What Does Democracy Need?

What does democracy need to persist? Democracy often lays the groundwork for its own destruction. While democracy itself is merely a neutral form of governance, it has a set of perverse incentives that lead it into destruction if those incentives are not carefully guarded against. Democracy, since the time of the Athenians has created a risk of the tyranny of the majority. If the interests of one group of the population are significantly at odds with the interest of a different group within the population, democracy will naturally become a form of mediation between those two groups of people. Mediation itself is good, but the sort of mediation a democracy creates allows parties to see the political game as a zero-sum, and thus concerns of a vital importance to the persistence of the nation become secondary. The human brain is hardwired for competition, and politics works best when this desire can be re-oriented into something more productive. The market is able to effectively turn competitive desires into positive outcomes for people, but democratic politics, particularly nationally, seem to maximize the combative nature of competition while not turning much of the energy into mutually beneficial solutions. 

Democracy can persist for longer when there are strong institutions that are more difficult for the people to change. Things like protecting human rights, the right to property, and other things that should be agreed-upon by most people should not have an easy pathway to be overwritten by democratic consensus. Any democratic policy has the ability to vote themselves wealth one time, and forever destroy the trajectory of their nation. As more of the government becomes something that democracy can rapidly change, the incentives shift to favor this sort of dramatic action and enable the quick destruction of stable institutions. As the size of the government grows, elections decide the allocation of an ever greater share of resources. In many cases, government growth actually slows down overall growth, and creates a still smaller pie for everyone to fight over. Democracy will naturally destroy the order that enabled it unless the people are extremely virtuous or there’s some form of power that is held separate from the democracy.…