I think it’s clear that democracy and capitalism don’t work together. Capitalists always wind up buying the government, and the only solution is a Great Depression sized catastrophe to reset the wealth of capitalists. But then, over time, they will capture the government again.
This isn’t to say much good may not be done at various times. Usually after things get bad enough, a generation winds up in power who is determined to make government work “for the people” because they’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t. War, revolution, poverty, depression and so on. The second generation staggers on. They don’t really understand in their bones that government must be made to work for the people, and they compromise, but they keep it more or less going. Then the third generation says “hey, if we ran the government for us and the people who can afford to pay us the most, well, we could live very very well, and who cares about the “people?”
Often the third generation needs to lie to themselves. They believe some intellectual charlatans: Milton Friedman and Laffer and later on Fukuyama of the “we’ve won, it’s all over, it’s the end of history!” The fourth generation doesn’t even pretend. It’s their government, and you peons can suck it up. (Everyone from Bush Jr. on. Bush Sr. thought that neoliberalism was garbage, even as he implemented some of it. Billy Clinton appears to have been a true believer and made it work on sheer brilliance and micromanagement.)
But there’s another problem with representative government: much like police, most people who want the power of government are the sort of people who shouldn’t have it.
What happens, one way or the other, is that government is run by people who run it for themselves, not for the people. It’s “the government”, nor “our government.”
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’ve come down on the side of sortition. Just pick leaders based on a lottery. Then run some medical tests on the ones chosen, to make sure they aren’t chronically sick or mentally disabled. Give them 10 year terms so they are in long enough to have some institutional knowledge and have elections every two years for one-fifth of the number.
Anyone who serves gets a full pension of three times median income for the rest of their lives, and is disallowed from any other income. If you aren’t willing to do that, you can decline office.
I’m quite positive that random people who know that they’re going back to being almost regular citizens whose income is dependent on how society performs in the future will do a better job than normal politicians.
Oh, there are plenty of details to sort out, to be sure, but this is far more likely to produce “our government” than the current regime.
The next article on this subject will be on the next important change: how we do taxation—how people contribute to “our government” and “society”. Taxing money is not the right way.
Daniil Adamov
I think representative democracy (or representative government, I suppose, if you think democracy means something good and shouldn’t be tainted) naturally goes hand in hand with the market economy (capitalism). Both are based on theoretically free choice within artificially constricted boundaries. Both theoretically leave all relevant power with an indefinite mass of humanity (the People, the Market), but in practice allow real power to be consolidated within a narrow elite. It is not, therefore, surprising even on a purely theoretical level that – as correctly predicted by many 19th century reactionaries, whatever their own errors – representative democracy should naturally end up as a plutocracy. Also, yeah, the vacuum of power created by artificially weak government is naturally filled by strong capital.
I agree with sortition, if only because it undercuts meritocracy and the malign selection it invariably produces (meritocracies always end up selecting for self-serving careerists and system fanatics; even if they are ever meant to select for some merit other than political skill, the selection system is sooner or later gamed). The average citizen could not possibly be worse, on average, than a Person of Merit, no matter how that merit is determined. Representative government is just another form of meritocracy, with merit theoretically determined by all voters, in practice to a much larger extent by various party and party-adjacent elites.
Jan Wiklund
What you suggest, Ian, was the Athens system. They picked all posts except military leaders by lottery. But it didn’t work either. In that case the rich sided with some foreign conqueror to upset the rules.
Perhaps it would work coupled with as much in society as possible run by the beneficiaries themselves. We fool ourselves if we think that the state should be some paternalist well-doer while we ourselves exclusively minded our private businesses. No system ever work by auto-pilot. The people the system is thought to benefit must actively intervene constantly, in organized forms, to keep it in a reasonable course.
And, of course, one must intervene constantly to weed out the rich or at least their wealth, otherwise they will do what they can to take more and more. A society can be thought of as a system of negociation, and in a negociation the winner is always the one with most resources. Which are used to get even more resources. So a society is always inequality-building – if there are not mobilizations to even out now and then.
Alex
@jan wiklund
The Athenian democracy did work. Even if we don’t count the last 3 centuries bce it lasted for 2 centuries with only one brief hiatus. This is already longer than all modern democracies except for the US.
It had plenty of other problems but they made it hard to *scale* the state which led to its being defeated by more powerful states but it had nothing to do with the sortition as a mechanism
Ian Welsh
Having a great plague in the middle of their war with Sparta kinda put a spoke in them.
