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Matthew On your
first point, the problem is finding a reliable mechanism for identifying the
‘right’ thing to do. We will mostly disagree as to what this should be. However
on this, the democratic process has great strength. It provides an opportunity
for social engagement and explicit agreement over the rules that society places
over itself. Thereby, it can remove a
source of dispute from the restrictions that we place upon our own freedom. In
fact, its greatest strength is precisely that we (and not someone else) are
placing restrictions on our freedom. On the
question of who governs, the non-optimal choice of who governs may reflect our
poor education about democracy and its operation and (maybe) our lack of effort
in learning and engaging ourselves in the process – at least such opportunities
exist in our democratic world. It may also reflect the impossibility for any
human mind to grasp the variables involved in optimising the operation of a
nation of (say) 60m humans, each of whom has countless factors affecting their
desires and these factors are all varying with time and are dependent on the
life experience of the individual. Anyone who has run a business of even a few
employees can attest to the difficulties. I believe the armchair critics give
the politicians an excessively hard time. Politicians are not perfect and some
are better than others but if the wrong ones get elected we have only one place
to look – in the mirror. Your idea
of meritocratic government seems to be a technocracy. Maybe, it is not wildly
dissimilar to most liberal democracies. For example, in the UK, the civil
service (your decision makers) make most of the day-to-day decisions but are
guided in the broad thrust of policy by the elected Ministers. If the UK
suffers from poor government then I think that it is not just the poor quality
of our MPs that requires attention but also the lack of technical qualification
(particularly scientific) of our civil service. The comparison with the quality
of European governments is stark (and not favourable to the UK). [BTW, Angela
Merkel has a PhD in Physics.] Alex As an
aside, one of my favourite bitter Churchillian quotes is: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with
the average voter. -----Original
Message----- Edward, I
have to agree with your questioning democracy, so if you don't mind the
excursion I'll just try to summarise (what I think the main problems are): * Goverments
make laws, and laws are supposed to be aimed at 'doing the right thing.' So,
for a topical example, perhaps there should be a law about vegetarianism. No
doubt some think that it should be legally compulsory, and others will
disagree. Somehow we have to come to the right answer about this. I have my own
opinions about this that not everyone will agree with, but I hope that we can
agree that 'the right thing to do' is not synonymous with 'what most people
think,' (unless you accept some weird kind of intersubjectivist ethics I
guess). Consensus is of course a nice thing to get, but just because there is a
consensus about something doesn't make things right: there is a majority
consensus that eating meat is OK, but this of itself doesn't justify eating
meat. So Governments should do the right thing, not what the people want, and
democracy fails to do this. * As a
general meritocratic principle, I think that whoever is most qualified (in
whatever sense) to do a job or make a decision should be the one to do it.
That's why we go to a doctor when we're ill and not a police officer.
Government is a hugely important job, so it is really important that
governmental decisions are made by experts in the appropriate field, ( e.g.
public health decisions should be made by doctors, regional public health
officials etc). But legislative decisions aren't made by experts in the field.
Instead the democratic system means that the people who make decisions are
those who are good at (for whatever reasons) are good at getting elected. Perhaps a
meritocratic government would look like this: you're interested in public
health, so after university you join the Department of Health, working on
various projects of theirs. Just like in a corporation, as you do well you are
promoted to more important jobs with greater responsibilities. As you rise
through the ranks (learning more and more about public health as you do) you
eventually reach a position where you (in consultation with others, of course)
begin to make decisions that have effects upon public health at a national
level: legislative decisions in effect. Other government departments would work
in the same way. I don't know whether this would work, as we'd only really know
by testing it, (perhaps people know of examples from history?), but it
certainly doesn't seem obviously flawed to me. As a final point, I think
that democracy does have one saving grace, and that is that (historically at
least) because the people choose the leaders, and the leaders are thus
dependent upon public support, democracy does seem to be a good way of
preventing tyranny, and tyranny (I don't have a definition, but an intuitive
grasp will suffice) is something definitately worth avoiding. Matthew |