Is democracy too democratic?

The other day, somebody posted an article on Twitter (X). I read it with interest, though it was a while before I realized that it was five years old. The title breathlessly announces "The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy," and it appeared in Politico in September 2019. (I've provided a link so you can read it yourself.) In the end it's not a terribly profound article, but it got me thinking.

Just to be clear, this post is not really a response to the article. It just uses the article as a jumping-off point for some meditations about the nature of democracy.

The first thing that this article makes clear is how dishonest all modern American political discussion is. Time and again the author (Rick Shenkman) tells us that democracy is important, that it is under threat, and that it is doomed to disappear. And yet, the thing that threatens democracy seems to be the participation of all those damned people! If only the people would let themselves be led by their betters, the way they used to do once upon a time, things would be fine. But today they are riled up and want a piece of the action—the word he uses over and over is populism—and so things are going to hell.

Populism and elitism

Prof. Shawn Rosenberg

When I talk about "their betters," Shenkman uses the word "elites." He defines them (following UCI Prof. Shawn Rosenberg, whose recent paper was actually the focus of Shenkman's article) as "experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule." Later on he expands this definition. 

"The elites, as Rosenberg defines them, are the people holding power at the top of the economic, political and intellectual pyramid who have 'the motivation to support democratic culture and institutions and the power to do so effectively.' In their roles as senators, journalists, professors, judges and government administrators, to name a few, the elites have traditionally held sway over public discourse and U.S. institutions …. But today that is changing."   

It's changing, the argument continues, because the Internet gives a voice to anyone with a laptop or a phone. As a result, populism has become a far more powerful challenge than it once was, and has begun to threaten democracy. 

Now at this point I have to step aside for a minute. Rosenberg argues (and Shenkman appears to agree) that populism threatens democracy. Is that even possible? Let's look at those two words. Democracy means rule by the δῆμος (demos), which is Greek for "the people." Populism, by contrast, means rule by the populus, which is Latin for … (checks notes) … "the people." When you trace back to fundamentals, democracy and populism are the exact same thing.

If Rosenberg thinks that populism (i.e. democracy) is a bad thing, he should feel free to say so. But then I wish he could be honest enough to say openly that he's criticizing democracy. That position would put him in good company, by the way. Most political philosophers over the years have taken a dim view of democracy, largely for the exact same reasons that Rosenberg does: they've all thought that the common people are too stupid to govern. Rosenberg says so too. 

Of course I realize that I'm asking too much here: he can't let himself criticize democracy openly and in so many words. That's the dishonest part, but it's not really his fault: the word "democracy" is a shibboleth today. When Rosenberg (or Shenkman) uses the word "democracy," what he really means is the modern American polity. As a result, no one who expects to be taken seriously dares speak a word against "democracy." 

On the other hand he tips his hand by saying that democracy works best when it is governed by elites, which is a little like saying that cold weather is great so long as it's warm out. The correct word for rule by elites is "elitism," and that's clearly what Rosenberg has in mind. As I say, this puts him in the mainstream of political philosophers in the Western tradition, even if we can't say so out loud these days.

Rosenberg's argument

As summarized by Shenkman, Rosenberg's argument is that "democracy" (by which, as I say, he means the modern American polity) is doomed. "Democracy is devouring itself—his phrase—and it won’t last." This outcome is inevitable because human psychology is not built in a way that supports self-government by the common people. In particular, Rosenberg makes three points that I want to discuss. (Shenkman arranges his material a little differently, but I am putting these points in an order that is convenient for me.)

1. "The irony is that more democracy—ushered in by social media and the Internet, where information flows more freely than ever before—is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us towards authoritarianism." [The words are Shenkman's.]
2. "The majority of Americans are generally unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship." [The words are Rosenberg's.]
3. "Democracy is hard work and requires a lot from those who participate in it. It requires people to respect those with different views from theirs and people who don’t look like them." [The words are Shenkman's.]   

What can we say about these claims?

The first one is easy. It is a traditional commonplace that democracy leads to authoritarianism. Plato discusses this linkage lucidly in Book Eight of the Republic. The only reason that the connection sounds paradoxical to us here and now is that we have deliberately forgotten all the traditional teachings about democracy because we think we are better than all that.

The second point is a little harder, and I think it is an artifact of our current historical moment. When Rosenberg says that most Americans can't understand democratic practices, that has to mean (among other things) that he doesn't see Americans practicing democracy on a daily basis. But we used to do so, as I argued in a recent post. (And please see that post for details.) In our clubs, our civic associations, our recreations clear across the board—to say nothing of the more complex question of our workplaces—Americans used to have a connection to democratic activity in their daily lives that we simply lack today. So Rosenberg's observation on this point is fair so far as it goes, but I think it indicts our modern condition far more than it indicts human psychology as such.

