Why Democracy
Apr. 11th, 2004 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...
What does that mean? Does it mean that all people are identical? That if you attempt to measure people on some kind of scale the results will show that they are equivalent to each other? That no person is stronger or smarter or faster than any other? No, that would be obvious nonsense.
What it means is that people should be treated equally. That the law that applies to one person should apply to another equally. No one person should be privileged over another, but that they should be equal in both the rights assigned to them and the duties expected of them.
Society beyond a certain size needs rules - in small social groups it's possible to get by with ad-hoc decisions and informal methods for dealing with problems, but once you have social networks that are too large for each member to know every other member then rules are needed to ensure that all members of the group know what behaviour is (un)acceptable.
But why should we agree to treat all people equally? Why not bias the rules towards white people, male people, smart people or creative people? The basic reason is this - if you want people to follow a set of rules then either you need to get them to agree that those are the best set of rules or you need to enforce those rules against their will. Enforcing rules requires an infrastructure in and of itself, and the more people don't buy in to the rules the more enforcement is necessary. If the rules are generally considered to be unreasonable then there will either be mass disobedience or a police state.
The only way to mass agreement on the rules is either to have rules that are agreed on by the majority of people. Some rules are simple enough that most people can agree with them without needing to invest a large amount of time in understanding them. "No Killing People" is simple enough to be generally considered acceptable, for instance, whereas international treaties on agricultural trade so massively exceed most people's interest levels that no more than a fraction of a percent of the population would take an interest. In addition there are many choices that will be sharply divisive, with no single answer being acceptable to all parties.
The answer to this problem is to have a method of producing rules that all people can agree to. Once the method is agreed on, everyone agrees that rules produced by it will be followed, allowing society to function and rules to be created without unanimity. Nobody likes to be left out of decision making agreement, but as mentioned above most people have no interest in the complex details of most rules (the fact that the rules for anything approximating real life need to be complex is another story, for another time), which inexorably leads to the idea of representative democracy, where the mass of people each vote for a person to uphold their interests, agreeing that the laws that these people produce will be followed.
It's not a perfect system (such a thing being, by definition, impossible), but it's the only one that has even a small chance of working in the long term. Anything else leads to feelings of dissociation from the rules that are produced, meaning that people will be less willing to follow them.
Of course, there are a fair number of different approaches to representative democracy, ranging from the traditional "first past the post" to "proportional representation" via numerous other different ways of interpreting and combining individual votes. Another topic for another time.
What does that mean? Does it mean that all people are identical? That if you attempt to measure people on some kind of scale the results will show that they are equivalent to each other? That no person is stronger or smarter or faster than any other? No, that would be obvious nonsense.
What it means is that people should be treated equally. That the law that applies to one person should apply to another equally. No one person should be privileged over another, but that they should be equal in both the rights assigned to them and the duties expected of them.
Society beyond a certain size needs rules - in small social groups it's possible to get by with ad-hoc decisions and informal methods for dealing with problems, but once you have social networks that are too large for each member to know every other member then rules are needed to ensure that all members of the group know what behaviour is (un)acceptable.
But why should we agree to treat all people equally? Why not bias the rules towards white people, male people, smart people or creative people? The basic reason is this - if you want people to follow a set of rules then either you need to get them to agree that those are the best set of rules or you need to enforce those rules against their will. Enforcing rules requires an infrastructure in and of itself, and the more people don't buy in to the rules the more enforcement is necessary. If the rules are generally considered to be unreasonable then there will either be mass disobedience or a police state.
The only way to mass agreement on the rules is either to have rules that are agreed on by the majority of people. Some rules are simple enough that most people can agree with them without needing to invest a large amount of time in understanding them. "No Killing People" is simple enough to be generally considered acceptable, for instance, whereas international treaties on agricultural trade so massively exceed most people's interest levels that no more than a fraction of a percent of the population would take an interest. In addition there are many choices that will be sharply divisive, with no single answer being acceptable to all parties.
