, rather than a natural state of being; but I feel this better maps to my intuition.
"I find myself nervous at the recent trend towards using “democratic” to mean “good” and “undemocratic” to mean “bad”, because it either makes us twist language in an Orwellian way" -- I assume this is a direct reference to https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ : "It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy"
If people claim to be acting in accordance to some ideal, they should be held accountable to the standards of that ideal, otherwise they are wrongly gaining status which is rightly associated with the ideal.
This reminds me of John Nerst’s April Fool’s Day post arguing for the abolition of secret ballots on the grounds that people should be “held accountable”: https://everythingstudies.com/2021/04/01/abolish-secret-ballots/
I find footnote 3 to be the right way to think about democratic government. I think the word "democratic" is usually used to mean representative democracy (which fit with footnote 3) and refer to the government - but we could certainly also consider if other parts of society is democratic - for example, corporations are seldom very democratic, yet they can hold a lot of power. Billionaires donating to charity is certainly a less democratic process compared to taxation and government spending on wellfare (given that the governement acts in the interest of voter). Functional government can and should regulate individuals and corporations to a reasonable extent and put checks on their power. A functional government should act in the interest of the general public, and balance interest of different groups. How much regulation? That is really a very difficult question, and ideally it would be up to the voters to pick the party most aligned with their interest.
What is needed in all this is balance - any extreme will lead to bad outcomes.
You manage to both be completly beside the subject of discussion and engage in ad hominem.
To be clear I am only saying that there need to be some balance between the power of democratic government and freedom of individuals and corporations. I don't claim to have the answer to the optimal point of that balance, though yes - I suggest it is not at the extremes.
Agree with the broad strokes but disagree with the details. The idea that every person's individual actions should be subject to popular vote is both on the rise and obviously horrific.
But the concept of individual accountability even for things like "saying or believing the wrong things" clearly has a place in society. Societies should have values and ideas/actions that fall outside those values (and even if you don't agree with "should" there it doesn't matter - they do). People who transgress against those values will have that transgression held against them. Not allowing that to happen requires much more totalitarianism than just accepting that it does. Because often the "accountability" is enforced by people acting freely.
PS one thing we should consider holding substack accountable for is it's crappy commenting infrastructure
A democracy is just a society where decisions are made democratically. This includes the decision as to whether one should have freedom of religion or have a mandated state religion. Both societies, as long the decision re policy on religion is a democratic one, are perfect democracies. There is no contradiction there.
To clarify, it is only the highest level of government that must be democratic. E.g. we could democratically decide that all government policy will be set by the richest person. As long as that top level decision is democratically made you have a democracy.
In other words,democracy is a technology, and should not be moralized.
The examples of charitable donations and AI development, where terms like "undemocratic" are used but shouldn't be sufficient to win the claims of their arguments, are nonetheless legitimate cases where a person could reasonably believe that individuals or small groups have too much power that is unchecked by collective decision making. Maybe the term "undemocratic" is a bit subpar, but at least it's a concise way for those people to explain they believe that more government oversight would be an improvement. The term "less democratic" might be an improvement since it is less absolute, and certainly it should be combined with a more thorough argument about why more "democracy" in those cases would outweigh the trade-offs.
To be charitable to what I think the other Robert Reich meant, there are certain things a private citizen can do that will affect the lives of thousands of other citizen. There are benign ones like writing a book or making YouTube videos about volcanoes. But there are also things like polluting the air, enforcing the law, and declaring war. If we imagine Elon musk amassing a private army and declaring war on another country, there is a sense in which it’s undemocratic, because somebody acted unilaterally, instead of our elected representatives voting on it, and a sense in which he’s unaccountable, because we can’t vote him out of office. The same goes for vigilante justice, etc. I worry the continuum between freedom and totalitarianism is too simple a model to capture these nuances. We’d need a model in which it’s absolutely totalitarianism to mandate a state religion or ban books, but in which it’s democratic - and not in the totalitarian sense - that only elected representatives can declare war or found a police department.
If “we imagine Elon musk amassing a private army and declaring war on another country, there is a sense in which it’s undemocratic,” it's undemocraticness is perhaps it’s least objectionable feature. When people commit murder, we don’t worry about whether it is democratic or not. Perhaps the error is rooted in thinking that if a state decides democratically to invade another country violently, that this is a legitimate function of government and not murder?
