Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media.(static)
Ed Brayton also blogs at Positive Liberty and The Panda's Thumb
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Category: Politics
Posted on: July 20, 2008 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton
James Madison accurately describes the nature of the mob mentality in Federalist 55:
In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
He was right.
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Comments
If Madison is correct, then we must ban assemblies of people beyond the critical number.
I hope the Constitutional Convention was below the critical mass, or we may need to rewrite the Constitution based on the input from an appropriately small number of legislators.
Don't even start about the US House of Representatives. 435!! What were they thinking?!?
Posted by: Gingerbaker | July 20, 2008 9:49 AM
This is a good reason for why we must resist the urge to move ourselves more in the direction of direct democracy. The Founders hated democracy (as opposed to republicanism) because it was more like "mobocracy" and the people don't always possess the knowledge and insight to rule effectively that experienced legislators do. Several states have proposed to convert the election of president away from the electoral college to a direct election system. I think that is a mistake; in fact, I think it was even a mistake to change the US Senate to a direct election system because it diluted the influence and checks and balances of the state legislatures over Congress.
Posted by: mroberts | July 20, 2008 10:45 AM
Have no fear...Chuck Norris has the solution! Chuckie thinks the House should be changed to only one representative per state, eliminating that pesky problem of a large liberal states having more representation than the barely populated red states. Norris, being the constitutional scholar that he is, actually thinks that the clause in Article I of the Constitution guaranteeing at least one representative per state means that there is an option to HAVE only one representative per state, eliminating the entire notion of representation based on population. Read all about it in his latest column on WorldNutDaily: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=69528
Oh...and here's my rebuttal to Chuckie's batshit crazy proposition:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/just-when-you-think-chuck_b_113200.html
Posted by: Chris Rodda | July 20, 2008 11:17 AM
mroberts wrote:
This is a rather dramatic overstatement of the case. First of all, democracy and republicanism are the same thing; the old "we're a republic not a democracy" cliche is absurd. Direct democracy is one form of democracy; liberal democracy (or republicanism) is another. A republic IS a democracy. And the reason the founders built things like a judiciary that serves for life into the system was because they knew that democracy and liberty were often in conflict and they rightly preferred liberty.
The electoral college has nothing to do with moving the US toward a "direct democracy." Direct democracy means the people vote on every policy; representative democracy means the people elect representatives to decide policy. The electoral college only has to do with the question of how we elect representatives; getting rid of the electoral college has nothing to do with direct democracy. Get rid of the electoral college and we will remain a representative democracy.
Which only means that the same people who elected the state legislatures that appointed the Senate now get to elect the Senate. This, again, is hardly the difference between representative and direct democracy.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 20, 2008 11:39 AM
Perhap Mrroberts is onto something here.
Take the stockmarket for instance. Do we really need markets in all those cities? Close down the markets in the smaller, less important markets, say Boston, New York, Sydney, London, Beijing is the largest market (at the moment). Why have so many stocks, surely one representative from each sector is enough (hell why not have fewer sectors while we are at it?) I mean all those buyers, in all those stocks, in all those markets, why it would be MOBOCRACY -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | July 20, 2008 12:11 PM
"This is a good reason for why we must resist the urge to move ourselves more in the direction of direct democracy. The Founders hated democracy (as opposed to republicanism) because it was more like "mobocracy" and the people don't always possess the knowledge and insight to rule effectively that experienced legislators do."
The problem with this argument is that if our electorate consisted of 301,139,947 crack-crazed chimpanzees who voted on every issue, our country, by sheer statistical randomness, would still be in much better shape than its current condition.
No, it takes a special kind of idiocy/corruption to screw up the most powerful economic engine in the world into bankruptcy, and a brilliant liberty-protecting Constitutional democracy into a torturing totalitarian state.
Bonzo looking better all the time.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | July 20, 2008 1:01 PM
My point was, of course, that free markets are seldom wrong. (That's what economists say anyway).
If there had been a betting pool (a kind of futures market) on the 1948 Presidential election, polls would have shown that Dewey was well ahead, but the betting pool would have given Truman short odds.
Human beings often make mistakes as indivduals, but mobs, when allowed to vote freely and with consequences (and that's the key) often choose wisely.
The other point is, I suppose, that Authoritian goverments are self-defeating. Because the follower slavishly follow the leader, and the leader fears dissent as another example of thier own power hungry personalities, the leader orders purges, and the followers dutifully carry them out without question, ridding the state of anyone who has different ideas, or any kind of real talent. This means only yesmen survive thus the decisionmaking process becomes stunted and disfunctional. The effect of this process on the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany is, tragically clear to us, in hindsight. =DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | July 20, 2008 1:27 PM
Agent K to Agent J: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
Posted by: Troy Britain | July 20, 2008 2:03 PM
"we're a republic not a democracy"
I want to smash my head into a wall every time I hear Neal Boortz on the radio say that. "Democracy is a hideous form of government, we're a republic not a democracy" were his exact words if I recall correctly.
That @sshole actually wants voting priveleges to be based on income, with poor people not even being allowed to vote!
