The end of democracy

A government of the elite and corporations, by the wealthy, for themselves?

Much fuss has been made of late of the threat to the US democracy from the re-election of Donald Trump. Democracy and the Right to Vote are not the same thing; I spent some time applying some critical thinking to dissecting American democracy in order work out what exactly is being threatened by Trump.

I conclude that modern democracy is marketed as being very different from its essence, and most of the electorate don't really realise that their democracy is already broken. What really matters is how far a government strays from representing its citizens, which used to be the essence of democracy but now appears to be largely unrelated.

Government serving people

The ancient Greeks were the first people to create a democracy. The word comes from two Greek words that mean people (demos) ruling (kratos). It was a direct democracy; it was the duty of all citizens at the time to vote on issues. Officials were selected at random in order to obtain a representative sample of the population.

Since then, governments have drifted away from serving the people. The Romans created representative democracy where citizens elected staff to represent them. The Roman system ended up with little direct accountability to the general population. Corruption was prevalent and power was abused, with decisions often made to favour the wealthy elite at the expense of the many. Leaders such as Pompey The Great and Julius Caesar undermined the public institutions for personal gain, leading to the end of the republic.

The English Parliament in the 13th century started as an advisory body but also evolved into a system where elected representatives gained influence. Wealthy landowners controlled and purchased whole constituencies and bribed MPs to vote certain ways on key issues. The House of Lords by its vary nature was composed of elite nobles and bishops and voted (and vetoed) in the interests of the wealthy. The East India Company was the first allegedly private business that had massive influence on, and privileges granted by, the state. It was able to conquer, reform, manage, control, abuse and milk overseas territories, acting as a de-facto government abroad.

American Democracy

Abraham Lincoln famously described American representative democracy as

"government of the people, by the people, for the people"

thereby emphasising the principle of governance serving citizens. However, this democracy has never really been representative for several reasons.

Federalism

The United States was a union of states. The Federal government used to be limited in role, primarily to defence and military offence, coin money, regulate currency and banking, post, interstate and international commerce, immigration, and handle foreign relations and treaties. Any power not granted to the federal government was devolved to states. State government used to be far more important to individuals' lives and livelihoods than federal government.

Federal powers have grown substantially since the early 1800s; before then, the federal government didn't regulate industries, it didn't regulate labour, it didn't regulate food safety (FDA), it didn't regulate healthcare, there wasn't a national social security. There was no EPA, no OSHA, no FHWA, no EEOC. There was no Federal Reserve or SEC. Although these agencies were created to address inconsistencies and issues states struggled to handle effectively, over time their power has grown.

The President was more like a president in a company; the role was primarily administrative and not about wielding power and was heavily constrained by checks from Congress and the Judiciary. Over time the President has become a CEO for America Inc, with assumption of far more implied powers, and the ability to unilaterally make decisions on behalf of the entire country himself.

Weighted votes

Two hundred years ago, US population was more evenly distributed among states, and the laws and governance of the state had far more impact on the average citizen's life than the federal government. Although weight of votes of one person vs another was never really equal, in particular because of the voting influence of slavery, over time populations have skewed and the power of one vote has similarly ended up more skewed.

This mattered less when Americans were electing a federal government that, by and large, had little influence on their lives compared to the state government, but now the President has an gigantic and undue influence on the freedoms and lives of the average American.

The skew is best seen by contrasting, say, California (2020 population: 39.5 million people) and Wyoming (2020 population: 580,000 people). Due to representation in the outdated "electoral college," a vote in Wyoming is worth 3.7 times more than a vote in California! This can hardly be considered democratic in the real sense of the word; a first nail in the coffin.

Individual influence

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the US, famously wrote

"whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

It reflected his belief that education and knowledge were essential for a functioning democracy. However, are the people well informed? Money has always been used in representative democracies to influence outcomes of votes, by campaigning, lobbying and swaying popular opinions.

In the book Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, whistleblower Christopher Wylie disclosed the abuse of data, analytics and psychological manipulation to influence elections. He showed how Cambridge used Facebook data to build psychographic profiles of the electorate and micro-target voters with personalities who would respond to emotionally charged, negative and misleading messaging. This micro-targeting was used successfully to sway Trump's 2016 campaign and the Brexit vote. Congressional hearings resulted, not much changed.

This led to uninformed decision-making by voters that has now become routine and accpted. We're now at a point where one of the largest social networks, X, is owned by the co-president of the country and is routinely propagating disinformation. I have many previously rational friends who have ended up in such anger-motivated 'algorithmically captured' states that they routinely accept disinformation as truth and don't even question it.

The electorate are not well informed; another nail in the coffin of democracy.

Corporate influence

Just as Cambridge Analytica uses psychographic data to micro-target voters, corporations use lobbying and public relations campaigns to influence specific lawmakers and sway public sentiment on issues that affect their influence. Data is used to craft the strategies by which voter's perceptions are distorted, leading to incorrectly informed outcomes. For example, the design of bank bailouts in the 2008 financial (TARP) was heavily influenced by the large banks benefiting from the bailout, who then in turn lobbied to water down regulations (Dodd Frank) used to prevent future crises. Banks received massive government aid with little accountability, whereas citizens faced foreclosures and economic hardship with no government assistance.

A detailed study into the influence of elites and interest groups on the voting habits of average citizens took place in 2014 by professors at Princeton and Northwestern University. They concluded that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have a substantial impact on US government policy, while average citizens have little to no influence. In other words: The wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

Policies with low support (<= one in five) among the economically elite were adopted 18% of the time; whereas those with high support ( >= four in five) were adopted 45% of the time. Similarly, when a majority disagrees with the economic elites or organised interests, they lose. Even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they don't get it.

