Democracy’s Strength

Not paying attention, I missed my only regular commenter when he finally came round to my position on democracy 1:

But it is highly wasteful. Enormous amounts of money are being extracted from the public to secure the election of someone who does not rule the country, this function being really exercised by his “advisors”.

I would warn my new acolyte, though, against overstating the case. As opponents of democracy, we have to recognise and explain the fact that the most successful societies in human history have had this democractic form of government, (even while the actual elected politicians were senile or powerless) or else we have no right to be taken seriously.

Yes, democracy is certainly expensive. But to conclude that it is wasteful you have to show that the same end can be achieved more peacefully.

The useful purpose of democracy is to persuade the population that their rulers are legitimate. There are other ways of doing this, but they aren’t obviously more efficient. I quite like the era of divine right, myself, but that required the state to run a religion that would proclaim the legitimacy of the monarch. Brute force has a long track record, but the policing bill gets pretty expensive. Running government as a sideline of the entertainment industry is probably significantly cheaper than running it as a sideline of either religion or the military.

I do think that this crude comparison is in essence the basis of democracy’s strength and its dominance of the twentieth century. At the same time, it is very obviously missing the point. The cost of political parties, campaigns and voting machinery makes up an insignificant fraction of the real cost of democracy, just as the cost of employing soldiers and secret police is a small fraction of the cost of military dictatorship, and the cost of supporting a priesthood is a small fraction of the cost of theocracy. In each case, the true price paid for maintaining the legitimacy of a regime comes from the incentives it puts on people to behave in destructive ways, inside and outside of the governing institutions.

The impact of democracy is the gross dilution of power and responsibility that comes from giving the population a role in resolving disputes among the rulers. The way for a faction to succeed is to take control of and expand the organs of propaganda — the media and educational institutions — until we get to the situation we are in today where the society’s ideological commitments are to those ideas which succeed in power struggles within those institutions, no matter how destructive they are in both the population at large and the actual government.

We are not talking about simple clean categorisation. In practice every government employs a combination of democratic rhetoric, armed force, and appeal to higher moral authority, to improve its perceived legitimacy. The other obvious price paid for legitimacy — the subsidy of supporters — is huge in democracies but at least comparably large in any of the alternatives.

The most effective road to legitimacy is for the regime to be just accepted as inevitable, or as obviously superior to any available alternative. We do see that in some places, generally after catastrophic civil war or economic collapse, but it tends not to last for more than a generation or two before the next round of rebels or radicals or foreign agents manages to undermine it.

I don’t, then, have any silver bullet to fix government. I fear that the current world-ruling regime is past saving and will collapse, but I am not impatient for that to happen or optimistic about what will follow it2. The principle I stand for is that government just is and it is better to accept and support it, even in its imperfections, than to oppose it and force it to spend even more on self-defence. I would apply that even to the present establishment, but the tragedy of democracy is that by supporting it in fact I am opposing it in theory: my unconditional support is a denial of its very premise of legitimacy — that it is and ought to be subject to the whims of the populace.

If someone is to play Chief at this time of day, it should be the right Thain and no upstart.

  1. It is of course theoretically possible to believe that it would be better if Joe Biden really were The Leader Of The Free World. But let’s be serious here.
  2. The optimistic projections I occasionally post are intended to stimulate a habit of looking for positive outcomes, not as confident predictions

3 thoughts on “Democracy’s Strength”

  1. I take it that I am the person referred to as “your only regular commenter”. With regard to this solitary status, I would suggest that you need to alter permissions so your site does not shut down commenting after one month: this would enable a debate to take place and more people to contribute. (Unfortunately this often means spammers).

    Now, as to the notion that I have “come around” to rejecting “democracy”. It is the habit of persons, parties or countries that have some slight democratic element in their government to assert that they stand for democracy (and consequently anyone who opposes them is a fascist or terrorist). More often, the introduction of a single undemocratic element into an otherwise democratic system vitiates any original democratic intent.

    The American political system is an elected monarchy. The people who created it were reacting to the defects, as they perceived them, in the system of the time. They were ruled by a king: George III, as it happened: they perceived him to be a tyrant: so they changed the system to one where the monarch would be elected once every four years, and could only serve a limited number of terms. But within that limited term he was still a monarch, responsible for everything: he chose the ministers, they did not choose him. Your proposal, as I understand it, is to amend this system by reverting to an unelected monarch, the reason being that the amount of (what are effectively) bribes an elected party has to shell out to win the assent of electors is too high a price to pay.

    Ryszard Kapuscinski’s classic “The Emperor” is a biography of Haile Selassie, the model for the Emperor in Evelyn Waugh’s endearing classic “Black Mischief”, who enjoyed unlimited power for most of his life. He had a little dog: and that dog, like many dogs belonging to rich people, was spoilt and undisciplined, and in the habit of pissing on the legs of anyone who entered the Imperial salon. As a concession to propriety, the King of Kings appointed a servant to wipe the legs of victims with a handkerchief. That servant, the Master of Hounds and Groom of Canine Micturation, was necessarily in the company of the King of Kings and Conquering Lion of Judah for as long as the dog was, and so could raise any topic he wished and ask any favour: consequently it was observed that he exercised more power in Ethiopia than both Houses of the Dergue.