Posted by: Hume's Ghost | July 20, 2008 2:53 PM
And I said "priveleges" because Boortz doesn't consider voting a right. He loves to say citizens have no right to vote.
Posted by: Hume's Ghost | July 20, 2008 2:54 PM
The Inverse Law of Group Intelligence: The effective intelligence of any group is roughly equal to the average IQ of the group, divided by the number of individuals in said group.
Thus, any group over about 25 has the intelligence of a swarm of ants. It also explains why no one undertakes a truly stupid activity alone.
Posted by: Anonymouse | July 20, 2008 7:14 PM
Dingojack:
There are good reasons to believe that democratic behaviour will be far less effective than market behaviour. If you're interested look for The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan (its on Amazon), but here's the quick version:
In a market people are making decisions for themselves. This means if they screw up they suffer. This gives people an incentive to think about what they are doing. People wills till screw up, but they'll try more.
If you are making a decision with millions other people then your vote hardly affects anything. As such there's no point wasting valuable energy becoming informed or even thinking too hard about who to vote for.
This by its self wouldn't be a problem if voter mistakes were random, because they'd cancel out. Unfortunately people have biases, especially when they don't think too hard about what they are doing. Caplan identifies 4 biases in popular thinking about economics, and it seems unlikely those are the only 4 biases voters have.
You are right about autocratic governments being a bad idea as well. I guess there's a tension between too much democracy, where idiocy reigns and too little, where a cadre of insular elites calls the shots.
Posted by: James K | July 21, 2008 1:48 AM
James K - And Kaplan's four biases are*...?
Sorry I don't think you read the bit you quoted very carefully let me reiterate:
Note I am making the voters into investors with that distiction. -DJ
*Yep I'm too cheap to buy a book. Actually I don't have a credit card so can't really buy stuff over the net.
Posted by: DingoJack | July 21, 2008 2:52 AM
Voting is not the same as making market choices. If you buy a Ford, I am still free to buy whatever I want (or nothing at all). If enough people vote for McCain, we are ALL stuck with him, whether or not we voted for him. That is a big difference. Voters are not investors.
Posted by: steven | July 21, 2008 9:28 AM
Ed,
Interesting that you should quote Madison from Federalist #55 about mob rule, then claim that a republic is a democracy.
I found this quote from Madison in respect to that very issue:
"Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths... A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." (James Madison, Federalist Papers, the McClean Edition, Federalist Paper #10, page 81, 1788)
And a quote from Jefferson:
"The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body." (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph C. Cabell, February 2, 1816)
And another:
"Indeed, it must be acknowledged, that the term republic is of very vague application in every language. Witness the self-styled republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens." (Letter of Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816)
That last bit is interesting, because it talks about direct action of the citizen, which is what most people would call "democracy" today. But some distinction should be made between the mob rule described by Madison in your opening quote and the orderly layers of government described by Jefferson in the quote from the letter to Cabell. You seem to prefer to use the terms "direct democracy" and "representative democracy," but, since the people who designed our government preferred the term "republic," that's the one I like to go with, also because I prefer that dividing-up of governmental power that Jefferson describes above to the greater and greater concentration of power in the hands of the Federal government that seems to be our situation today - a trend that appears to have started with Lincoln and seems to have accelerated since the 1940's.
So, perhaps in the broad sense, democracy and republic really are synonymous, but since there are many kinds of democracies and republics, it's important to define one's terms.
Posted by: MichaelE | July 21, 2008 10:07 AM
The United States is a constitutional democratic republic. The chief flaw in our system is that the only people elected to public office are people who actually run for public office, meaning that almost nobody in public office is psychologically normal.
The late Bill Buckley is quoted as having said, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." Maybe instead of having a draft for the armed forces we should have a draft for the Legislature. With ten candidates for every position I'd bet there'd always be at least one reasonable choice.
Posted by: ttch | July 21, 2008 7:33 PM
DingoJack:
The trouble is that in politics the consequences are necessarily socialised. There is no way to apply market-level consequences to voters (if you've come up with a way I'd be genuinely interested to hear it). So I'll accept your position in principle, while suggesting it is irrelevant in practice.
To avoid threadjacking I'll direct you to the following article, which is an expert from his book about these biases. Note that the evidence behind his thinking is in the book but not the article.
Posted by: James K | July 22, 2008 12:57 AM
James K - Thanks for the link. And yes, I agree theoretically possible, but (at present, or perhaps at all) not possible practically. Still wouldn't it be interestesting if 'the dismal science' could be political science? :) DJ
Posted by: DIngoJack | July 22, 2008 5:40 AM
Actually I've always been proud of my discipline being called the Dismal Science because of how it got that appellation.
Its all due to a guy called Thomas Carlyle and his horror at the abolitionist sentiments of the early economists. That's what he found so dismal about economics, he believed that allowing free market principles to triumph over the old established tradition of slavery led to economic and moral decline.
As such I consider "Dismal Science" a badge of honour, and remember Carlyle every time someone accuses economists of ignoring the importance of social and moral cohesion in their pursuit of economic efficiency.
Posted by: James K | July 23, 2008 1:05 AM