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Re: Questioning Democracy

OK, I admit that it might be hard to form a system so that everyone is always accountable. But that doesn't mean that we should shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well, it might as well be the public." It just occurs that in a business everyone is accountable to someone higher than themselves: bottom-rung people to middle management to senior management to senior executives, who in turn are responsible (often but not always) to boards, whose members have their personal bosses. Nobody need not have anyone above them. But I think I am slightly twisting what you are saying Nick, You say
 
> The thing about democracy is that it recognises that everyone has interests.
 
You think that the specifically the people should have oversight. Fair enough, but be careful not to presuppose this (ie democracy) when trying to defend democracy. I want to know whether a government should even be trying to serve the interests of the people. I know that it is hard to decide what the 'right thing to do is,' but I would much rather have ethicists decide my countries abortion policy than the man on the street.
 
Just on a pedantic note, it's not true that in a democracy politicians do not follow their own (or their party's own) agenda. Of course they do, we don't have the people's wishes served just like that. Politicians do things the people don't want ( e.g. the war against Iraq had a majority opposing it, yet it still happened, (not trying to comment of rightness or wrongness of that btw), and they fail to do things that the majority of people in this country want (e.g. reinstating capital punishment).
 
I think that we can say a lot about the failings of democracy and the possible advantages or disadvantages of 'meritocracy,' but I wonder what people think about the presupposition of democracy that government ought to be just trying to satisfy the wishes of as many of the electorate as possible? (Perhaps this isn't a good definition of what democracies are supposed to do, I don't know).
 
Matthew