BEST NOT ASK TOO MUCH

Overworking "Democracy" (Sheldon Richman, June 20, 2003, Ideas on Liberty)

Whenever I re-read F. A. Hayek's classic, The Road to Serfdom, I always take away an insight or two I had earlier overlooked or forgotten. For example, Hayek shows that asking too much of representative government ("democracy") can, ironically, push it toward totalitarianism.

The push comes from the fact that people disagree-the more specific the issue, the more likely the disagreement. Take central planning under representative government: Hayek points out that while getting a consensus on generalities is easy (say, that the objective should be to secure the "common welfare"), reaching agreement on the specific path to that goal is close to impossible. He writes, "It may be the unanimously expressed will of the people that its parliament should prepare a comprehensive economic plan, yet neither the people nor its representatives need therefore be able to agree on any particular plan.... [I]t is a superstition that there should be a majority view on everything".

Here is where the seeds of totalitarianism are planted. The endless wrangling in the legislature may prompt people to reconsider not central planning but representative government. "The inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people," Hayek writes, "will inevitably cause dissatisfaction with democratic institutions. Parliaments come to be regarded as 'talking shops,' unable or incompetent to carry out the tasks for which they have been chosen. The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be 'taken out of politics' and placed in the hands of experts-permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies".

Which would explain why the more we ask government to do the more disillusioned with it we become. The key being that when we asked we were indeed prey to illusion. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 20, 2003 5:57 PM