They concluded that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. I also think of it as a corporatocracy. One more nail in the coffin.

What are Americans actually voting on?

When election campaigns run in the US, they are typically based on debating topics that either have little impact on the lives of regular people, or that the rest of the world has moved on from.

There are many big issues that affect Americans and should be considered by an educated, informed electorate, but are never really debated. Some examples that spring to mind include:

• Opportunity for the next generation: In a 2022 Pew survey, 70% of Americans feel that younger generations will face far greater economic challenges and have less opportunities than their predecessors. They are more likely to be saddled with student debt and will find it harder to find jobs to pay it off. 55% of young people consider it harder to find jobs compared to their parents. How will this get turned around?
• Inequality: The US is the most unequal country in the G7, and the worst of almost any developed country. The bottom 50% of households own only 2.5% of total wealth. People worth hundreds of billions of dollars who pay an insignificant amount of tax live next to millions without a reliable source of food. The inequality is approaching India levels, with increasing poverty, homelessness, crime, mental and physical illness seen on the streets of all major cities. This generates resentment and fuels instability. What can be done to help?
• Declining life expectancy: US life expectancy continues to decline year after year; it's now at 76.4 years, the lowest it's been in nearly two decades. A population dying younger must be a top issue for a government. Deaths of despair from alcohol, suicide and drugs are all on the up. Why isn't anything being done?
• National debt: The US debt is around $37 trillion dollars now; the deficit for last August alone was $470 billion. In 2024, interest on national debt will exceed $1tn, surpassing spending on healthcare and national defence for the first time. This creates a terrible burden for the next generation, or it needs to be inflated away (and inflation disproportionately affects low income citizens). Shouldn't policy on what to do about this be debated, along with real numbers and financial plans?
• Guns: A majority of Americans favour stricter gun laws, however the mass shootings and unnecessary deaths continue regardless. Another day, another mass shooting, nothing changes. Infuriating, and it affects the day to day lives of most citizens, with kids in schools being used to lock downs, shelter in place orders, and shops guarded by armed gunmen. This isn't the world we want.
• Climate change: Regardless of the cause, in future more towns and cities are going to be wiped out. Funds have to be set aside to deal with infrastructure damage, relocate populations, handle economic disruption — and maybe even consider leading addressing the problem?
• Social media: Depression, anxiety and suicide rates are increasing in American teenagers and there is growing evidence that social media causes harm. Teen depression rates rose in direct correlation with smart phone prevalence - even LinkedIn gives me professional depression sometimes. Given the obsession with regulating drugs that harm people, shouldn't social media be looked at in a similar light? What about AI? Even excluding its substantial impact on election outcomes? The closest thing we've come to a debate is talking about TikTok because it's Chinese, not because it hurts people — and now the President and co-President Elon both own social media of their own. Social media now has more impact on peoples' decisions than the real media.

Instead, we've left with debates on what gender sign to put on a toilet; on abortion – a largely solved problem in the rest of the developed world that's now enlightened; building walls along borders; deporting illegal immigrations that harvest the fruit and keep people fed (they don't eat cats and dogs); turning China into the bogeyman that's the cause of all American suffering (it isn't, it helped fuel the strongest period of economic growth in American history by getting cheap stuff to consumers); and warmongering all over the world.

The electorate aren't just mis-informed, they are distracted from thinking about things that really matter to them and their future generations. Another nail in the democratic coffin.

The outcome of democracy

The problems cited above aren't just isolated to America; in fact, other developed countries are following in the footsteps. We can take Brexit as an example: The campaign was built on lies. The outcome was such that only 37.5% of eligible voters voted to leave, 34.8% voted to remain; and 27.8% of eligible voters didn't vote. Therefore, neither campaign represented a majority of the electorate, so the outcome should have been the status quo. After the outcome, public opinion substantially shifted — the lies were proven as lies – and a much larger proportion now view Brexit as a mistake due to dissatisfaction with the outcome and the growing economic malaise resulting. Perhaps they should take inspiration from the Greeks and require citizens to vote!

In America, the billionaires and large corporations – the empires of tech entrepreneurs, finance companies, weapons companies, oil and gas companies and whatnot – continue to get richer, almost regardless of which party or president gets elected. If we consider the outcome as being the result of the policy, then it is the policies of these corporations, and the associated oligarchs, that run America.

The election is a game, the electorate are ill-informed, and the government does not act in the best interests of the people. Meanwhile, the inequality grows, health declines the next generation suffers. This growing gap causes the "discontent and anger vote" that's attracted to, and fuelled by, angry messages from angry leaders, in this particular case Donald Trump.

Trump is not a “threat to democracy”

If "how things work now" in America is democracy, then clearly Trump isn't a threat to that. He might well be an accelerator! The attempt to overturn the results of the last election and the instigation of the mob who stormed the US Capitol were the actions of an aspirational dictator attempting to stay in power in the simplest way possible.

The elections and votes by the general public are largely immaterial to outcomes on matters that matter - a charade, if you will. The smarter way for the dictator and his affiliates to stay in power is to continue to (ab)use social media to distort the truth and influence outcomes, in alignment with the corporations and oligarchs that matter the most. That the richest man in America and owner of one of the most influential social networks is now co-president, and the president himself owns his own social network, is a really good start to making that happen.

It's certainly possible that the Musk + Trump egos blow up at some point which will throw the spanner in the works. Even more likely, people will get even angrier, seeing that (just like last time) Trump doesn't really change much of anything that affects the common American. Historically, such disconnects between the government and the people they rule have lead to the formation of true dictatorships, or civil wars and the fall of empires. It feels like the US is on this path, and might well drag the rest of the "Western" world with it.