People doing stuff with money (such as donating to charity, or anything, really) is democratic in so far as people have roughly the same amount of money. It's voting with the pocketbook, instead of the ballot.
Doing stuff with money becomes less and less democratic as wealth becomes more unequal, especially as corporations control vast resources controlled by tiny groups (essentially the board and CEO).
There's something 'democratic' in every citizen getting $1000 to give to any charity they personally want; the resulting distribution of resources closely matches the desires of the population, which seems like a good description of what democracy is about.
But when there are like 12 billionaires who have all the disposable income in the entire country, and what charities get funded is almost entirely a reflection of those 12 people's values and priorities and interests, then it becomes a lot clearer why the term 'undemocratic' is appropriate.
It doesn't really matter if the distribution of charitable funds is based on the personal whims of 12 totalitarian government officials, or 12 ultra-rich people who control most of the economy; the average person is equally unrepresented either way, it's therefore equally undemocratic either way.
Scott, you mistake the core problem and dissemble, your arguments are non-sequitur.
As a result, this shares more in common with propaganda pieces to rabble-rouse than something written for rational discourse. I'd suggest you return to rational thinking and logic instead of relying on sophistry to make a point. Critical theory cannot be used to prove anything, it amounts to whining and destructionism.
Earlier in the 20th century, any rational person knew that to make a rational point that would be accepted by rational people, you don't create new words; but instead you use commonly understood words with common definitions/shared meaning, to get your point across.
The only effective use of redefining words to less understood words, or appropriating existing words with opposite definitions is for lying and deception. Irrationality, destructionism, corruption, and deceit/loss. The only reason you do this is if you are trying to lie or deceive and cause some loss or harm. Its not accepted by rational people, and rationality is the only reason we've been able to build civilization up to the point we're current at.
Mises had quite a bit to say about that type of corruption of language if you read between the lines of what he had to say in his published works, which btw thoroughly refute socialism. Falsity and the cult of false beliefs is rampant because of indoctrination, usually from a young age. Few go back and critically evaluate those instilled beliefs which were accepted prior to the age of reason.
Robert Lifton explains some of the psychological grooming process from the historical perspective of a PoW in Mao's first revolution. They use sapir-whorf and distorted reflected appraisal to its fullest effect (inherent weaknesses in all humanity).
These techniques have only become more sophisticated today (i.e. this account was documented in the 50s iirc), often without needing the isolating components to drive people crazy, or break them into compliance. All that's necessary is sufficient interference in an individuals life in a small set of categories. USMC University has a book on Political Warfare which touches on this subject matter.
Similar techniques are being used in K12 schools under social emotional learning frameworks, and in the workplace under DEI frameworks to promote critical theory (and your article does to).
Please educate yourself so you don't inadvertently push false narratives as true.
Totalism is just another face of what's being pushed in its flavors of socialism these days, and its being pushed regardless of the fact that economic calculation hasn't been solved for those systems; hence its destructionism as Mises calls it, under the false belief of the masses that they are marking things better, while the leaders actually in-effect promote behavior towards destruction and slavery (in its many forms).
It comes down to proper education, very few people receive a classical education that would let you recognize the inherent and structural issues in what you have written. Most never take college Philosophy; such as logic or ethics. Please educate and reform your arguments so you don't mislead others.
This is a fascinating example of several propaganda techniques, which is not at all ironic because it's a deliberate feature of such techniques--expressing opinions as if they were facts, projecting malign intent, insisting on some tradition as justification for rejecting the views of the other, etc. are all designed not only to disguise their own nature, but to make the other side look like the one arguing in bad faith.
Victor, you need to be specific in your criticisms, and the basis for those criticisms otherwise you are the one who is guilty of exactly what you are falsely accusing me of (through implication).
I referenced my sources in logical rational manner, but you claim these are opinions without refuting any of the source material (which hasn't been refuted in almost 100 years, Mises). You provide no logical rational basis for such a premise/implication.