The third point requires some more discussion. 

Respect for others

The claim that democracy requires respecting those with different views and "different looks" (however understood) is a complex one, and I think it would not be recognized or even understood by anyone who lived longer ago than about a hundred years. Let's study it for a minute.

Different views

In a trivial sense, of course democracy requires respecting those with different views about matters of public deliberation, precisely because democracy involves public deliberation over public issues. If nobody has different views on whether to build a road here or a harbor there, we don't need to deliberate; and if people do have different views, democracy gives us a way to resolve the disagreement without coming to blows. So far, so good.

What about views on other topics? What about religion? Religion is not a matter for public deliberation: we might debate whether the state should pay to build a church here or there, but no democratic debate can settle that This Religion is true, while That One is false. And so there is nothing inherent in the nature of democracy to require religious toleration. Socrates was put to death for disbelieving in the gods of democratic Athens, and no-one objected that the charge was unconstitutional.

In the United States, because of our special history, we are guaranteed religious toleration by the First Amendment. Even so, there are limits. If someone insisted that he wanted to worship the old Aztec religion by sacrificing his neighbors to the Sun God, law enforcement authorities would put an end to it pretty quickly.

What about patriotism, or loyalty to the regime generally? Here the history of thought shows even less wiggle room than in the case of religion. It is a commonplace of classical liberalism that no government should tolerate political parties who are not willing to tolerate classical liberalism itself. (The usual examples are Nazis and Communists.) So here again, there are good theoretical reasons for refusing to respect someone with different views, in case the difference is that you are loyal to the regime and he is not. 

It is true that historically the United States government has been willing (at least recently) to accept the existence of American Nazi and Communist Parties. But I would argue that this acceptance is less a theoretical requirement of democracy-as-such than it is a gesture of lordly disdain. The American regime has been so strong and so secure that it allowed parties to survive even when those parties said overtly that they wanted to bury the regime itself. The implicit message is that the regime regards these parties as totally impotent, no worse than screaming toddlers. 

"Different looks"

This last proposition—viz., that "Democracy … requires people to respect … [other] people who don’t look like them."—is even more narrowly, parochially bound to our local place and time than any of Rosenberg's other claims. Surely it is obvious that neither Rosenberg nor Shenkman would ever have written such a sentence were it not for the peculiar history of America's most peculiar institution: race-based slavery, followed in history by institutionalized racial discrimination and (even more recently) by a race-based civil rights movement. In no other country could someone have written those words and expected them to be understood the same way.   

So is it true? Let's break this into two questions. First, is it true that the American polity here and now requires people to respect those of other races? Yes, that's pretty clearly true. One way or another, that's the corner we have painted ourselves into right now, because of our past history.

Second, is it true that Democracy in principle—Democracy as such—requires people to respect (or even enfranchise) those of other races, or who look different in other ways? No, this has never been a requirement. Often the assumption has been the exact opposite.

Traditionally, before the founding of the United States, democracies were found only in small communities. That's why James Madison had to write Federalist Number 10, to prove that it was possible to implement democracy over a large country. And those small communities in which democratic government was traditionally found were also largely uniform in racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious composition: if they weren't, they dissolved into conflict right quick. (See this post for more discussion of small, homogeneous communities.)

For that matter, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his classic Democracy in America that one of America's greatest challenges for the future would be that three different races shared the continent. (At that time he meant Whites, Blacks, and Indians.) He took it for granted that it would not be easy for these three peoples to settle into a single community.

But these are just examples, and anyone can multiply examples. Is there a logical argument that addresses the role of sameness-or-difference in democracies?

I think there is. But I am feeling my way, so bear with me.

Social trust

For a society to cohere, there has to be some measure of trust among its members. What I mean by "trust" in this context is that people have to be able to predict how other people will act. Only then can they work together. There's a large literature around social trust in the social sciences, and I don't propose to crack it open at the moment. But let me make a couple of simple and obvious points.

There are (at least) two ways you can feel like you can predict what someone else is going to do. One way is if you know that he is compelled to do it by external forces. Another way is if you feel enough sympathy with him that you can see the world through his eyes, at least to a limited extent.

Politically, the first of these ways corresponds to the condition of empires, where everyone is equally subject to one Sovereign. It is relevant to note that the first recorded multi-ethnic societies were all empires. This is because everyone's common subjection to the Emperor makes other people's behavior predictable. As long as a stranger greets you with "Hail Caesar" (or the equivalent) you know that you can trust him to obey the Emperor's laws and customs. It might not be everything you could wish, but it's something. It makes for predictability, and that allows the growth of trust.

The second way, the way of sympathy, is the way of small communities and is more natural in a democracy. Strictly speaking, to be able to sympathize with someone well enough that you can predict how he will react, you need to know him and know him well. Nonetheless, when strangers meet, there are often other kinds of commonalities that stand as proxies for genuinely knowing each other. 

