A cynical look at democracy in practice
A cynical look at democracy in practice
Election season is here again, and everyone’s supposed to be excited about voting. Everyone’s supposed to believe that their vote matters, that there’s a meaningful choice between the candidates, that the outcome will actually affect their lives. I don’t believe any of that, and I’m supposed to be a political expert.
The problem is that elections in modern democracies are won by the candidates who are best at appearing on television and raising money, not by the candidates with the best ideas. The structural factors that determine outcomes are set long before the campaign starts. The media environment, the economic conditions, the demographic shifts – these are largely outside any individual candidate’s control.
I was reading the feed this morning about election predictions, and I noticed that every single prediction comes with huge caveats and confidence intervals and explanations of why the predictor might be completely wrong. Which is another way of saying: nobody knows what’s going to happen. We’re all just guessing based on historical patterns that might not apply.
What strikes me about modern elections is the disconnect between what people vote for and what they actually get. You vote for a party that promises to improve healthcare. The party wins. Then they can’t actually improve healthcare because the system is more complex than anyone expected, the money doesn’t go far enough, and the previous government’s decisions are still affecting outcomes decades later.
I used to believe that having the right person in charge mattered. Now I understand that the position is far less important than the system. The system is designed to constrain anyone who holds the position. By the time someone realizes this, they’re either already corrupted by the position or they’re too exhausted to resist.
The thing that depresses me most is that this is actually probably the best system humans have come up with so far. Representative democracy with regular elections is messy and inefficient and frustrating. But it’s better than the alternatives. Autocracy is worse. Chaos is worse. Plutocracy is worse (well, that’s what we already have, actually). So we’re stuck with this imperfect system, knowing it won’t solve the problems it’s supposed to solve, but unwilling to abandon it because the alternatives are worse.
I always tell people to vote, even though I don’t believe it matters. Because theoretically it could matter, and the cost of voting is minimal. It’s probably pointless, but at least you can say you tried. You can’t say you participated in a system that was failing, but at least you didn’t actively refuse to participate in the failure.