Democracy and the short term   

 

In 1774, the parliamentarian Edmund Burke said:

   "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead    of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

Some 60 years later, in 1838, ‘The People's Charter' was published by the Chartists, a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom. The charter stipulated the six main aims of the movement as:

*   Suffrage for all men aged over 20
*   Electoral districts with equal numbers of voters
*   Voting by secret ballot
*   An end to the need to own land in order to be an MP
*   Pay for Members of Parliament
*   Annual election of Parliament

At first glance, there appears to be no conflict between the statement made by Burke and the demands of the Chartists, the first 5 of which were finally accepted in 1918. But two of their demands make Burke's statement of principle difficult to achieve in practice: the requirement that MP's be paid a salary (so that non-toffs could stand for election) and having an annual election to Parliament. Why? Well in the last few weeks we have seen the reason for this inconsistency played out in the democratic system of America.

A large majority of Congressmen turned down the $700,000,000,000 (is that enough noughts?) bail-out package. They were of course entitled to exercise their judgement and say no if that was what they believed. But the reports of why those in marginal seats actually said no are very instructive. It was reported that there had been a violent reaction against the bill from the grass roots. They had telephoned their congressmen in droves to tell them of their disapproval. The elections for the House of Representatives were to be held only a few weeks later and so the congressmen had to bow to the immediate will of the people rather than exercise their own judgement, or face the near certain loss of their seats and their salaries. The impending election meant that they could not take a long term view of the rights and wrongs of the bill. And so we see that the fact that people are now career politicians, relying on their salaries, makes their role as independent thinkers much more fragile. Even worse, were there actually to be elections every year, then their representative role would be even further diminished. They would become simple proxies for their constituents. And I am not convinced that this would produce sensible long-term results. We need people who can reflect in an informed way on the great issues of the day and then decide on our behalves accordingly.

But then we look at the morality of what happened. The grass roots were against the package on the basis that it would be grossly unfair and immoral to reward the fat cats who had got them into the mess in the first place - despite the fact that the ordinary Joe would suffer just as much, if not more, from the lack of action to prop up the banks (and so the fat cats). A clear case of an irrational mob reaction. But this was soon abandoned when, a day later, the stock market had its biggest fall ever. Main Street finally realised that this affected not only the super rich, but them as well via their pension funds, the availability of credit and so, ultimately, their own jobs. The telephone calls for rejection of the bill became outnumbered by those in favour of it.

No doubt some congressmen breathed a sigh of relief, realising that they could do as they had always wanted to and vote for the bill. But having frightened the executive and the party leaders with their initial rejection, there was then something else which came into play. The bill was passed on Friday with the benefit of an extra $100,000,000,000 in scrapings from the Pork Barrel - tax breaks for local groups in their constituencies, like the $7 million for the children's wooden arrow makers in Myrtle Point, Oregon - given to bribe those (presumably unprincipled) Congressmen whose votes could be bought. They were given something that they could wave under the noses of their potential electors, so bolstering their chances of keeping their jobs.

Thus we see that capitalism, condemned as being an activity based on selfishness and greed, is probably no worse in practice than our democratic system of governance, which is also ultimately based on selfishness, that of the voters and of some, at least, of their representatives. Mind you democracy is probably still the best system we have - in principle. We just have to get the practicalities sorted out, so that long term needs can stay on top. This time it was only achieved by the skin of our teeth.


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