fare: Simple Systemic Argument Why Democracy Can't Possibly Work

François-René Rideau (

fare) wrote,
@ 2008-04-10 00:56:00

Entry tags:

democracy, en, information theory, libertarian

Simple Systemic Argument Why Democracy Can't Possibly Work

In a democracy as such, the total feedback control from the governed to the ruling is in the order of a few bits per year at most. Certainly, any process to satisfy millions of people with diverse preferences requires much more information than that. What is worse, the ruling class itself largely gets to define what those bits encode. And what damns the whole system, the individual incentives are for the ruled to not acquire such costly useless (to powerless them) information, and for the rulers to spread propaganda that will extend their power.

In other words, the powerful are pretty much out of control of the citizens. Certainly, a few bits per year of information might sometimes be better than none at all. But not for long, since the meaning of those bits is soon to be controlled by some variant of a two party system. The knobs controlled by those few bits will never allow to change the one thing that matters mosts: the irresistible growth of the power exerted over you, the fact that whoever is likely to be elected is a power hungry bastard backed by an organized predation system. Preserving and extending the power of politicians and bureaucrats upon citizens is a bi-partisan issue.

Inasmuch as some democratic societies work and others don't, it isn't due to democracy as such, but to other institutions completely independent of democracy, disconnected from it, and actually slowly but surely corrupted by it and destroyed by it as well as by any other form of political power: individual rights (as opposed to collective claims), common law (as opposed to statute), the rule of law (as opposed to the arbitrary power of politicians and bureaucrats), a culture of honesty (as opposed to having to weasel around imposed regulations), widespread self-reliance (as opposed to a sense of entitlement), and other personal moral values (as opposed to compulsory submission to "moral" rules edicted by others). These are the institutions of a market society, one where each one earns his living out of mutually voluntary cooperation.

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They seem to know it

baldvin
2008-04-10 08:21 am UTC (link)

I have enrolled to a tabloid journalism course. After all, those people are the king-makers in democracy, and I was interested who they are, how they think, etc. I'm not a journalist, just a programmer with a biophysics diploma, so it was really just curiousity.

At lunch, I've engaged in conversation with a guy, a bit older than the average there. Asked him who he is, turned out that he is a lobby-specialist in one of the ruling parties here, in Hungary. He took notes on the classes, didn't talk or ask, but kept open his eyes.

It seemed to be a wonderful opportunity to insult somebody working as a lobbyist, so I asked if there is _any_ way to look at "lobbying" but as a dirty, disgusting process, pretty close to official corruption? How come that there are people willing to work with the mark "responsible for official corruption"?

The answer was very interesting: he told me that his main job is to be an "interface" of the party, to whom people and organizations can turn if they want help in lobbying.

What he does is in fact collecting information, he told that he finds it very important because otherwise the civil sector can only send information in form of votes. (Btw, this guy works for the always-the-second opposition party).

I don't actually think that it is real information flow or that it anyhow would undermine the validity of your theory. As a matter of fact, it supports your theory, it shows that information flow from the people to the ruling is important.

A friend of mine asked a few days ago which "democracies" are fake, and which are real? Is there such a thing as "real democracy"? There are countries like Uzbekistan where the letter of the law is perfect, while it seems to be obvious that it is not a democracy.

Maybe democracy can be defined by --- whatever small --- but non-zero feedback existing?

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	Re: They seem to know it selfishgene 2008-04-10 08:27 pm UTC (link)
	Maybe lobbying is one of the things that keeps a government somewhat reality focused. IMO the worst thing that could happen in US politics would be for those arrogant morons in Congress to vote according to their true beliefs. Voting according to lobbying, however bad, is much less disastrous. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Nice post

hodja
2008-04-10 11:17 am UTC (link)

However, it would be interesting to elaborate a bit about the distinction between direct control feedback and informational feedback (if there is any).

Here's how I see it:

The ruling class sends down various pieces of information in the hope of altering the behavior of the ruled: some of it are orders to act in certain ways under the threat of violence, the rest is information about the world in response to which we are supposed to alter the decisions we make based on rational self-interest (e.g. propaganda). But are the two really different? I mean isn't the former just a special case of the latter?

In the other direction, the ruled supply the rulers with various pieces of information, some of which (the few bits per annum that you mention) are supposed to be orders, obligatory for execution in a democracy, the rest is tax declarations, polls, published opinions (like your blog post), etc. These bits are chosen in such a way (so the ruled hope) to make the rulers behave in a manner that is most beneficial to the ruled (compared to alternatives!) because of the rational self-interest of the rulers.