Mises has yet to be refuted, especially with regard to economic calculation, and being an economic system, socialism-based economics (which came after exchange society) and how its supposed to work in society must necessarily be considered and proven better than economic systems such as the distribution of labor/exchange systems before adoption or even jumping to discussions of opinion, ideology, or psychology, regardless of the truth or falsity of your subsequent statements.
This is just rational self-preservation considering everyone's lives in the system depend on the system remaining functioning and not breaking down.
Societal systems breaking down because they can't handle shortages very commonly translates to outcomes of death, or totalism/slavery; and that's hardly a normative statement;.
You would need to refute the structure of the argument, and/or the sources and importantly; be specific about it (because broad generalizations are a fallacy).
You currently appear to have no fundamental basis for the implication you are making, which harms your credibility.
When words and communications have multiple meanings, context is important.
More specifically; if you look at your own abductive reasoning process, as it was structured; if you actually apply the process validly (rationally) you would likely not have posted at all or at the least provided some logical support; because you would know the presence of A indicating B being true, is not always true for B indicating A; though that's exactly what you implied as being true (B indicating A).
Since you have provided no logical support for those accusations/suppositions, your basis appears nothing more than flawed logic, or sophistry.
Lumping logic/rational thought in with propaganda and drawing/anchoring a negative association where there is none... is beyond sinister in my opinion, because associative priming in that context is a sophisticated brainwashing technique, with no inherently logical basis; primarily meant to mislead the uneducated and untrained. Its been used by cult leaders for decades.
Victor, Do you have any specific refutations about the source material, or argumentation structure that my sound statements were based on?
Also, it should be obvious that engaging in manipulative criticisms without logical basis, and failure to follow well-known rational argumentation structure is an example of the definition of arguing in bad faith; not merely a false accusation of the appearance of such. I don't see why I should need to point that out, but you seemed to be confused or are intentionally being obtuse.
When dealing with liars, and deceitful people; observations, logical thought and argumentation is the only tool we can bring to bare to discern truth from falsehood.
I hate being the Objectivist bore here but - yes, this is exactly what Rand was warning about 40+ years ago. Democracy is the rule of the majority, the system that executed Socrates. And the demand to hold heroic and interesting people "accountable" is straight out of "Atlas Shrugged". Seriously, go read the fictional newsstorues by "Bertram Scudder"
A government that is forced to choose a state religion say by some unchangeable constitution is less powerful than a government that can enforce a state religion if it sees fit, and not enforce one if it decides otherwise.
Sitting back and not interfering with peoples lives is one of the choices a democratically elected government can make, and quite a popular choice at that.
If people vote for a totalitarian party who controls every aspect of their lives, they get it. If people vote for a libertarian party who does absolutely nothing, they get it. In either case the system is democratic. "How much should the government interfere" is another parameter to be set by the mechanism of democracy.
Charitable donations aren't undemocratic, because the democratic government chooses to allow them.
The people aren't a thinking entity with desires and goals--individual humans are. If the people vote to impose a nightmarish police state 55%-45%, then a whole lot of individual humans are going to be disappeared in the middle of the night by secret police, and there's no sense in which they (at least the ones who voted against) chose that. They just had it done to them.
I popped in just because I was deathly curious to see how the ACT audience reacts to this article.
And I must say, I am impressed. It seems the PMC-led nonsense going on regarding "accountability" and "democracy" - which is really just thinly disguised agendas - is not shared by the majority of the commenters.
The other interesting part is the amount of space devoted to discussion of libertarian views. I have always found the entire field to be ludicrous - I continue to believe that libertarianism is entirely a product of the ahistoricity (is that a word?) and experiences of Americans, promulgated into the young and naive in other parts of the world but nonetheless a contradictory and inconsistent grouping of thinktank puffery.
I have found that people with an engineering background often seem attracted to libertarian viewpoints.
Thank you, Lord Dorwin.
Ok, you got me.
Referencing characters from a TV show about science fiction is even more ludicrous than libertarianism.
Then again, at least the TV show/original book is overtly labeled "entertainment".
You know, if you don't understand the allusion, you are allowed to say so.
Of course libertarianism is ludicrous. But is it less ludicrous than conventional thought?
I would vote yes.
Conventional thought at least nominally goes through the sausage making of actual real world policies.
Libertarianism is conveniently so isolated that it can retain all manner of foolishness.