The Paradox of Representative Democracy

The Tragedy of the Commons is an ancient concept of democracy that was first stated in its modern form in 1968. The key idea is that the more individuals have a 'share' in a polity, the less each individual thinks of the commonality they share. It has worked itself out in many ways, and all of them have the vague stench of unethical behaviour justified by division of moral burden.

And that's how modern democracy works. If you have many stakeholders, each is an advocate for a single view or set of ideas. They see the rest as competitors and can only gain power by advancing their own stake. They assume that the rest will be automagically handled. So eventually either extreme polarisation or extreme gridlock occurs.

The only way out is to oscillate between extreme poles and zero displacement. It's exactly how a sinusoidal wave looks. There is dynamic stability in such motion. But humans being human, political forces try very hard to keep the wave at the extremes to avoid gridlock or power-sharing.

The paradox of representative democracy is that it works best when not working, and it governs best when it seems ungovernable. Indeed, it might work because it shouldn't work at all, and only selfishness and power-thirst from its proponents keeps it going.

First-World Parliaments

The oldest parliament (or place of parley) in the First World was held in the shadow of a huge black basaltic slab on the west face of the Thingvellir, the 'Valley of the Thing', in Iceland. Sources generally agree that this democratic assembly of all the local people, the Althing, started around AD 930 and has been in existence therefore for more than a thousand years. That span takes into account the periods of anarchy and times of war that disrupted the Althing and scattered the assembly. To this day, a thing is an object to be agreed upon.

But the longest continually-running democratic institution in the world is probably found a bit further south, on Britain's Isle of Man. There, the local assembly or Tynwald has been meeting regularly since AD 979, and this is its 1033rd year of existence.

These are true First World parliaments, the first ancestors of various assemblies that spread throughout the North Atlantic region, and eventually culminated in the Westminster Parliament at London, which some call the mother of all modern parliaments. The big difference is that at Westminster, those who meet represent a majority or plurality of their constituents, but sometimes not even half of those they claim to serve.

A First-World parliament thus became one at which the laws of the realm are fully and freely debated not by all those bound by such laws, the laws of the commonwealth of the people, but by their representatives. This is of course somewhat necessary as states get larger, but one also has to wonder about what has been transacted without the full, free knowledge of the people.

Those Who Do Not Know Their History

Today I opened the 7 March 2011 issue of TIME. On page 2, I encountered a letter which I shall reproduce below:

I always admire Klein's well-written and factual articles. However, I very much disagree with his statement that "strong armies create security, a necessary precursor for democracy." First, Egypt must solve its problems with strong government and decisive leadership, not an army. Second, this is a perfect opportunity for the U.S. to demonstrate its goodwill via the Peace Corps. Now is the opportunity to seize the moment to promote peace, which we failed to do in the 1970s. It is not too late.

Michael Sandomeno,
Lucerne, Switzerland

It provoked an undignified HMPH from me as my eyes scanned the last lines. Lucerne, Switzerland, really?

Here's some history most people forget. The Old Swiss Confederacy, founded 1291, was unbeaten in battle till 1515 at Marignano. They had the largest standing army in Europe, the most desired mercenaries, and the most lethal kill-rate. These soldiers were the best close-combat infantry in the world for centuries. The Swiss have been exporting mercenaries (including technocratic and economic ones) for 720 years now.

How do you think they became democratic? They did it by fighting a huge civil war, beating up the neighbouring states, and expanding unchecked (and uncheckable) for 224 years (see previous paragraph).

As for Lucerne, among the many nice things it is known for, it is known for a particularly horrendous weapon, the Lucerne hammer. This thing was designed to smash armour using a hammerhead which looks like modern lobster-cracking gear, a long spike, and a short beak—all mounted on a 2-metre pole.

The Swiss, in short, were not a peaceable bunch of yodellers stuck on ski resorts high up in central Europe. They were a dominant bunch who were well able to enforce their own idea of democratic neutrality by beating up anybody else who came their way. Only the mass proliferation of firearms stopped them in the end.

So, Mr Sandomeno, please spare us the Swiss cowbells. The Swiss have no business telling people that you can have democracy without bloody battles and large armies. And, of course, neither can the Americans (who to this day, like the Swiss use their history as an excuse to arm the populace).

Democracy and Information

Imagine that each person is a mathematical point, a node. Each node can have two states: informed or not. And the nodes of a community are all connected in a network. The value of the network is determined by how many continuous chains of 'informed' nodes can be traced within the network, and how long and complex they are.