The answer to this problem is to have a method of producing rules that all people can agree to. Once the method is agreed on, everyone agrees that rules produced by it will be followed, allowing society to function and rules to be created without unanimity. Nobody likes to be left out of decision making agreement, but as mentioned above most people have no interest in the complex details of most rules (the fact that the rules for anything approximating real life need to be complex is another story, for another time), which inexorably leads to the idea of representative democracy, where the mass of people each vote for a person to uphold their interests, agreeing that the laws that these people produce will be followed.
It's not a perfect system (such a thing being, by definition, impossible), but it's the only one that has even a small chance of working in the long term. Anything else leads to feelings of dissociation from the rules that are produced, meaning that people will be less willing to follow them.
Of course, there are a fair number of different approaches to representative democracy, ranging from the traditional "first past the post" to "proportional representation" via numerous other different ways of interpreting and combining individual votes. Another topic for another time.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 07:29 pm (UTC)I take it the "either"'s not meant to be there?
But why just a majority? It'll mean in some cases that 49% of the people won't be happy with a rule. Why not only allow laws to be passed when 100% agree with them? It might make for less laws, but noone could say I broke the law because I think it's a bad law.
which inexorably leads to the idea of representative democracy, where the mass of people each vote for a person to uphold their interests, agreeing that the laws that these people produce will be followed.
And if the mass of people who vote slips below 50% - what does that mean?
ranging from the traditional "first past the post" to "proportional representation"
When you make that post, maybe you could gather some data for it by checking out the NZ experience - we switched from one to the other about four elections go.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 12:32 am (UTC)2) It should have been "vast majority" rather than "majority". Or possibly "nearly everyone".
3) It means that the voting system you have isn't representative enough, so people don't feel that they are connected to the results. _Or_ it means that people think that all of the people who are likely to represent them are equally likely to do a good job. Sometimes both of those things.
4) Cheers. We have a mixture of the two systems in the UK - a form of PR in Scotland, first past the post in England/Wales.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 12:57 am (UTC)Re 4) I was forgetting the Scottish Parliment. Are you happy it's PR and not FPTP?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 05:27 am (UTC)4) I'm happy that it's PR, but wish it was moreso.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 01:09 am (UTC)As you know, I do voluntary work for an organisation that works for minority rights (specifically, equal rights for LGBT people), and when I was researching my Dissection of Orson Scott Card (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=yonmei&keyword=Dissecting+Orson+Scott+Card&filter=all) I was pleased and amused to be able to point to 18th century texts by USian writers deeply concerned with the idea that majority rule would mean tyranny of the majority: though of course they were rather thinking of the horrid prospect that aristocratic white males might be overridden by the mob. Still.
In Last of the Wine, in one of Lysias and Alexias's conversations, Renault very smoothly brings in a concept the Athenians were worrying over, back in their very early and very limited democracy: "Is it worse to suffer evil or to do it?" - "Surely to do it." - "Then if a democracy does evil, isn't that worse than when a tyrant does evil alone, for in a democracy many men must agree to do evil together?" (I'm paraphrasing, of course, because I don't know where my copy of LotW is right now. Must get new tall fat Billy, and must have booksorting party...)
In the US, the majority can at least say that the government that made war in Iraq is not their fault: they didn't vote for Bush. In the UK, Blair's government did receive (for a UK government) popular support. In the last election, I voted Green for my MSP but Labour for my MP.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 05:31 am (UTC)Absolutely agreed - but that's the nature of the rules passed by the system. If the majority of people _want_ to be prejudiced about the minority there's not a lot you can do to stop them without some kind of constitution/Bill of Rights, and you have to be very careful with them, because they can end up being horribly outdated and saying things like "You have the right to own guns to defend yourself from invading armies."
no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 10:33 am (UTC)No, it's not. Or rather, it can be but it doesn't have to be.
the majority of people _want_ to be prejudiced about the minority there's not a lot you can do to stop them without some kind of constitution/Bill of Rights, and you have to be very careful with them, because they can end up being horribly outdated and saying things like "You have the right to own guns to defend yourself from invading armies."
...as indeed the Iraqis are finding useful right now!
No, seriously: of course any Bill of Rights is going to be reflective of the time in which it was written. The US system, while not perfect (the disadvantage of being an early adopter is you get the beta version) does include the checks-and-balances of three branches of government: the current right-wing obsession in the US against "activist judges" is obsessively anti-Constitutional.