It might be a commonality of religion. In the pagan Roman Empire, Christians were a persecuted minority and trusted each other on sight. In modern America, I have seen neopagans give food, lodging, and transportation to total strangers just because the strangers were also neopagan.

It might be a commonality of hobbies or interests: two surfers, two backpackers, or two Dungeons-and-Dragons gamers are more likely to trust each other than either would be to trust someone that did not share the same passions. 

It might be a commonality of language, or even of accent. The last time I was in the United Kingdom, I spoke the same language (English) as everyone else around me; but if I got separated from my friends and found myself chatting with strangers, I chatted most easily with other Americans.

You know where this is going. 

Like it or not, it is easier for people to feel sympathy with others who look like them. This means—when we are talking about democracies and not empires—that the levels of social trust, and therefore social cohesion, are likely to be greater in a mono-ethnic democracy than in a multi-ethnic democracy. They are likely to be greater in a monoracial democracy than in a multiracial democracy. Note that I say "likely." There are always factors that can throw the probabilities—for example, if there are religious or political differences that produce antagonism and hostility even when there is only one ethnicity or race. But other things being equal, you can expect greater levels of social trust when fellow citizens share more features in common. Race isn't the only one of those features, and sometimes (depending on circumstances) it isn't even the most important. But to deny that it is at least one feature among others is simply foolish. 

Summary

I've made a number of points in this post, some more important than others. Among the smaller points are these:

Populism cannot threaten democracy, because populism is democracy.

Yes, democracy can lead to authoritarianism. This is not news.

If Americans don't understand democratic practices, it is because the modern world has eliminated most of our social organizations, and because we have no opportunity to exercise authority or responsibility in our workplaces. This is a modern dysfunction, and not a sign of fundamental human limitations.

I think the larger points are these: 

First, democracy does not require freedom of opinion. (It is a blessing that our Constitution guarantees it anyway.)

Second, the most successful multi-ethnic societies are empires, not democracies. If your goal is to create a fully-functioning multi-ethnic state characterized by diversity, equity, and inclusion, then quit mouthing democratic platitudes and forthrightly build a non-democratic empire.

Conversely, the most successful democracies (for example, the Scandinavian countries at least until very recently) have been mono-ethnic. This is not a historical accident, but in fact there are logical reasons for it.

Now, the main point of Rosenberg's article (as described by Shenkman) is that American democracy is doomed. And he might be right. Never mind that I have quibbled with his detailed points, but consider the consequences of the principles I have just outlined above. 

If indeed democracies require some nonnegotiable level of commonality among the citizens as a basis for sympathy and social trust; … 

… and if furthermore a (nominally) democratic society consciously undercuts or disregards any grounds for commonality among the citizens in the name of (for example) diversity or equity or inclusion; … 

… then naturally we should expect democracy in that country to STOP WORKING. 

And this is exactly what Rosenberg says: that democracy in the United States is no longer working, and will ultimately disappear. So in the end his observations and predictions may be completely accurate. It might just be his assessment of the causes that's a little off.

           

If I read as many books ....

Sometimes I wish I spent more time reading deep books, and less time on the Internet. And it's true that the Internet can be addicting. But it also tosses up the weirdest intellectual flotsam and jetsam, and sometimes this detritus can trigger interesting thoughts on its own.

It can be reassuring to know that even Thomas Hobbes, for his part, felt he hadn't read as much as many others had. But he reframed it as a strength. Maybe some day I can aspire to that.

 

          

Education for servitude

The United States prides itself on its democratic heritage. We believe in educating our children, and our neighbors, in the virtues of democratic citizenship. Or we say we do. But what does an education like that really mean?

In Book 3 of the Politics, Aristotle writes:

But [besides rule … over persons in a servile position] there is also rule of the sort which is exercised over persons who are similar in birth to the ruler, and are similarly free. Rule of this sort is what we call political rule; and this is the sort of rule which the ruler must begin to learn by being ruled and by obeying—just as one learns to be a commander of cavalry by serving under another commander, or to be a general of infantry by serving under another general and by acting first as colonel and, even before that, as captain. This is why it is a good saying that 'you cannot be a ruler unless you have first been ruled.' Ruler and ruled have indeed different excellences; but the fact remains that the good citizen must possess the knowledge and the capacity requisite for ruling as well as for being ruled, and the excellence of a citizen may be defined as consisting in 'a knowledge of rule over free men from both points of view.'

⸻Aristotle, Politics, Book 3, 1277b, ed. and tr. by Ernest Barker

(Oxford University Press, 1946, 1980), pp.104-5.

