Arguments based on Democracy (A 4th of July Interlude)
A majority of people are often wrong about the most basic facts—you really think the problem is not enough democracy?
Greetings—
I’m in my last few weeks in Spain before heading back to the U.S. I’ll be at my homestead in New Hampshire for climbing season, to work on a few building projects, and to witness the last few months of what appears to be an ultra-scary election.
I don’t love writing about politics, and I know it’s not what you signed up for—but at the end of the day, politics affects us whether we care about it or not, whether we show up or not. In any case, I promise to get back to the climbing, the homestead, and the Spain renovation project next week.
But now, happy 248th birthday to the United States, and a few thoughts on democracy.
A majority of people in multiple major power countries would approve of their government’s preemptive use of nuclear weapons if it provided a strategic advantage either to their nation or a close ally.1
Just let that sink in.
Then think about it the next time you argue that what is needed is “more democracy.”
In the U.S., the founders feared a populist mob just as they feared a tyrannical king. This is why we have bizarre institutions like the Electoral College, which has twice in my lifetime given the presidency to the loser of the national popular vote (George W. Bush in 2000, Donald Trump in 2016).
I don’t approve of either of those presidents, nor do I approve of the Electoral College, but I get what the founders were thinking directionally.
Sometimes less direct voting is better.
Take our primary process. In the not too distant past, candidates were chosen at the party convention, by delegates who were chosen back in their home states. These delegates were free to vote how they wanted, while the “primaries” were referred to as “beauty contests”—useful for optics, but not binding as far as the actual nomination process went.
It was only after the riots over the Vietnam War during the 1968 Democratic convention that both parties changed the rules to make the outcomes of primaries binding on delegates (Ezra Klein’s podcast with Elaine Kamarck is a primer on the history if you need it).
Here’s some more public opinion: in May of this year, 49% of Americans thought the stock market was down for the year. In fact, it had been on a historic tear upward, having already risen 12% for 2024, and 24% the year before.
You may say that people “feel” that the economy is bad, and you’d be right. They do feel that way, and one might reasonably ask why. At the same time, the U.S. has higher wage growth, lower inflation, and lower unemployment than almost any peer country in the world.
But saying “Well, it’s better here than there” is faint comfort if you still feel it’s bad where you are.
Anyway, public opinion is often quite bad. Here’s my all-time favorite example: in 2016, the Natural Environment Research Council in Britain held an Internet vote to help name their new $287 million flagship polar research vessel. The agency offered a number of suggestions, including Shackleton, Endeavour, and Falcon.
Yet the British Internet voting public in their wisdom chose a different name: Boaty McBoatface, which got 33% of the vote (Second place had 11%).
Thankfully, the agency disregarded the vote and named the ship Sir David Attenborough, after the noted zoologist, broadcaster, and narrator of various beloved Netflix nature documentaries.
Three months after Boaty McBoatface, British voters went to the polls to cast a non-binding vote on whether they thought the UK should leave the European Union, with 51.89% voting in favor. The British government arguably should have disregarded that vote as well. (Today, 55% now believe Brexit was the wrong decision; only 9% say Brexit has helped the NHS, despite that having been the central campaign promise of the Vote Leave Campaign.23)
This is always the danger when you cede incredibly important decisions to the people.
Sometimes the people in their wisdom deliver good and prudent results. Other times, an autocratic demagogue is able to drum up people’s fear, resentment, and distrust, and harness a mob of their own creation to ultimately destroy democracy itself.
Yes, I’m speaking about Trump. I think his reelection could constitute a death blow to this 248-year experiment we call a Republic—but I could just have well been talking about that other guy.
The past is a clear warning that education is no silver bullet to any of these problems. Some of the most educated, advanced countries in history have also been the instigators of global conflict and genocide.
A well-educated voting public will not necessarily be a wiser, more reasonable one. In fact, the more intelligent you are, and the more information you have access to, the more effectively you can convince yourself (or others) that all your pre-conceived biases are true, that your side is most definitely in the right, and that the others mistaken.
Oftentimes, more information and education only help us better defend our biases.
But forget education—if only we had actual critical thinking, you might add! If only the people could correctly sort what is true from what isn’t, and effectively evaluate all the arguments, then we could trust them to make better decisions, and democracies would work better.
Well: no educational system in the world has figured out the true path to ensuring that, but when they do I’ll be interested to see how it goes. In the meantime, if we want to avoid a continued descent toward autocracy, I submit that other solutions may be needed.
To start, I suggest structural changes to institutions along the lines the U.S. founders might have approved of. The checks in the U.S. Constitution to restrain the power of voters aren’t flaws in the system—they are by design. Some might even call them features.
But wait, if the U.S. has all these restraints on populist mobs, how then, might you ask, was Trump able to win power in the first place?
Well, the founders had a major blind spot when it came to party systems. They argued relentlessly against “factionalism,” but seemed to drastically under-estimate the possibility that party systems would come to dominate U.S. elections, which they did so almost immediately—because of this blind spot, there are almost no rules regulating how parties may behave, and almost none restricting how they choose their candidates.
The parties made their own rules, and they can change them. No burdensome act of Congress or Constitutional amendment needed.
What the Democratic party needs to do now, is hold a real convention, one where the delegates are free to vote for someone they think can win. It would be messy. But it would certainly give Democrats a better ticket than the one they have now.
One could even argue this process would be more democratic than the primary process of the past six months since none of those gave voters a meaningful choice about who to nominate. At least at the convention, duly chosen delegates from throughout the country would get that choice.
But what is “democratic” or not can sometimes be in the eye of the beholder, and as a well-educated, moderately intelligent voter I prefer to take the view that a real convention where delegates choose would be slightly less democratic, and to the benefit of us all: the party, the nation, and the world.
Let the delegates decide. They’ll do fine.
In any case, it would be some really great reality TV. Better than the dribble we’ve all been watching recently.
https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/48/4/47/121306/When-Foreign-Countries-Push-the-Button
https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/britons-brexit-bad-uk-poll-eu-finances-nhs
Great post.