What Does Democracy Need?

What does democracy need to persist? Democracy often lays the groundwork for its own destruction. While democracy itself is merely a neutral form of governance, it has a set of perverse incentives that lead it into destruction if those incentives are not carefully guarded against. Democracy, since the time of the Athenians has created a risk of the tyranny of the majority. If the interests of one group of the population are significantly at odds with the interest of a different group within the population, democracy will naturally become a form of mediation between those two groups of people. Mediation itself is good, but the sort of mediation a democracy creates allows parties to see the political game as a zero-sum, and thus concerns of a vital importance to the persistence of the nation become secondary. The human brain is hardwired for competition, and politics works best when this desire can be re-oriented into something more productive. The market is able to effectively turn competitive desires into positive outcomes for people, but democratic politics, particularly nationally, seem to maximize the combative nature of competition while not turning much of the energy into mutually beneficial solutions. 

Democracy can persist for longer when there are strong institutions that are more difficult for the people to change. Things like protecting human rights, the right to property, and other things that should be agreed-upon by most people should not have an easy pathway to be overwritten by democratic consensus. Any democratic policy has the ability to vote themselves wealth one time, and forever destroy the trajectory of their nation. As more of the government becomes something that democracy can rapidly change, the incentives shift to favor this sort of dramatic action and enable the quick destruction of stable institutions. As the size of the government grows, elections decide the allocation of an ever greater share of resources. In many cases, government growth actually slows down overall growth, and creates a still smaller pie for everyone to fight over. Democracy will naturally destroy the order that enabled it unless the people are extremely virtuous or there’s some form of power that is held separate from the democracy.

Stable institutions and protections of property rights can both allow the pie to grow for everyone while allowing the populace to have a mindset that is far less zero sum and genuinely coordinate politically. As a nation stewards its resources more poorly, often to fund democratic-inspired spending sprees, the stakes of each election come to feel much more serious. Making it constitutionally difficult to increase spending will decrease the probability of such a state occurring. While many regulations and taxes may benefit the people who directly vote for them, they destroy the opportunity for future economic growth. The Athenian form of democracy was enacted by a people who were far more free and independent than our current populace, and they could not have conceived of our current welfare arrangements. Democracy also often serves as a sort of small claims court that mediates the relationship between the labor force, and those who control capital. There must be more articulated and precise means for arbitration of disagreements, because otherwise, conditions will change to dramatically favor the winning group every few years. The market provides a good way for this to happen, but when it is stifled, people feel compelled to pour their energy into political disputes. 

While democracy is one form for the people to express their desires, it can very quickly reduce people’s set of choices to only two: the majority and the minority. A national order with some spheres separate from the constantly changing wills of the people can allow a wide range of freedom that is difficult to sustain in pure democracy. The American structure that combines elements of democracy and republicanism is more insulated against the tyranny of the majority than pure democracy, but it has enough mechanisms from the desires of the people to policy that the will of the people is the only ultimate safeguard of freedom. For democracy to coexist with freedom, the people must become more friendly towards freedom than they have been in the past few years. Redistributionism is strong on the left and the right, and it presents a temptation that may end up being too great for our country to persist through. If more people can experience the benefits of technology and markets before they regulate innovation away, there is a chance that the people will allow economic freedom to continue.