Ruling and being ruled. That's the key for Aristotle, and it makes sense. On the one hand, a free man should be able to rule his own affairs, and this means (in particular) knowing how to rule something successfully. On the other hand, no society can have everyone rule at once. (When I was a child the expression to describe that latter situation was, "All Chiefs and no Indians," but I suspect nobody says it that way any more.) So in a free society, responsible adults have to be able to pass back and forth smoothly from one state to the other. And the only way to learn this skill—Aristotle says this clearly too—is through practice.

How do we get that practice? Once upon a time, there were a number of ways.

• 
  If you go far enough back in time, most Americans lived on farms. Of course you might have been a hired hand on such a farm, or a cousin visiting for the long term; but if you owned the farm then you were responsible for it. The farm functioned like a small community. Whoever owned it (typically a Mother and Father) allocated chores among the people who lived there (themselves, and also the children and hired help, if any) and made decisions about how to use whatever was produced (what to consume, what to sell, what to buy with the proceeds). At the same time, a farm was likely not completely self-sufficient; so the owners of the farm were also members of a larger civil and political society, including church, schools, and towns of some kind, all governed by laws. While they ruled at home, in these other domains they were ruled by others.
  
  
• 
  Then there were townsfolk. These might be merchants or doctors, blacksmiths or lawyers, barbers or barkeeps, preachers or teachers. But again, if you go far enough back in time most of them were sole proprietors, or close enough. A successful merchant might hire a couple of men to handle his warehouse; a successful lawyer might take on a likely lad as a clerk. But in time the clerk could learn the law and might start his own practice; a man who started by heaving and stocking dry goods in a warehouse might go into business on his own moving and hauling. So the distance between the working man and the customer was small; and in this sense, many townsfolk were masters of their own affairs. At the same time, naturally, they were ruled in various ways by city, county, and state governments.
  
  
• It's also true that somebody had to hold these government positions, and frequently they were not full-time jobs.* So a prosperous farmer or a successful townsman, someone who could afford time away from work, might well run for office for a term or two and then go back to private life. Again, we see the alternation of ruling and being ruled.
  
  
• 
  And of course there were service clubs, fraternal organizations, and other kinds of voluntary groups. Most of them involved some level of governance, however minimal; most of those chose their officers according to some kind of vote for some kind of period, after which the office would expire and be conferred on someone else. Someone who didn't have time to run for City Council might be elected to head his local Rotary Club, or volunteer for a leadership position in 4-H, or Scouting.**

One way or another, then, it was not unusual for adult Americans to have some experience of leadership or responsibility over some group of other people, however small or temporary. And our idea was that this experience made us all better citizens. By diffusing the experience of command throughout the society, we thought we were making it less likely that we would later accept servitude or despotism. If we were used to standing up straight, we would find it harder to bow.

Sounds great. How's that working out for you?

These days? Not so well. 

The problem is that none of these avenues towards responsibility and the experience of temporary rulership has the same meaning it once did.

These days, fewer than 2% of Americans live on farms; so while the farm household might still function as a small-scale political community, it is not available as a learning environment for the overwhelming majority. 

In fact, never mind farms: even the ownership of real property—land—doesn't mean what it once did. At the time of the American founding, voting rights depended (among other things) on owning property, because property meant independence. The fear was that a man without property would vote however his employer told him to vote. But back when I owned a house, it didn't make me independent. All it meant was that I had a mortgage to pay every month, so I had a strong incentive to keep my job. If there had ever been a measure on the ballot which hurt my employer, I would have voted against it blindly, without a second thought—so I could keep paying my mortgage. So much for independence. 

Government jobs are full-time and professional now. (For the implications of this shift, see this wonderful essay by Charlie Stross.) Even towns and cities are mostly large enough that you are unlikely to be ruled by your neighbors anyway. I don't know many cities that still hold Town Meetings.

Fraternal organizations appear to be in decline. I can't speak for volunteer organizations of other sorts; but when my kids were in Scouts and Little League (and I was serving in the PTA), it seemed like I kept meeting the same small group of parents volunteering in one venue after another. (And of course they kept meeting me.)

But in some ways the biggest change—as monumental in its effects as the disappearance of our farm population—is the change in the nature of work. In most places, in most professions, sole proprietorship has disappeared. The polite question, when you meet someone new, is no longer "What do you do?" but "Who do you work for?" Economically speaking, Americans—rich and poor alike—are mostly employees. And American workplaces are not designed to be democratic institutions! Swedish managers may have to discuss a new initiative with their employees to get buy-in before implementing them. German managers have to get permission from the Betriebsrat before instituting major changes. American managers are free to call out, "Hey everyone! Gather 'round and listen up. Effective immediately …!" Don't like it? No hard feelings. You can always quit. It's a free country, after all.

