18A047  Not Even Democracy Works by Jim Davies, 11/20/2018   

Government doesn't work; that's a theme struck here rather often. But a current crisis in the UK underscores a new theme: that even its supposedly best form, in which government is responsive to voters, doesn't work either. And in Britain, that form has had longer than anywhere to be tested.

The problem centers around "Brexit". Two years ago there was a referendum about whether the UK should remain in the European Union, or leave it; everyone with standing and influence favored the "remain" side and that was widely predicted to win, but in the event they lost. It was a good moment, and a ZGBlog gave some details under the subtitle A Worm Turned.

That's the source of the present mess, because of the three main parties in the House of Commons, only one had any members in favor of Leaving; that was the ruling Conservative Party and even there, they were outnumbered by at least 2 to 1. That overwhelming majority (in the House) for Remaining has continued to the present day; there is simply no willingness in government for doing what the people have directed.

David Cameron was Prime Minister at the time, and it's to his credit that he called for the Referendum. He then erred, in my view, by campaigning for the Remainers (he should have stood aside, neutral) and when the vote went against that he resigned. In due course Theresa May took his place, knowing full well that she had to take the country out of the Union; Brits simply do not wish to be ruled from Brussels. In more than two years, she has failed to do so.

There is, therefore, a conflict; voters say A while government says Non-A. Democracy fails. Brendon O'Niell, Editor of Spiked! put it this way on November 15th:

We are witnessing a historic demoralisation of democracy. We must act...

Throughout the democratic era, political parties have reneged on manifesto promises. Politicians have let people down. Promised dawns of plenty and liberty have failed to materialise. That is par for the course in an imperfect democratic system.

But this is something else. This is something worse. For here we have a political class standing in direct opposition to the people’s democratic cry. The thing we voted for in a free, fair, mass and historic fashion – the re-energising of British sovereignty and of British democracy – is being flagrantly denied to us by the establishment.

Notice, O'Niell believes in democratic rule, he's no anarchist; but he says it isn't working. He's right.

He's only partly right, though; and not just because that article is headed "How to Save Brexit" while failing to make any proposal for doing so. There's a deeper problem. The very "establishment" that is clearly denying and frustrating the people's will has itself been elected by the people. Every member of the House of Commons got there because voters so chose. So voters have spoken with a forked tongue; there is ample fault in the establishment, but there's fault also in the "demos."

At first sight, one might explain it away by suggesting that voters have Party preferences in general but a particular wish on the single issue of Brexit. For example a voter might favor most of the Labour Party's policies, but not on this one topic.

Now we're getting close to the core of the fraud called "Democracy" or "Majority Rule." Any one voter has a range of preferences, and chooses the candidate who comes closest - who says he agrees with the voter more often than his rivals do. So a voter might have 20 subjects about which he feels strongly; Joe Rep makes speeches that seem to favor 11 of them, while Pat Dem appears to favor only 8. So the voter picks Joe - even though Joe disagrees with him on the remaining 9 issues. And he is just one voter out of 130 million, in the US. And naturally (as O'Niell remarks) there's no guarantee that Joe will keep his promises, hell having not yet frozen over, even assuming his party wins control and so enables him to do so.

So of course it cannot work. There is no possibility of it working. The notion that in a democracy everyone gets what he wants from government, or even approximately what he wants, is nonsense; it cannot possibly be done. On the contrary, virtually every voter is doomed to be disappointed. And that is government in its best form; always, a source of conflict, disharmony, dissatisfaction. Contrast a free-market or zero government society, in which all interactions are voluntary; thanks to the fact that value is subjective, everybody wins! That is what awaits us, in the zero government society.