This post will be in two parts -- or maybe I'll just get to one part now and do the second part separately, we'll see how it goes. The first part is some empirical true facts about elections and electoral democracies, or republics if you prefer to use that term for representative systems such as ours. I don't want to get hung up on vocabulary. The second is philosophical -- how should we understand democracy, popular rule, We The People? How does that work and how can it work and how should it work?
So, Part One. Many people assume that elections and the resulting legislative and executive (and in some states, judicial) representation are essentially machines for turning popular preferences into public policy. Alas, this is not so. Actually, it doesn't really make any sense. First of all, fundamentally, most people know and understand very little about public policy. Either they just don't invest much time and effort in learning about it, or they get information from unreliable sources, or they have strong preconceptions and confirmation bias such that they don't accurately process the information to which they are exposed, or likely all of the above.
For example, according to polls many people blamed Joe Biden for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the restrictive abortion laws that ensued in many states because he was president when it happened. Many people believe that a) the people flooding border towns and being bussed to northern cities are illegal immigrants, and b) illegal immigrants receive government benefits, and even that they vote. Neither is true. The people who are allowed to remain in the U.S. who cross the border without visas are applicants for political asylum. Because of current U.S. law (unchanged under the previous administration, note well) and international treaties, we have to give them a hearing on their claim. Because the immigration courts are backed up -- the administration has asked for more money from congress to operate the system, but the Republicans in congress have refused to provide it -- they must wait a long time for their hearings. Most are ultimately deported. Meanwhile, they are entirely ineligible for any government benefits and obviously, cannot vote. But they are not here illegally. People who are here illegally provide much of the workforce for agriculture and construction, and we'd be in trouble without them, BTW. They also cannot receive any government benefits and cannot vote.
I could go on -- many people believe that the share of the federal government that goes to foreign aid is 25% or more. It's actually about 1%. Most people seem to believe that crime rates are increasing, actually they've been falling steadily for 20 years. And crime is higher in Republican led states than in Democratic states, BTW -- Manhattan is one of the safest urban areas in the country! You could look it up. Many people believed that Obama had raised their taxes when he in fact lowered them. But you get the idea.
But even if we had a well-informed electorate, there are structural difficulties with the democratic ideal. For one thing, in the U.S. (it's more complicated in parliamentary systems), the winner-take-all presidency means that there will never be more than two important political parties. I shouldn't have to take up a lot of space explaining why this is, but all you have to do is look at U.S. history and you will see that it is true. Third parties are short-lived, have little impact, and are quickly either absorbed by one of the two major parties or disappear, with the exception of occasionally replacing one of the parties, which amounts to the same thing. Either way, a third party has to disappear.
Ergo, the parties have to create broad coalitions, ergo it is very likely that you'll end up having to support one that agrees with most of what you believe, or what you care about most strongly, but not with everything you would wish for. Furthermore, on many issues the majority, even the very large majority, has a policy preference that they care about a little, but a minority has a different preference that they care about a lot. This is called diffuse versus concentrated interest. This means that the minority has a disproportionate impact because they vote on that single issue, and they are very likely to turn out.
Another problem is that in our age, it costs a lot of money to successfully run for office. Therefore people who have a lot of money to donate to campaigns have a highly disproportionate impact, and not only that, they have a very concentrated interest, to whit, rich people don't want to pay taxes, and they don't want regulation of their businesses. For many of them, that seems to be all they care about. Because the impact of money -- via political advertising, and voter turnout operations -- highest on low information voters, many people do not realize that they are voting for candidates whose real agenda is to cut taxes on the wealthy and eliminate worker and consumer protections. So we get a lot of policies that are in fact unpopular.
It turns out part two will have to wait for the next post.
4 comments:
It's a fool's errand to dismiss voters as unknowing sheep. You do so at your peril.
Many of those who vote for lower taxes are entertaining a much larger picture and that is the size of the federal government and the scope of its responsibilities.
They see an ever growing, ever increasing and ever more expensive top-down, one-size-fits-all government that was never designed to be what it has become.
We need to have a national conversation by the adults in the room about the proper role of the federal government and what its duties should and should not be.
It's apparent that we cannot afford the level of current spending levels. That's why you're complaining about not raising taxes.
I would enthusiastically vote and even champion much higher taxes if spending were limited by statute to a certain percentage increase (at least some known limit) and the the additional tax revenues raised by this new legislation that you're seeking were marked strictly to be applied to reducing the national debt.
Alex,
I can agree. One great example is the Social Security program which has been expanded to include more and more benefits. Benefits such as spousal benefits, divorced spouse benefits, dependent benefits, survivor benefits of divorced spouses, disability benefits for disabled adult children, etc.
It's not that these are not well meaning or not needed. It's that it's grown piecemeal largely without an overall design. This has happened to most all government.
I assume Mr. Dumbass has never lived abroad. Well, I have. I paid more taxes than I do here – and I had more money in the bank, because the government gave a shit about people. They paid for my healthcare, paid for my Social Security, and there weren't homeless people at every intersection holding up cardboard signs. But I suspect that Mr. Dumbass believes that having a wealth disparity in which someone like Jeff Bezos is on his way to becoming a trillionaire and tons of people don't have a pot to shit in is a desirable state of affairs. Guess what? Government can be a great thing, and is in plenty of countries, because the governments give a shit about their.people. But not here in the good old U. S. of A.! Here, the one who dies with the most toys "wins," and most everyone else suffers while they're alive.
Here, we have to watch the insanity and the obscenity of ruining one lottery winners life with $1.3 billion, instead of giving $26,000 to 50,000 different people to help them with their lives. Capitalism is insane, and it is in its demented death throes.
Alex -
The Constitution was never designed for the world we live in now. Are you saying that the FDA, the FAA, and the SEC are unconstitutional because the founders couldn't even imagine the need for them?
If you ask most of us how simple it is to understand the work we do in our jobs, we'll laugh in your face and say something like, "You don't have a clue about the subtleties and complexity involved involved in making what I do fit in with everything else." Yet we somehow assume that everyone else's role as a cog in the whole scheme of things is somehow easy to understand. Government's role in making sure things run reasonably smoothly necessarily grows as the complexity of our society grows, seemingly exponentially. For example, who do you think should be responsible for making sure bad actors don't make AI do something that destroys your life?
Sure, government could be run more effectively, but civil servants are just as human as the rest of us. I submit that they are less dangerous than Boeing's upper management even though they're getting paid far less than the Boeing top brass. The solution to the problem you describe doesn't lie in neutering government; you'll get a for better ROI by working to ensure that the most trustworthy and competent people are in charge of making it function well. And that might involve putting the resources into public education to make it possible for it to turn out citizens with the wit to detect BS when they see it, and to make fun of the folks who are shoveling it.
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