"It's a free country," but in our daily working lives, as employees, our experience is of obedience to authority. This is true at the operational, or ground-floor level; but it's often true to some considerable extent in management as well. I worked once at a company where one of our Directors confided quietly to me that he was feeling really bad about his job because the VP that he worked for was regularly overruling all his decisions. This is the kind of management that Scott Adams lampoons so famously in The Pointy-Haired Boss, and Adams couldn't have made such a profitable career of his cartoons were it not that so many people recognized the scenarios on a visceral level.

Of course, workplaces differ, and I don't mean to sound bitter. On the whole my own experience with workplaces has been very pleasant. And in some workplaces, a measure of distributed responsibility is still possible. I have sometimes speculated that the closest I've ever come to the Aristotelean ideal of "ruling and being ruled" was when I managed a small department for a struggling technology start-up. My department had a critical (but very narrow) role in the operations, loosely characterized by everyone else as "the stuff that Hosea's group takes care of"; I was consulted on all major decisions that affected our work; then once a decision was finally made I saluted and went to implement it (even if I had argued the other way). Ruling and being ruled. And while I had no legal responsibility for the company (and no financial stake besides my salary and a few stock options), I was able to base my contributions on the company's overall needs and goals (as I understood them). This is what political engagement ought to look like, and what strikes me most is that it almost never does.

Certainly my engagement with the political entities where I live has never looked like this. Those organizations—city, county, state, and federal republic—ask me to cast a ballot every two years, and I do it because it is the right thing to do. But I can't believe it matters. My vote for Senator or President must surely disappear in the collective pool of votes as less than a rounding error. My vote for Mayor probably makes a little difference, because I don't live in a big city. Even so, I don't have any sense that the city is some kind of collective enterprise which needs my input. Voting is just a ritual, so I do it for the same reasons I celebrate holidays.  

I seem to have wandered some distance from my original topic, but the basic point remains. If a Man From Mars studied the way that most Americans live their lives on a daily basis, he would never call us a democracy. He would point out that as children we go to schools where we have to do what we are told; then as adults we go to jobs where we have to do what we are told. Outside of work, well, there are doctors and insurance companies and agencies and bureaus of one kind and another. The Man From Mars would tell us that our whole experience, most of the time for most of us, is that of obedience to authority. In practical terms, our lives are one long education for servitude.      

This essay is not a call for revolution. It is not an incitement to any kind of change. These conditions have grown up for reasons, which means that trying to make a sudden, abrupt, arbitrary change will be no help at all. But it is helpful to understand where we really are, especially when that point differs so far from the story we tell ourselves.

__________

* As late as the 1980's, when Howard Dean was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives and then later to the Vermont lieutenant-governorship, all of those roles were part-time positions and he maintained a private medical practice alongside to pay the bills. (Reference.)   

** And yes, I am conflating different decades here. Rotary and 4-H and Scouting were all founded in the first years of the 20th century, as the period of family farms and small towns of sole proprietors was beginning to recede into the past. But the point is that even as some opportunities for "ruling and being ruled" faded away, others came forward.   

                

Conquest's three laws

Yesterday, I was looking for something else on the Internet and I stumbled across something called "The Three Laws of Politics," from Robert Conquest. They go like this:

1. Everyone is reactionary about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. (Also called O'Sullivan's First Law.)
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. (Also called Conquest's Second Law.)

OK, they are funny. But why am I writing about them? My aim is to see whether I can give rational explanations for each one. I think I can.

Everyone is reactionary about what he knows best.

The Wikipedia article about Robert Conquest gives an example to illustrate this law:

In his 1991 Memoirs, Kingsley Amis wrote of Conquest that "he was to point out that, while very 'progressive' on the subject of colonialism and other matters I was ignorant of, I was a sound reactionary about education, of which I had some understanding and experience. From my own and others' example he formulated his famous First Law, which runs, 'Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.'

Fair enough, but why should it be true?

I think the reason goes something like this. To begin, "reactionary" is a term that contrasts with "progressive." People are "progressive" on a topic when they favor new methods; they are "reactionary" when they prefer old ones. 

Now, when you really grapple with a topic—carpentry, say, or music, or teaching—you learn from experience what works and what doesn't. And over time you learn where there are seductive-looking shortcuts that actually make the work worse rather than better. For the most part, the methods that work will be the same ones that successful practitioners have used in the past, because the discipline itself isn't going to change in a few paltry years, or even in a generation. The nature of the material will remain the same (the wood, say, or your instrument, or your students), and so will the successful methods. Consequently, when you really know a topic, you are likely to respect the wisdom of the traditional ways of handling it; and you will see the folly lurking behind attractive new methods, because you yourself probably tried something similar years ago and saw first-hand how it failed.

Therefore, by knowing the topic well, you will be reactionary about it.

Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

Again, the Wikipedia article gives examples: the Church of England, Amnesty International, the ACLU, and the Ford Foundation. But why should it be true?

