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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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It really isn't. Democracy is about letting people have a say. They may be wrong, they may vote for candidates I think are stupid. They may hold ideas I think are harmful. But democracy isn't about making the best decisions. There is no wisdom of crowds in this situation. Thats not why democracy is good.

That's one way of defining democracy. But it's very different from the Rousseauan view (particularly the Jacobin variety), wherein "democracy" becomes about government acting in accord with Rousseau's "General Will" — which is not the same thing as the will of the majority. As you note, the latter can be wrong, while the former is always correct by definition.

Yes but Rousseau seems to be entirely incorrect. His claim basically is that individual men of simplicity will by deliberation in small groups find that the common good will be so obvious that only common sense is required to identify it. Likewise he believes that such simple folk cannot be fooled or confused by stratagems.

Looking around I see that conception to not actually tally with reality. So whether there is such a general will may be irrelevant, even in small groups making the right choices is not clearly obvious. And even if it were it only applies in small groups (groups of peasants making decisions around an oak tree being his rather picturesque vision), given that is not the type of democracy we are operating in even Rousseau wouldn't think it could apply here. The General will is simply not available to us at this scale.

Yes but Rousseau seems to be entirely incorrect.

I agree, but it doesn't stop people from invoking concepts from his work… or, more specifically, Jacobin-derived interpretations thereof.

The General will is simply not available to us at this scale.

Here, the people I've read break from Rousseau, in that it's not the simple peasants who identify the common good. Instead, it is only elite technocratic experts who have the right mix of talent and education to work out the correct choices, and it is by "deliberation in small groups" of these rare people that the General Will can be divined. And thus, "democracy" is when these experts become the intellectual vanguard of the ruling elite, and the greatest threat to "democracy" is the "populist" who would unseat them by appealing to the superstitions and prejudices of the less-enlightened masses.

We're a representative democracy, and the elected officials are to represent the people. Well, to quote from a previous comment of mine:

…consider individuals who need a “representative” to act on their behalf. Children, the senile, the mentally ill, and so on. What makes a parent, a legal guardian, a representative with “power of attorney,” a good representative? Well, one who acts to their own personal benefit, to the expense of the person they’re representing — one who embezzles funds, for example — is definitely a bad one. This is analogous to the “non-democratic elites” outlined above

But consider the opposite end. I’m reminded here of Bill Cosby’s “chocolate cake for breakfast” stand-up routine. If your kids answer the question of what they want for breakfast with chocolate cake, should you give them what they want? If a schizophrenic wants a doctor to open up their skull and remove the CIA mind-control chip beaming thoughts into their head, does a good guardian start looking for a brain surgeon?

No, a good representative acts in the best interest of the person they represent. A good representative respects their clients wishes… so long as it isn’t against their best interests. Here, the analogy to the overly-permissive parent or guardian is the sort of politician people like the essayist denounce as a “populist” (with or without the “authoritarian” modifier), and you or I might call genuinely democratic. Someone who enacts the popular will — which, per Rousseau, is just another “particular will” — instead of the “general will”. (As I once saw it put, the difference is that the “popular will” is the will of The People (plural) while the “general will” is the will of The People (singular).)

Note that there’s not a strict binary. It’s not “let your kids have chocolate cake or ice cream for breakfast” vs. “you dictate entirely what your kids will have for every meal, they get no choice at all.” You can let them pick which breakfast cereal they might want, or between pancakes and waffles, between oatmeal or French toast, and so on. You can give them a constrained choice among a menu of acceptable meal choices. Even an institutionalized schizophrenic, or an elderly person with senile dementia, has rights to some measure of choice around their activities, circumstances, treatment, and so on; but only when it’s not counter to their own best interests.

Hence, a “stage managed” “defensive democracy” with a strictly limited menu of choices for an electorate who, between public choice theory “rational ignorance” and Marxist “false consciousness”, don’t always know what’s in their own best interest, nor which potential representative is most skilled at determining what that societal best interest is.

Generally, it seems to me like many have come to hold two apparently contradictory propositions:

  1. Liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government. Our governments are democracies, and it is from this that they draw their legitimacy.

  2. The masses are too ignorant, misinformed, bigoted, and superstitious to generally know what's in their own best interest; nor to determine which potential representative would be most skilled at determining what that societal best interest is; and thus the government cannot afford to allow their input much weight on how it governs them.

One way to square these is to simply ditch #1 — this is the Moldbug "formalist" position. Tell people our "Brahmin/Elf" elite caste are legitimate rulers not because of "consent of the governed," but because they're literally the only people with the smarts and know-how to be capable of governing a complex modern society.

Of course, this runs against centuries of deeply-ingrained cultural mythology, particularly in the US. I mean, we're coming up on the 4th of July. Freedom, democracy, the Founding Fathers standing up to King George, et cetera. Many wouldn't take such an ideological u-turn very well (hence Yarvin's cryptographic weapon locks, VR, and so on).

But then, we notice that #1 and #2 are only actually incompatible if we define "democracy" in #1 to mean something that includes "the masses having significant input on how they are governed." And, like Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty noted, definitions are flexible; modern academia has made an artform of playing games with the definitions of words. Thus, one can resolve the paradox by adopting a definition of "democracy" wherein the influence of the electorate plays little role, a “stage managed” “defensive democracy” where the voters are free to choose… among a strictly-limited menu of elite-acceptable choices. And if you look at the methodologies used by many of the "democracy indices" that purport to measure how "democratic" various countries are, you'll see something that puts a lot more weight on 'does it have these various things left-leaning technocrats like?' and less on 'how responsive to the electorate is it?'

In short, we're definitely still a democracy… where "democracy" means whatever our unaccountable elites say it does.