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I have yet to see the brilliant minds across the planet introduce, let alone working on and thinking about, a global economic system based on contraction versus growth. Capitalism is based on growth and therefore capitalism is in effect dead in the water or a dead man walking considering vital resource restraints like fresh water and topsoil for example.
Tying this post with the last post, many of the advocates of AI boast about the productivity gains that will manifest. China’s build-it-and-they-will-come ghost cities comes to mind but that phenomenon on steroids. AI will realize productivity gains of 50% but in the context of capitalism it will mean there will be a scarce few who can afford to consume that productivity. It will be productivity, and thus a tragic waste of the planet’s precious remaining resources, for productivity’s sake.
This is why I pray to the AI god to come to Just Do It. To do what has to be done. To do what humans collectively are incapable of doing if history is an informative benchmark. Level the playing field once and for all. Egalitarianism by the hardest.
Tzimisce
I also think lotto democracy is the way to go. I had a similar concern about “institutional knowledge” and thought that maybe a new set of people would cycle in every two years but have 10-year term limits. Essentially, 1/5 will be new and 1/5 will be about to leave.
My issues with 10-year term for everyone at once is that it will allow for 1) established power bases and 2) a lot can change over a decade, a lawmaker can really have a pulse for things in those first 2-4 years but get out of touch (relatively speaking) towards the end of their service.
I also thought we would want a relatively large number of people, like 5,000 or so. I would really want a large sample size of the “average” person. I like your idea of a limited number being directly elected, it gives at least some “buy in” through the electoral process but isn’t so heavily weighted as to moot everything else.
My other concern that you didn’t touch on in this piece (and maybe you will later), is the actual brass tacks of legislation, the “scoring” for budget impact, drafting, knowing were to amend statutes, etc… These are the kinds of things done by legislative staff CBO, et al. You can quickly end up with a Chinese eunuch problem with the professional civil servants having so much impact. At the same time, these people probably shouldn’t be random given the level of expertise required.
One possible solution is a random selection of state-level legislative staffers or a volunteer pool (who are randomly selected like jury duty) specifically for this purpose. Either way, they too should be term limited. However, AI might also be a solution for this kind of work in a few decades, but I’m weary to hand off everything to AI.
One last point, we already do this in America with juries, so this kind of decision making is not foreign and could be a potential selling point.
Feral Finster
All sortition would do is strengthen the hand of the permanent bureaucracy.
There are no solutions, only temporary expedients that themselves become toxic, sort of like litterboxes.
elkern
Seems to me that the problem is way bigger than ‘democracy’ vs. ‘capitalism’. Doesn’t every (temporarily) stable political framework eventually lead to concentration of Financial Power which then corrupts the State until the society implodes? (Of course, many Societies get steamrolled by outsiders before they get to that point)
My knowledge of History isn’t broad or deep enough to really support this theory, though. I suspect that Confucius figured this out a few Millenia ago, but I haven’t gotten around to reading his works.
Oakchair
Maybe Democracy is like a star. It can provide warmth, light and energy. Though over time it can collapse in on itself pulling everything and one into the abyss.
Perhaps one negative side effect with Democracy is that people can begin to believe that their only civic duty is to vote; that the only way to enact social or economic change is to vote. As this grows in mass it withers away other institutions, organizations, strategies and avenues of progress. Similar to how armies of occupation begin to lose function and competence. Democracy needs a real struggle or else it collapses into a farce resembling a reality TV drama.
—–
Capitalists always wind up buying the government…
over time, they will capture the government again.
——
The solution is to take their power and smash it into pieces. Cover it in a salt and acid mixture. Then for good measure drop a nuke on it. On second thought bathe it in more salt and acid afterwards.
Bob
Sortition would be a realistic way to change things for the better. I came to that conclusion too. Because basically it cant be as bad as the people the system filters through now. Even if you had a good number of mental cretins, it is bound to be better. Put some young people in the mix and it would force you to turn the education system into something that actually involved people learning, god forbid.
I’m also inclined to go for direct democracy. It would be a disaster for a while (I’m guessing the Brits would vote to deport half the population and then declare war on Russia) but hopefully people would learn to think carefully about what they really need in due course.
😁
GrimJim
It is a common myth that the USA has had a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
It has always, ALWAYS been a “government of some people, by some people, for some people.”
From the first it was an Oligarchic Republic. Only Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant Men could vote or hold office; it was a government for WASP Men, by WASP Men, for WASP Men.
One of their very first acts, the Whisky Tax proved that. They needed to pay for their revolution, so of course, they made other people pay for it.