The point of this principle seems to be that the natural tendency of any organization is to drift leftwards; therefore unless the organization is defined from the outset to be right-wing it will end up left-wing. (Presumably if an organization is defined from the outset to be right-wing, that might be enough to slow or even halt its natural drift.) So we can rephrase the question to ask: Why is it in the nature of organizations as such to drift to the left-wing?

You can find here the article (by John O'Sullivan) that originally proposed this law, but it doesn't give a very good explanation. All it says it that the "people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world"—but it doesn't say why that should be.

So let's start by understanding the terms left-wing and right-wing. These terms originated from the seating patterns in the French National Assembly, during the early days of the French Revolution. Those members of the Assembly who cared more passionately for social equality sat to the left of the President of the Assembly, while their opponents sat to the right. But in any society, the party which cares most about equality are always the Weak. The Strong are sure of their place and therefore are less likely to spend time thinking about equality; but the Weak fear being trampled by the Strong, and therefore cling to the ideal of Equality in self-defense.

In today's world, people who are sure of their own strength most often want to use that strength to make money. They are the ones who light out on their own to start businesses, or who rise quickly to the top to lead them. The people who do like "private profit, business, making money" are the Strong. 

The Weak, by contrast … well, of course there are gradations. The weakest simply fall through the cracks of society and end up on the bottom, no matter what. But there are others who are able to make a living for themselves, but who feel nonetheless far more kinship with the Weak than with the Strong. Perhaps we can call them the middling-Weak. These people become employees (almost never employers), because employment means a kind of security with only a narrow scope of responsibility. (The Owner or the Boss, by contrast, is responsible for everything.) And the best employer from the perspective of the middling-Weak is a large organization or institution. Organizations are force-multipliers. Organizations are like walled cities for the middling-Weak; and as long as they do their jobs faithfully, their organizations will protect them.

Therefore organizations (especially large ones) attract the middling-Weak; at the same time they tend to repel the Strong, because the Strong find them constraining. So over time, organizations (especially large ones) are staffed and managed predominantly by the middling-Weak. They may have been founded by strong men—John D. Rockefeller, say, or Henry Ford—but the strong men die after a time and a management team takes over. The management team contains a number who are middling-Weak, and every decade there are a few more. Consequently, over time the management team comes to feel more and more sympathy with the Weak in society at large. Over time, they throw the organization's weight behind causes that support or favor the Weak. And this is to say that over time they drift to the left-wing. 

The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.    

For this law, the Wikipedia article quotes one remark to the effect that "a bureaucracy sometimes actually IS controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies — e.g. the postwar British secret service." Even when such overt subversion is not literally at issue, though, the point is that bureaucratic organizations often behave in ways which are baffling if you consider their stated goals. I think that—again, leaving out overt subversion—I can identify two reasons.

First, the directors of the bureaucracy have their own private interests, which are bound to differ (in at least some respects) from the interests of the organization itself. So when they make choices, those choices are likely to be at some kind of angle from the organization's own interests. I don't mean that the directors simply exploit the organization cynically as a cover for their own actions. Doubtless that happens from time to time; but I think far more common is the case where the final decision is some kind of weird vector-sum of the interests of all the important directors individually, plus the interests of the organization simply. Trying to unravel the logic afterwards is likely to be very difficult. Hence the note of despair implicit in this law.

Second, the directors of a bureaucracy are often not as enlightened and perspicacious as we think they ought to be given their exalted position. Even the ones at the very top are human beings like you and me: and they are just as capable of being short-sighted, muddled, and confused as we are. When they make decisions that look gobsmackingly wrong-headed, of course it is possible that they are trying to subvert the organization from within (as per Conquest's Third law); and it is also possible that they are playing four-dimensional chess, so that things will all turn out fine for reasons we can't even imagine; but it is just as likely that they made a simple mistake.

Robert J. Hanlon summarized this last possibility in Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

So much for Conquest's Three Laws. 

               

Rousseau, rats, and the cuckoo-clock

A month ago I posted an interesting observation. In his famous work The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposes a simple criterion to establish the best governments in the world. "What is the purpose of any political association?" he asks. "The preservation and prosperity of its members.… [Therefore] other things being equal, the … best government is the one under which the population increases most…. The government under which the population shrinks is the worst. Over to you, Statisticians—count, measure, compare!" 

A simple lookup of countries ranked by rate of natural increase then shows us that—according to Rousseau—the best-governed countries in the world today are Niger, Uganda, Angola, and Benin. All have a rate of natural increase over 33‰.* If you want to pick one of these countries to move to—because they are so well-governed, I mean—you might make your choice based on what languages are available. (Looking only at European languages, you could choose from French, English, Portuguese, or French, respectively.)

