Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

Voting

I vaguely recall that in one of Terry Pratchett’s books there is a quote along the lines of “he liked the idea of democracy until he considered the other people who would be voting.” No doubt other people have said similar things. Democracy always has the chance of devolving into mobocracy. The U.S. has a notoriously low percentage of people who actually vote; is that actually a good thing? Is it better when only interested people vote?

One natural fear about democracy is that it turns into a tyranny of the majority. The canonical example here would be the death of Socrates. Fortunately, in the U.S. this doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem, due at least in part to the Bill of Rights and the independent judiciary (in some places the first level of judges are elected, but there are higher levels which are appointed).

The problem in the U.S. seems to be more the capture by special interests. In a system like the U.S., the people who care a great deal about an issue can often get it passed because nobody exerts themselves to oppose it. I think this tends to lead to government by crisis. When there is some long-range problem, a relatively small group of people can delay action until the problem reaches crisis proportions. It’s difficult for a democracy to have a sensible long-term approach to problems. At least, that is true in a strong executive system like the U.S.; it is less true in a parliamentary system, in which parties must stake out clear positions.

Fewer people voting encourages capture by special interests and discourages tyranny of the majority. Capture by special interests discourages people from voting, as ti seems to have little effect. The special interests discourage people from voting, since it gives them a freer hand. Perhaps that is in part why the U.S. runs the way it does.

Of course, my forward-looking issue is your hobby-horse and their special interest. We all have our own.

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6 responses to “Voting”

  1. Mathieu Arnold Avatar
    Mathieu Arnold

    There was, in _Mort_ :
    “Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.”

  2. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    Thanks! That wasn’t quite the quote I was thinking of, though. The one I seem to recall, if it existed at all, had Vimes thinking that democracy seemed OK until he realized that Colon and Nobby would get to vote.

  3. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/ifstoneinterview.html

    The above paper suggests that Socrates was a supporter of a dictator, a strong believer in the concept of an aristocracy, and generally opposed to democracy.

    If that is correct then removing him was not an example of mob-rule. Most countries have laws against an armed uprising.

    PS It would be good if you could install the “Subscribe to Comments” plug-in.

  4. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    Thanks for the note.

    If you read the Republic it’s pretty clear that Socrates, or Plato, or both, are opposed to democracy. But I don’t think it follows that Socrates was advocating an armed uprising. I think I.F. Stone engages in some special pleading, and as far as I know his views are not generally accepted. But, if you like, you can omit that sentence from the post above; democracy still clearly has at least a theoretical problem with the tyranny of the majority.

    Can you point me to the plugin you mean? Note that there is an RSS feed for the comments, which can be used with any RSS reader. In particular I generally use http://rss2email.infogami.com/ which turns any RSS feed into e-mail messages.

  5. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    The fundamental problem with Democracy is that of people who are grossly ignorant getting the vote. Representative Democracy is the mitigating factor, in theory at least someone who is ignorant of the issues could still make a reasonable choice of a representative who is qualified to make decisions (it’s a pity that in almost all countries the voting is for parties not people).

    http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/

    An RSS feed of all comments is not nearly as useful as specific messages with comments in response to my comments.

  6. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    Yes, in general I agree. I am fairly new to California, and I am rather dubious about the habit of having a dozen ballot questions for each election. I would rather elect an intelligent person who can devote all of her or his time to figuring out the right answer, rather than have me spend half-an-hour on it. While some ballot questions are certainly appropriate, a proliferation of them suggests that we are failing to elect intelligent people. Or it suggests that people who can’t convince the intelligent people are trying demagoguery instead. No doubt in reality both are true.

    I’ll look into the plugin shortly.

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