Downloading Democracy

By Andrew Nowobilski

Aristotle’s assumption that democracy is essentially rule by mob is the cause of many a furrowed brow among present-day scholars. What an anti-democratic Neanderthal! sneers Modern Man. I suppose one can’t expect much from a slavery lover. But perhaps the enlightened egalitarians are too quick in using the unjustifiable latter opinion to disqualify the former from serious consideration. Democracy has some big problems. Aristotle was onto something; a one-year anniversary postmortem on the President’s campaign to reform Social Security proves it.

The Republicans never had a very serious plan. Given that they had sold themselves electorally on the mantra of lower taxes at any cost they couldn’t very well propose higher payroll “contributions” to fund the transition to personal accounts. But any credible savings program cannot generate more deficits now. Some compromise of cutting expenditures and raising taxes would be needed to launch a reform program. But compromising on taxes is anathema to one of the central pillars of Bush‘s political success. Republicans therefore reaped the bitter harvest of the indulgent expectations they had sewn; so constrained by their own promises, they could not even formulate a rational plan.

But the Democrats shouldn’t be too self-satisfied about foiling the President. Whether or not President Bush’s reform was the right one, the Medicare and Social Security financial numbers dictate that tough entitlement reform will be necessary, and it will hurt. The Democrats’ victory was too easy. It demonstrated all too clearly the immense political power of AARP and other seniors’ advocacy organizations. The so-called gray lobby wields veto authority over any far-sighted reform. It is swollen into a political monster that no other faction can match. And it is acutely sensitive to opportunistic accusations of nefarious plans to put seniors on a cat food diet. Democrats gave those fears free rein last time around. They promised painless solutions. They strengthened the forces that favor the unsustainable status quo. But whenever the Democrats regain Congress they will no longer have the good fortune of being able to simply needle everything the Republicans do. They will actually have to, you know, govern, and that means they will have to reign in grandpa Frankenstein. Frankie may not appreciate it.

Beneath the surface paternalism of the classicist’s skepticism of democracy resides a clarifying frankness. A democracy qua democracy contends only that society should be ruled at the total discretion of the will of the majority of the people. Combine that with the human impulse to reward oneself with goodies bought on someone else‘s tab, and democracy is like Napster for loot. Only instead of pimply-faced teenagers downloading songs without paying for them, the Joneses download beefier Social Security benefits and more generous Medicare services purchased with other people‘s checkbooks… or on their children’s backs.

Like music piracy, democratic pillaging is difficult to stop once begun. Just look across the pond. The French cannot institute even modest reform of their hiring laws for fear of retaliation by violent gangs. Every faction, from plumbers to prostitutes, has an unshakable sense of entitlement to its special advantages. People have been permitted, even encouraged, to download property and privilege for free, and the result is as unstoppable as Internet piracy. Like old-school Napster, democracy’s “product” is “free,” its acquisition impersonal, its use socially acceptable. It is demanded by everyone.

Madison recommended that factions be kept weak and competitive, so that they cancel each other out to the public benefit. But Madison’s Big Idea works only under a liberal order that places strict limitations on the resources and uses of government. The erosion of that order has given rise to the delusion that no tradeoffs are necessary. The tax cutters can get what they want, and so can the gray-haired robber barons over at AARP. Ask the Democratic Man what he’s doing to plug the future funding gaps in Medicare and Social Security, and he’ll just laugh at you and keep on downloading. Why not download some nice Medicare drug benefits? Sure, it may add trillions to our unfunded liabilities within a stone’s throw of the demographic tsunami, but who cares? It’s someone else’s problem.

The problem isn’t the demand for retirement income or medical care, any more than the problem with old-school Napster was that its denizens liked a lot of music. Newspaper headlines screaming about rising medical costs don’t consider that most of the cost creep derives directly from demand for life-enhancing quality improvements. The problem is that with the current entitlement system, like Napster, there is absolutely no correspondence between personal benefit and personal sacrifice. There is no feedback information about costs. And unfortunately, the economy has a lot less wealth than the World Wide Web does bandwidth. With everyone trying to download at once, the system will sooner or later slow to a crawl.

I hope Aristotle was wrong to criticize democracies so harshly. But if the US doesn’t temper its democratic zeal with a healthy dose of liberal restraint, in twenty years it will be exactly where much of Europe is now, with spoiled, ungovernable voters--with a mob. The Democrats had better enjoy the one-year anniversary of the quiet death of Bush’s plan while they can. The Gray Dawn nears. And Frankie’s a bit of an early riser.