    Monarchies are prone to this sort of abuse, where persons with access to the source of all power use this as a way of obtaining wealth and power for themselves. In the French and Chinese autarchies this was largely exercised by the monarch’s floozies, mistresses and concubines, together with eunuchs in China.

    The American system, by holding elections for the monarch, constitutes a partial, some might say considerable improvement, but here the same concentration of influence is experienced, the undemocratic influence being exercised by such persons as the First Lady’s hairdresser. If the President misbehaves too conspicuously, he can be removed by a process known as impeachment.

    Strangely, the system has evolved differently in the country that inspired it: here, the monarch has been side-lined and it is the party/faction which rules, electing one of their own number who can be removed at short notice. Famously, Liz Truss was elected Prime Minister of the UKGBNI in September and booted out in October of the same year, having in the meantime collapsed the pound in the interest of the faction of greedy city traders who had backed her elevation to this role.

    In my opinion, the best system is the Swiss. A large amount of power is held by cantons, a very small constituency, and overall rule is by a committee that changes its opinion slightly after elections. A tremendous number of referendums are held to determine what the people actually want. Heroic and powerful “leaders” such as are familiar from other countries are not encouraged: politicians are merely committee members. Can you name a Swiss politician? I cannot.

    To this we contrast the American system. The fact that I am less than impressed by this does not make me an “opponent of democracy”. The presidential elections provide only a binary choice, meaning that if you don’t buy the total package you have no redress. Most of the electioneering consists in mudslinging. So you vote for a person, only part of whose package you agree with, and then all power is immediately taken out of your hands for four years, during which the incumbent may or may not fulfil their promises (not is more likely, since there will be a competition between the two parties, and the one who tells the most lies may win.) The incumbent may know little, and understand less of what is happening.

    But obviously my comment on this system being highly wasteful, extracting money to secure a non-governor fainéant, only applies to the American presidential elections. The recent election in other countries, such as this one (the U.K.) did not cause me any expense, that I noticed, and even in the US, it could be that the elections for state and local officials are beneficial.

  2. I’m not sure this is really the place for debate to take place: the era of blogs as platforms for debate ended in 2013. I described in my 2016 piece “Neoreaction and Twitter” why Twitter (as it then was) was so effective for wide exchange of ideas. This website is an adjunct to my X account, where I can summarise and archive what happens there. As to spam — I typically get about fifty comments a day on this site, most of them in Russian, and all of them spam.

    When I identify myself as an opponent of democracy, I mean I am an opponent of actually existing democracy. It’s hardly necessary to have an opinion on theoretically perfect democracy (though, for the record, it’s much worse).

    I’m sure Switzerland is great, but it’s hard to separate that from the fact that small countries full of rich people are usually great. I hear that Dubai is great, though it is at the opposite extreme in terms of amount of democracy.

    The danger that a monarch will fall under the sway of competing factions is very real — but as I wrote in 2011 (“Weak Kings and Bad Kings”), referring to your identical comment of August 20, 2010,

    “With democracy you get all the disadvantages of a weak king whether the individual politicians are weak or strong, so there is no good reason to prefer a strong personality over one that is open to reasoned argument.”

  3. I find that I have already stated my opinion regarding the Trump victory, under the post headed “The horror of foreign policy”:

    The election of a Trump, though a disaster for decorum and good taste, will come with the silver lining of a sensible policy vis-à-vis Russia.

    Some commentators are already quoting H.L. Mencken:-

    As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

    The horror of four more years of this buffoonery is not that the United States will be mal-administered: the system will step in to ensure this does not happen: but that the latest antics of the orange-faced shit-gibbon will again be headline news. It’s like being told that there will henceforth be no television programmes apart from endless repeats of Sgt Bilko and I Love Lucy. If only there were some party with the power to shut down his twitter/X account: but no, the Master of X is the slave of Trump and he will covfefe his way through as many of the remaining years as he can.

    Trump was the candidate for White men and those born within the jurisdiction: Harris for Black women. Trump got an overwhelming majority of white male votes, and a healthy portion of white female votes (because they were white) and even a significant number of black male votes (because they were male.) With Harris, the proportions are reversed, even millionaires like Oprah Winfrey endorsing her.

    This enables the Trump side to win, as there are more white people than Black. It is just not in the interests of reproductive white people to have a Black, feminist, transvestite etc friendly faction in charge of hiring and border control. The white male working and small business class perceive this as a movement to tax them to finance equal opportunities hirings performing roles of dubious to non-existent value.

    So what I hope will happen is as follows.

    Trump keeps his promise and makes peace with Russia, averting World War Three. Europe resumes use of cheap Russian gas, reducing the cost of living but moving the continent more into a neutral, pro-Russian position.

    What I presume will then happen, without necessarily wanting it to, is that Trump will plough ahead with tax cuts which will be greatly to the benefit of Elon Musk but not at all to Trump’s ordinary voters. There will be mid-term elections, and a lot of his 2024 voters, without actually admitting that they were wrong in 2024, just won’t be motivated to come out again, not having been benefited in any discernable way, and so the country will revert to the usual Republican/Democrat impasse, meaning Trump won’t actually be able to do anything disastrous. There is also the fact that a person of his age and waist-line does not have much of an active life expectancy, and the presidency of the United States is a fatally stressful position.

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