Logically, then, the value of the community increases the more 'informed' nodes there are. But in real life, the problem is that this imaginary construct is not real. In real life, people have infinitely different informational states and do things with their information, some of which are detrimental to the network.

Governance has two properties. First and most morally supportable, it allows the community to act optimally in keeping the community viable. Second and most unfortunate, it allows the community to divide itself into nodes that govern directly and nodes that don't.

In a democracy, information is supposed to make humans wise enough to govern themselves or to choose proxies that will do it for them. The problem is that information without effective application is not knowledge, and information without optimal effect is not wisdom.

That problem in turn is a problem of complexity — quite often, nobody knows what will be effective, let alone optimally so; worse, the people who are likely to figure it out are a minority that shrinks relative to the size of the population. If there is only one right answer, then as the population grows, the number of people who will figure it out will diminish in percentage simply because of the law of regression to the mean.

But hang on, some will say, surely they can share that answer, thus raising the percentage. Sadly, no. They can share that answer but it may not be believed, as was the case with Cassandra. In fact, the larger the number of non-enlightened, the harder it is to inform them, let alone convince them. Sharing is harder, and sharing effectively is worse.

In the end, it seems, the problem of very large numbers is simply solved but hard to accept. Since a large number of people will act as if it is controlled by a statistical model, then the larger the number, the more likely that effective control will either be by unremitting tyranny (perhaps, a machine autocracy or theocracy), or by complete anarchy with the understanding that any outcome will be considered right. The latter is the logical outcome of true democracy.

Empirical observation will show that neither extreme is viable. What is viable is a synthesis of the two extremes, but with one important proviso for each: the unremitting tyranny must not be unremitting, and the complete anarchy cannot be complete.

Tyranny must be balanced by forces that deny it, for nobody is wise enough to be God. And chaos must be checked with wisdom, for nobody will survive complete chaos. In both cases, information is the key; it must be withheld from those who would misuse it, and yet it must be available to all.

The state of information is never fixed, but the status it has within the continual negotiation of society is what keeps a society viable. The capacity for never-ending argument punctuated by tyrannical acts and anarchic opposition is what makes societies work. If you remove all punctuation, you get a text that is too malleable; if you remove all flexibility, you get a text that is too unpalatable.

So if you want democracy, you need to be prepared to sabotage it and yet defend against others' attempts to sabotage it. You must prepare to be rightly wrong and wrongly right. If you cannot tolerate this rather Heisenbergian situation, you should opt out altogether. Enjoy yourself.

Multipolar

The world is becoming multipolar, according to all kinds of sources. But that's a silly 'sky is falling' sort of statement. The world has always been multipolar; it's just that sometimes, the narrative has required some sort of Zoroastrian dualism (e.g. 'The American Way' vs 'The Evil Empire') or some sort of divine exceptionalism (e.g. 'Rule Britannia'). The complex poetry of the world has always been made prosaic by clever people who hate the messiness.

Look at science. Science is democratic. In theory, everyone can be part of the formal discourse because everyone shares the same starting axioms and the same reasoning process. In practice, science is elitist. It creates spiraling towers of horn and ivory, as more of it is formed into more and more specialised stuff and fewer and fewer people know what to do with it — or what can be done with it.

Look at democracy. Democracy is evil. Why? Because humans very well know that the worst thing to trust is humanity. And yet we claim that we want everyone to have the same rights and powers and privileges because all humans are equal in some sense. But democracy is good, because it gives us the comforting illusion that someone who is better than us isn't really better, and that anyone can be as good as anyone else.

These two forces are the greatest movements of the modern age. They have undeniably done much to improve human conditions from a human point of view. But they persist in making enemies, not because they are good things (and thus persecuted) but because they are human, and thus imperfect. And they love trampling over other ideas because they are good at it.

But shouldn't they win, since they are better ideas? The point is that we don't know for sure that they are better ideas. There is no objective point to view them except through the anthropocentric lens of being. We can philosophize all we want, but all we know is that they are convincing ideas to many humans. They win a lot of 'marketplace of ideas' competitions — but the marketplace of ideas can only exist in a world where democracy and science have a significant presence.

I like both democracy and science because they make my life comfortable. If that is how we decide what is good, then I guess that's good. But I'm uncomfortable about thinking that. So what else should I think?

I think I should not conform to the pattern of this world, I think.