I think the same crowd of folks can be heard chanting, “Democracy Now!” in certain pretexts, but it seems that they have changed their tune recently to something closer to, “Authoritarianism Now!” I’m no expert in Political Science, nor do I think it appropriate of me to denigrate those who are, and I apologize if I misrepresent what Political Scientists actually say and know about Democracy – but as I understand it, the point of Democracy is not to give EVERYONE what they want. Of all of the silly notions that are stuck in people’s heads these days is that they have a right and are entitled to get the things they want. But Democracies exist to help deal with (notice I did not say solve) collective action problems that for whatever reason are not being dealt with by other institutions that evolve to deal with collective action problems (say, like markets). But like markets, which are not necessarily best suited to solve all problems, when in fact they are used, they are not even supposed to, in theory, make everyone happy.
So on what planet are we living on that people thing that they are supposed to be happy with political outcomes? And if the climatistas want to end democracy so that “we” can do more about global warming (by the way, lots is being done even as I write this, but that’s for another post), fine let them end democracy to impose their global warming policies on the world.
But of course, there is nothing that says that once we end democracy to do stuff to stop global warming, that we shouldn’t end democracy so that we can also do all kinds of things that these people like. A wise person once said to me, and she was not a political scientist, “whatever you think you want from a particular political order – imagine that the people who run the thing, or who have the proverbial keys to the car, are people you mistrust at best and at worst you have a profound dislike for.” I like that way of thinking about politics, wholly aside from the lessons economists have taught us about how to evaluated decisions in the political sphere.