It is not immediately clear to me, what the channel capacity of the control loop is. After all, there is a lot of room for both parties to play with the information that does not force the other side, but still influences its behavior in substantial ways.

After reading your post, I counted about two kilobytes worth of info that I used last year for influencing the governments actions (most of it are witness testimonies where I was pretty free to choose what to tell), but even my revealed accounting carried more bits of my choice (even in terms of mutual information with the government's actions) than the decisions that I made when exercising my democratic right (not to vote in elections and referenda).

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Re: Nice post

fare
2008-04-10 04:33 pm UTC (link)

Excellent remarks.

Citizens do send a lot of information back to the rulers. And though centralization forces a lot of information to be lost in the central decision-making process (because each higher layer in the bureaucratic and political hierarchy is made of fewer men), this still amounts to some considerable feedback.

Now, to distinguish between mere informational feedback and actual intentional control, be sure to keep this case in mind: the victim controls the torturer, because if the victim screams very loudly at a particular method of torture, this is the method the torturer will select to use.

Quotation context withheld: I will probably be asked why I don't cite the author's name? Because my philosophy teacher taught me that it sometimes jeopardizes the effects of the quote.

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Re: Nice post

hodja
2008-04-10 09:18 pm UTC (link)

Quotation context withheld

Doesn't make sense in this time and age. I mean, C'mon, you yourself used this quote from Ayn Rand in your sig when posting to lisp.cl-debian. Google akbar!

Indeed, I am no big fan of Ayn Rand (and find this quote very typical of her), but that is not the reason why I fail understanding how it helps making the distinction. Could you please elaborate?

Here's my problem. There are various laws and other non-written "rules" conjured up by the powerful of this world about what am I (not) supposed to keep on my storage devices. There are some pretty explicit threats attached to these pieces of information. Is their communication of these towards my humble self mere informational feedback or actual intentional control? I sure as hell don't obey them, because in this particular walk of life I have all the means at my disposal to defend my sovereignty. If, however, I am merely informed that the government is planning a large-scale issue of debt, I will try to get rid of its currency (and even short it, if I can) ASAP. How about such pieces of information?

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Re: Nice post

fare
2008-04-10 09:50 pm UTC (link)

Ayn Rand was mocking the notion of "control" in Skinner's book. Intentions matter. The fact that the outcome of unknown processes in the torturer's head rather can completely affect the tortured's fate, but not the other way around, explain why the torturer is in control, and not the other way around. There is information going both ways, and the tortured is probably telling more to the torturer than the other way around - yet the physical control is well is the hands of the torturer.

So control is not just about information alone indeed, though information limits the precision and quality of the control. Which physical processes are moved by the information matters.

When you vote, you have a tiny fraction of bit of control indeed. When you declare your taxes, you emit bits, but you are the one being controlled. Yes, governments are happily very bad at controlling us. A big stick is a coarse tool, and there are only so many eyes to guide the hand. Still there's the difference between being on the handle-side of the big stick or the receiving side.

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Re: Nice post

hodja
2008-04-10 11:12 pm UTC (link)

I do agree that there is a difference between being and not being able to use coercion for one's ends, but I strongly disagree with the notion that voting is a more powerful tool than tax declaration.

I think what matters is the mutual information between the information that I feed the government and the actions of said government on me. That is what gives a measure of control. With voting, that mutual information is negligible to the point that I do not bother spending any of my precious time on it. Much more depends on how I file my tax declaration. To the point that I am actually paying an accountant to help me with it. Because the amount that the government will be able to extort from me depends much more on my tax declaration than on my vote. And that's what I care about most.

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Re: Nice post

fare
2008-04-11 06:06 am UTC (link)

Voting is less powerful than tax declaration, but it is the ruled controlling the ruler, whereas tax declaration is the ruler controlling the ruled. Which makes my point: the idea that electoral democracy is the rule of the people is a provable lie, because the government controls you considerably more than you control it.

When you fill your tax declarations, and adapt your behaviour so as to minimize your taxes (or more rationally, maximize your post-tax revenues), you are responding to the incentives that the government defined for you. Who is controlling the other one? The one who defines the game, the one whose internal mental states decides more arbitrarily what the other's behaviour will be. How much do your internal mental states affect the legislators' behavior? How much do their mental states affect yours?

You may be controlling a few tax collecting bureaucrats somewhat on topics they don't care about, but using your money that these bureaucrats collect, politicians control you somewhat more on topics that you do care about.

In the end, what the retaliation games that the bits encode are what decide who controls whom and how much.

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