Democracy Isn't About The People

Nor is it about ruling, 'cause it's pretty bad at it.

Winston Churchill famously publicized the quote:

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

This is true and it is false.

Let’s discuss.

Government as an Optimization Process

Each form of government can be thought of as an optimization process. A government is structured in such a way as to maximize some particular quality or capacity.

For instance, autocracies are optimized to empower the autocrat. When the autocrat is an intelligent and wise ruler, this can make it the most effective form of government; when the autocrat is malicious and/or a moron, this magnifies their malignancy and/or stupidity.

Anarchies are optimized to maximize a very literal kind of freedom - the freedom to literally do absolutely anything an individual can think of in the next few minutes. At their best they can be a refuge for the weird and the marginalized; at their worst they generally descend into Kraterocracy, or rule by the strongest.

Oligarchies optimize for a balance of power among a few different people or factions.

Theocracies supposedly optimize for religious piety in the population (though I’d argue generally wind up as either autocracies or oligarchies in practice).

Communism is supposed to be about optimizing for equality or fairness, but in practice and at scale always becomes an autocracy, optimizing for the power of the person in charge.

Each kind of government’s optimization process leads to different sorts of leaders. The qualities it takes to gain power in a democracy are different from the qualities it takes to gain power in an autocracy; how power changes hands in each type of government informs whose hands that power will go to.

Let’s look at autocracies as an example.

Exchanging Power in an Autocracy

If one lives in an autocracy, whether the form is a monarchy or dictatorship, the options for changing who is in charge are very limited.

Specifically, the person in charge usually has to die for power to change hands.

(Technically thrones can be abdicated and dictators can step down, but I think this is pretty rare, because a) powerful people don’t often relinquish power voluntarily and b) stepping down from a dictatorship means all the enemies you’ve made will now find it easier to kill you.)

Sometimes it’s tolerable to let time do the killing for you - eventually everyone will die of old age if nothing else kills them. But time doesn’t tend to kill people very quickly, and sometimes you want power to change hands at a faster pace.

On the whole, if one wants power to change hands in an autocracy, the only option (aside from waiting) is violence. Kill the autocrat, and have someone else take their place.

This is…problematic.

Conquering != Ruling

There’s a process to becoming a powerful person, and the process depends upon how one becomes powerful in a given situation. In the US, our politicians gain power by becoming very good at getting people to vote for them. This involves charisma, fundraising, demagoguery or oratory skills, and so on.

But if you live in a time and place where the way to seize power is violence, then it’s almost guaranteed that the people who come to power will be selected for those who are good at violence.

Being good at violence is not a skill that translates well to ruling effectively. Great conquerors rarely make good rulers.

The Problem with Autocracy

Putting these ideas together, the problem autocracies face is this:

In an autocracy, the only way to change the autocrat is through violence, which means that autocrats are selected for being good at violence, not for being good at ruling. So autocracies will, in general, produce poor rulers.

Now that we’ve seen how this plays out in an autocracy, let’s take a look at democracies.

Democracies

Democracies Aren’t Efficient or Effective

In the US, we live in a democracy - specifically a representative democracy. We elect leaders to represent us, and those leaders do the actual work of governing.

How has this worked out?

Well, rather than attempt to score a quarter-millennia of history, I’ll simply say that the consensus seems to be that most of the time our government is pretty terrible about actually accomplishing anything important.

(Criticisms of the American government are very easy to find, especially in America. I sometimes think of it as our national sport.)

When it takes years and millions of dollars to build a bench in California, some of this criticism seems justified.

That being said, I like to think of democracy differently.

What Democracy Doesn’t Optimize For

People think that democracy is optimizing for the government’s actions to reflect the will of the people being governed.

It isn't.

People think that democracy is optimizing for the people’s voices being heard in the halls of power, or optimizing the extent to which the government is serving the people.

Nope.

Democracy isn’t even about optimizing the degree to which the elected leaders are accountable to the people they represent, although that’s a part of the story.

So What Does Democracy Optimize?

What democracy really optimizes for - and the reason it’s been so successful - is the ability to exchange control of the government between opposing factions without violence.

When power can be won without violence (through a vote, in the case of a democracy), the winners are people who are good at convincing others to vote for them, not violence.

Thus the quality selected for in leaders is the ability to convince people to follow.

Granted, ‘the ability to convince people to follow you’ is not the same as ‘actually good at ruling’, but it’s a lot closer to it than ‘being better at violence than your competitors’.

In addition, the regular elections of a democracy give the opposition an alternative to violence. It’s a lot easier to wait four years for the next election than to violently overthrow the government.

Democracy survives and thrives not because it rules effectively, but because it’s a stable structure for ruling that survives the change of who’s in charge.

That is the advantage of democracy, and why I’m bullish on it over autocracies, theocracies, and so on.