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Re: Questioning Democracy

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Matthew -

I just don't see why you think that there are some people better placed than others to make political decisions (as opposed to technical/implementation decisions, where some degree of expertise might be useful). It's taken us a v long time to get to universal suffrage, and I'd rather not see it disappear - most of the members of this group (tho not me, ha ha!) would be disenfranchised by age, sex or a property qualification!

Politics is not a technical matter. It's about preferences and priorities, about deciding what it is you want.

Of COURSE the people (as a lump) are not automatically correct. but the (correct) implication of that is that no-one is automatically correct. Take your cars example - I happen to agree with your point, but it's up to me to argue this point in the political arena, and to try to win people over. Opinions genuinely differ... one can accept that an expert is an expert in their field, but that doesn't mean I must want what they tell me (consider the evidence from smoking - we've known for 40 years that smoking = death, and young people still smoke). We could have big govt deciding these things for us, but given the risks of that (Stalinist 5 year plans, anyone?) most democratic governments prefer to walk a fine line - a bit of persuasion, creeping legislation in areas of uncontroversial benefit, holding the ring between competing views, checks and balances. If you want something, go out and campaign for it - that's the freedom that a democracy gives you.

Actually, you and I may be, but I don't think most of us are moral realists (I think most of us are egoists, but that's a different point). Morality is again disputed territory, and I very much doubt that ethicists are better placed than others to make moral decisions (tho some of my best friends are ethicists!). Weak joke from Jeff Ketland (Edinburgh): 'why should ethicists be ethical? I'm a geometer, but I'm not a triangle!'.

If you're talking applied ethics, you can pick your morality from a huge marketplace - you'll find people arguing for pretty well every position, so again you have to CHOOSE - these are not technical questions. The desire to have only the righteous making decisions is what leads to theocracies, and they can be scary (cf old Iran, Calvinist Geneva, the Inquisition, Measure for Measure etc). the job of government, as I see it, is not to legislate morality any more than is needed to make it possible for people to live together without hurting one another. Law is, as someone said, the widest boundary of morality.

And that's why democracy is good, if sub-optimal - because it allows a lot of voices to be heard, in areas where there are conflicting interests.

On the death penalty, the reason we don't have it is the very checks and balances I mentioned last time. MPs are not mandated, they are representatives, and expected to vote on their consciences. No-one is suggesting that they SHOULD be mandated - I would argue for a representative democracy, not a direct one - but I want to maintain the right to kick em out if they go beyond the pale (as in e.g. voting for a death penality because the current crop of 'experts' or 'moralists' tell them to!)

Rant over. I'll go back to my lair now.

best
nick j



Matthew Hodgetts wrote:

I take on board what you are all saying about the stability of a democracy and the advantages the spread of power might have for preventing tyranny. I guess that these are empirical matters and we need to go out into the world to find out what the most stable and most free form of government is. Fine. I want to look at the more philosophical aspect of why serving the interests of the people should be the aim of government or even be a good idea generally. I have some prima facie reasons why it is not a good idea:
* The people are not automatically correct. For example, the use of petrol in cars is seriously bad for the environment, and I think that we should accept that the environment needs looking after. Hence let's say that the government should put a heavy tax on fuel so as to reduce usage and hence damage to the environment. But what if the self-interested public wants cheap petrol? Does the government now have some (moral?) obligation to reduce fuel duty and let the environment be damned because it's /vox populi/?
*The people's wishes might be immoral. If we are taking realism about ethics seriously (and, deep down, I think most of us do) then things can be right or wrong. Somethings should not be done. I agree that finding answers in ethics is hard, but ethics is some kind of a (non-empirical) science. People study it: they are called ethicists. They are better informed to make ethical decisions, than the public at large. Ethical decisions are arguably the most important ones, shouldn't we do more than contract these important decisions out to the laity? Suppose you have serious ethical objections to the death penalty, and yet you are a proper democrat. (The majority of people in the UK support capital punishment: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=23&did=210#ip04 <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=23&did=210#ip04> I can't actually find the /Guardian/ article it talks about). What do you do? You can be democratic or do the right thing. Democracy seems to require that sometimes you don't do the right thing.
*People don't always know what's good for them. We all look too much at the short term, even if screwing up our long term interests.
So there are some initial reasons against democracy being an ends in itself (rather than just a means to preventing tyranny). What reasons do we have to actually think that the people's wishes have some kind of legitimacy in themselves, just because they are people's wishes?
M.

On 05/01/06, *nj8* <nj8@ntlworld.com <mailto:nj8@ntlworld.com>> wrote:

    To reply to this message or start a new topic please email:
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    I was shooting from the hip, rather (don't have a lot of time
    right now)
    but WHY shouldn't the people have the power? they are the ones
    affected
    by the decisions, after all.

    There is an awful lot of political theory on how & why bureaucratic
    democracies (in the +ve sense) work ...  but it seems to me to
    come down
    to stability: there are checks and balances. In a democracy, there is
    probably more of a closed circle of accountability than in
    business. I
    elect you in, I thereby give you authority to make the law for me (to
    'lead' me if you like), but I can help to get rid of you if I
    don't like
    the way you do it.

    Of course, I don't get everything I want, but why should I expect
    that
    when there are 60m other voices out there? If I don't like your
    abortion
    policy, I'd rather have the chance to get rid of you than to be stuck
    with you for ever (or until the men in grey suits, or sandals, decide
    THEY want someone else...)

    best
    nj

    Matthew Hodgetts wrote:

    > 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



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