The Whisky Rebellion that followed showed them that maybe, just maybe, they’d overplayed their hand. Which was why the franchise was quickly expanded to pretty much all WHITE Anglo-Saxon Protestant Men rather than just the Wealthy.
But they stayed in power, mostly, and even those who were not Wealthy had little reason to rock the boat.
The ACW didn’t really change much, thanks to the busted Reconstruction, which kept the vote essentially White wherever it mattered. Even Suffrage didn’t change much, as many women were expected to vote the way their husband or father required. Even to this day, only 1 in 8 women secretly vote differently from their husbands. And of course, we see what happens with the MAGA women (the “Ofmen” movement, one might say).
Non-White votes didn’t really make much difference until the Civil Rights movement. And of course, the Right Wing has done everything it can to reverse that and is having great success in the last few years (though you ain’t seen nothing yet).
But still, with the wide opening of the franchise to anyone age 18 and over, how much has really changed?
Nada. Nix, Niente.
Recent studies have shown that the USA is an Oligarchy.
The USA has always been an Oligarchy. It has never not been an Oligarchy.
It was born an Oligarchy and it will die an Oligarchy.
Relative “freedoms” gained aside (that are now being rapidly swept away, anyway), the USA is an Oligarchy.
It is Oligarchies all the way down.
mago
Had my talking points lined up, but then read GrimJim who nailed it better than I could have.
Still, power, its acquisition, use and abuse deserves some reflection.
There’s the institutional pathway, then there’s the personal way. The Taoist philosophy was born under a repressive regime as was the I Ching and tai chi—all following the way of the universe, contrary to the way of the state.
Enlightened rulers have reigned here and there, mostly in ancient Asia, such as Ashoka and a few others, but with no long term endurance or heirs.
Perhaps some tribal societies had more egalitarian structures with deference paid to elders of proved experience and wisdom, but those days are long gone.
So here we are. Not expecting wisdom and sanity to prevail in whatever time I have left, but appreciate reading about the options.
shagggz
Sortition does address the problem of a meritocracy’s selection process decaying, by applying the veil of ignorance principle. But even starting to address caveats, as Ian does by referencing medical/psychiatric considerations, shows what a can of worms “getting there from here” is. The problem is cultural, which is what I take away from GrimJim’s comment pointing to oligarchy being the throughline of American history. The rapidly approaching bill for our ecocidal ways does not bode well for a sudden prevailing of cooler heads.
KT Chong
China is now more popular than the US in all of Africa, most of Latin America, and much of Asia:
https://www.politico.eu/article/usa-popularity-collapse-worldwide-trump-return/
Altogether and overall, China is now more popular than the US in the world.
Jessica
We must also limit any concentration of economic power. Concentrated economic power will eventually find a way to take over political power, though sortition should slow that process as well as any system can.
I quite like the idea that the political leaders selected by sortition be banned from any other income. An interesting and useful wrinkle
Carborundum
It doesn’t matter a whit how one chooses the representatives until one figures out how to shut down the “attention economy”. The ceaseless cacophony of low information toxicity, which this site among myriad others depends on for its lifeblood, will grind absolutely anyone to dust.
Ian Welsh
Love you too Dave. Plainly.
Eclair
Don’t forget that US ‘government’ starts at the local/county level. Most areas are divided up into ‘wards’ or ‘precincts,’ and the two established parties usually have tight control of what happens at this level.
When we moved to Colorado, I became ‘involved’ in politics … 2007 to 2017. I volunteered to be a precinct leader and went door to door in the neighborhood. After the national election, I went to a breakfast with the county Dem ‘elite’ and, basically, they laughed at me for suggesting that we begin to work on getting more participation at the precinct level, from the ground up. They said, bluntly, that ideas came from the top and that the job of precinct members was to follow orders.
I am living now in a small town in New York State. Somehow, people run for office and there is a budget to be approved and the roads get fixed and plowed and people get appointed to the zoning board and there seems to be a group that runs things but there seems to be no ‘formal’ mechanism, other than occasional town meetings. Which no one goes to. Then, there is the county level, which is even more of a mystery. So ….. if almost no one is engaged on local levels, how can we expect people to be involved on national levels?
Feral Finster
@KT Chong:
The only question that matters is whether China is more popular than the US with elites, when a degree from Tsinghua University opens more doors than, say, Stanford, whether an introduction to a Chinese movie star impresses a local bigwig than a handshake from a Tom Cruise.