But what are we to learn from this fact? Those of us who live today in the modern, advanced West are likely to view with alarm any suggestion that we move to one of these countries. Economically they are poor and struggling; politically they are far from free; even in the best country of the four, 17% of the population do not have access to an improved water supply.** Would Rousseau really have stuck to his guns, if he had known these facts, or would he have changed his mind about what criterion indicates the best government? Put more simply, was Rousseau merely ignorant, or was he crazy?

Or is there something more to these results than we see at first?

Between 1958 and 1962, the American ethologist John B. Calhoun conducted a series of studies on rats. Specifically, he created "rat utopias"—artificial environments with unlimited amounts of food and water (but finite living space), and with no risk from predators. After a couple of generations, the rats went crazy. They stopped reproducing: many female rats could no longer carry babies to term, and many male rats lost interest in sex. There were other dysfunctions too. Rats stopped grooming; heart attack and cancer rates soared; some turned to cannibalism or "frenetic overactivity," while others fell into "pathological withdrawal." These results seemed to correlate with overcrowding, but in fact the rats voluntarily increased their own overcrowding by choosing to eat all at once rather than waiting till others were not around. All kinds of discipline broke down; normal social behaviors vanished. The "rat utopias" became nightmares.***

No analogy is exact. But how hard is it to see the modern, advanced West as a human version of the "rat utopias"? Of course there are still pockets of poverty and deprivation in our societies, but many of us have all the food and water we need, even while we live in confined spaces. Many of us have minimal experience of violent crime, and none at all of warfare (the two most obvious forms of "predation" to which humans are subject in modern societies). And sure enough, our numbers are dropping—just like Calhoun's rat populations did. If Rousseau were evaluating Calhoun's experiments, he would have had no trouble at all concluding that the rats were miserable. He would have had no trouble at all identifying this misery as the source of the declining numbers.

Why shouldn't the very same argument apply to us? Because we like having enough to eat? Because we like being free from predators? 

I mean, … sure, of course we like those things. I like them! But if our objective behavior looks pathological, isn't it at least possible that we are confused or mistaken about what is good for us? Isn't it at least possible that we like peace and plenty the way a drunk likes his whiskey even while it is poisoning him? (For a further consideration of the ways in which modern Western society creates profoundly anti-natural stresses, see the extended discussion in this post here of the thought experiment from Frederica Mathewes-Green.) 

I don't want to argue in favor of hunger and repression, scarcity and warfare, as ideals necessary for human thriving. Really, truly, I don't. Show me where the argument is wrong.

Of course it is possible to spin this result in an idealistic direction, or in a coldly cynical one. As an example of the first, John Eldredge argues in his book Wild at Heart that we are built for combat and conflict because God created us in the middle of a world at war; and so long as Satan continues his war against God, so long will our lives require us to fight hard to win and guard everything good in them. Eldredge uses this idea to construct a spirituality that is at once modern, martial, and Christian. And yes, idealistic.

There's another way to interpret the insight that we somehow need deprivation and conflict to rise to our human potential. It's an interpretation put into the mouth of Harry Lime, in The Third Man. I think you know how it goes:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Show me where the argument is wrong. 

__________

* That's 33 per thousand. 

** The respective percentages (of people without access to an improved water supply) are: Niger, 31.43%; Uganda, the best of them at 16.86%; Angola, a whopping 33.54%; and Benin, 25.27%.   

*** For a more detailed account of the results of Calhoun's experiments, along with some of the lessons for human populations, consider for example this article here.    

               

Rousseau's challenge

How many of you remember Jean-Jacques Rousseau's work, The Social Contract? I had to read it for two different classes in school, so for a while I recalled it pretty clearly. But that was a long time ago, and I haven't thought about it since then. I do remember that I didn't think much of his ideas, and doubtless that is why.

But there was one passage that did stick in my mind, because it was unabashedly empirical, and it felt out of place in the rest of the work. The context is that Rousseau is talking about the various forms of government—monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and the like—and he asks which is the best? He explains that nobody has ever given a clear answer to this before, because no two authors can agree what criterion of "best" to use. Then he gives his own criterion, and it is breathtaking in its simplicity:

I am continually astonished that such a simple sign [of good government] isn’t recognized, or perhaps men do recognize it but aren’t honest enough to say so. What is the purpose of any political association? The preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign of their preservation and prosperity? Their number and their population[-growth]. That’s the sign you are looking for. Other things being equal, the unquestionably best government is the one under which the population increases most, without external help from naturalizing foreigners or establishing colonies. The government under which the population shrinks is the worst. Over to you, Statisticians—count, measure, compare! 

⸻The Social Contract, Book 3, Chapter 9, "The Marks of a Good Government."

Now this is simple! These numbers exist. These calculations can be done. What is more, they actually give a pretty consistent answer to the kind of regime that is the best—at least, according to Rousseau. I'm not quite sure Rousseau would be content with the answer, but he might. I do suspect he would be a little taken aback.

