Democracy’s Original Sin

 

Well, we didn’t get the Red Wave. 

Whether we get the hoped-for Gridlock remains to be seen. But we learned something — Trump’s touch is now toxic. 

Not that The Donald sees it that way. Nor would it dissuade him if he did. He’s making a run for it again. And the irony is that just like libertarians often spoil the party for conservatives (The Florida Senate runoff was hilariously brought about by a Libertarian candidate) Trump has plenty of die-hard support to run as an independent, split the right, and give Democrats an easy lay-up in 2024. 

Oh boy… 

That’s democracy in action. And, yes, no matter the result — or whether you even voted — it is all democracy in action. 

Democracy isn’t a result, it’s a process. That distinction creates a lot of confusion. It opens the door for manipulation. It gets folded into Newspeak. 

And gives every commie in government the opportunity to create division. 

Initial Condition 

The word Democracy demands qualification. 

It gets tossed about like an absolute. But the results of democracy depend heavily on conditions. Whether a democracy promotes justice depends entirely on how it protects individual liberty. 

Shared values around which a society centers itself result in minimal alienation. Inevitable power shifts make whatever alienation exists endurable. I’d call this America through the 90s. 

Polarize those values and something else emerges. 

When one side’s policies diverge sharply from the other side’s, the intolerable burden spreads wider for longer. Democracy becomes a tyranny to massive portions of the country, no matter which side controls the gavel. 

It’s two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. You still have a democracy, but not the kind I want. 

Now, both sides share equal blame in undermining individual liberty. Both parties spent decades removing links from the constitutional chains binding government. 

But I don’t blame the inevitable scrambling for control of the government’s conch. Those incentives will always exist. 

No, for me, the blame lies in democracy’s original sin. 

Spread Discontent Equally 

That original sin is the simple majority. 

Fifty-one percent pushing the other forty-nine around? That’s not common ground. It’s a tug-of-war. 

But the 50% threshold is arbitrary. It’s the default solution of simple reasoning. The majority threshold can be moved depending on the conditions you wish to create. Fifty percent just seems fair (in a kindergarten sort of way). But it doesn’t scale to accommodate divergent values. So, when binding the government in chains to preserve the individual is the goal, I have an idea on how to turn that dial up to 11. 

Though, before I give you that dial, I gotta warn you… 

You will not like it. 

My solution is tough. Too tough when history has conditioned us to accept the primacy of the simple majority by default. 

But so too were the ideas enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Ideas that broke the power of the crown and the church backed by nearly 2,000 years of precedent. 

So, I’m telling you this plan knowing full well no one will vote for it. Everyone will hate it. And I’m also telling you that is exactly why it would work. 

That plan is to simply bump up the threshold for majority to 80%. 

And more shockingly (especially to me) is that I suggest that this democracy be direct. 

Push Majority Towards Consent 

Yes, you read that right. 

I, Don Yocham, being of sound mind and body, do openly suggest to you before All That Is that, for a bill to become law, 8 out of 10 people must consent. Furthermore — yes there is more — I am suggesting that were we to do that, we could toss our current Republic aside and still tilt the scales reliably towards freedom and justice. 

Now, the optimal threshold could well be 70%. But 80% is as good a place as any from which to reason our way to a more “liberty-conscious” result. 

Either way, this threshold raises the bar of majority far closer to consent while not moving it so far as to give absolutists, of which there are only a few, a permanent roadblock to law. 

To be sure, there are more empirical approaches to iterate what threshold is optimal. That can wait, though. Besides, I’m not here to convince you. At least not yet. Because, like I said, no one’s gonna like it. 

But with Chaos still on the approach we may all soon realize that the only process that works is one that nobody in power likes. 

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