To measure population growth, we need to look at two numbers: total fertility rate, and mortality rate. It's no good finding a country with a very high rate of children born, if they then die just as fast. But this work has already been done. The metric we want is called the rate of natural increase: it is calculated by taking the total fertility rate and subtracting the mortality rate. This is Rousseau's key metric for evaluating the relative goodness or badness of forms of government. (Sometimes the same or similar form of government might show up in very different circumstances with different results; so perhaps it is less misleading to speak of the "regime"—a term that collects together the form of government and the way of life.)

Using the RNI data in Wikipedia as of today (Thursday, January 25, 2024), the top 23 countries with the largest RNI are all in Africa:

If you look at the next 33, they are in either Africa, or Oceania, or southwest Asia (mostly in the Middle East):

Only with numbers 57 and 58 do we get countries in the Western Hemisphere: Guatemala and Belize, respectively. The first European country is Kosovo (#133) followed by Iceland (#138). The United States drags in at #165, and Canada at #177. Ukraine limps in at #224 (out of 228 total), but of course there's a war in Ukraine right now and that might affect the numbers. 

What does this tell us? What is the great advantage that Niger, Uganda, and Angola have over the industrialized West? I don't know enough about the countries to be sure, but I can hazard a few remarks.

• Poverty does not appear to be an obstacle to a high RNI. Many of the countries near the top of the list are poor.
• Recent warfare does not appear to be an obstacle to a high RNI, as many of the countries near the top of the list have experienced war, civil war, or other political troubles. Active war, of course, reduces RNI by dramatically increasing the mortality rate.
• The lack of political liberty as we understand it in the West does not appear to be much of an obstacle either: Niger, Uganda, and Angola all score pretty poorly on any of the various "freedom indices" in use. 
• I wonder about religious faith. Does anybody know if religion is stronger in these countries than in the largely secular West?

What this seems to suggest is that Man thrives in adversity, not security; in want, not plenty. And if that is true, then pretty nearly the whole history of Western political thought has been barking up the wrong tree.

It's a sobering thought, and I don't know how to pursue it right now.   

Copyright Poppytarts. Used on page List of countries by rate of natural increase. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

               

Art of the possible

Is it just me, because I spend too much time on Twitter (X), or do more and more people these days frame political differences as moral ones? Maybe we always did that. When I was in university, back in the 1980's, my friends assumed that people who supported the Reagan tax cuts must feel personal, Scrooge-like satisfaction at the ruination of the Less Fortunate. No doubt people on the other side of the aisle returned the favor by assuming that my friends (and those who agreed with them) hated America. These days, Biden-supporters accuse Donald Trump of dictatorial ambitions; Trump-supporters accuse Joseph Biden of treason and bribery. If you support some policy that I oppose, it seems almost natural for each of us to accuse the other of moral wickedness: How could you possibly support such an evil plan? You must be evil!

Of course, the whole idea in a democracy is that we should work out our differences through compromise. Since good cannot compromise with evil, moralizing our policy differences threatens to shut down that part of the democratic process. But what are we supposed to do instead? If the other person's policy really is wicked, how can you ask us to smile and shake hands?

There are several answers to this, but I think one of the simplest is to remember that Politics is the art of the possible. In other words, I support this or that policy not necessarily for its own sake, but because I think it is the most likely way to achieve some higher goal. And when I reject your policy, it's not necessarily because I reject your goals. It might be just that I don't think your policy will work in the real world.

As an example, let's pretend that I think there is some miraculous energy source available that distills electricity out of thin air, at no cost and with no pollution or other harmful side effects. And let's pretend that you don't believe any such thing exists, but support some other kind of energy policy instead. It really doesn't matter what energy policy you support, because whatever it is—solar, wind, nuclear, gas, oil, coal, or something else—will have costs and side-effects. Since I believe there is a kind of energy available that has no costs and no side-effects, I will be unable to understand why you don't support it. And I will be deeply disturbed that you support something else instead. Over time, I will probably convince myself that you support That Other Form of Energy only because you have been bribed, or because you secretly profit from it, or because you are callously indifferent to the fate of humanity. Why else would you reject my solution to the energy question?

Of course the reason you reject my solution is that you don't think it will work. This is a factual question: it should be possible for us to study it dispassionately and come to an answer. Either Yes, my proposed energy source does everything I claim for it; or else No, it does not. And either answer should resolve our disagreement.

Just as an experiment, let's use this method when facing other political disputes as well. Before concluding that our opponents are wicked, let's check their understanding of the facts. It might turn out that they want to achieve the same things we do, but that they don't think our approach will work. Or perhaps they don't see the dangers that we can observe in their approach. And even if we disagree with them, we can't really fault them for leaving out of consideration any options they deem impossible.