I'm not that pessimistic, but let's go on.
"Now our government no longer needs us. The citizen-soldiers have given way to the professional all-volunteer military and its armada of smart bombs and drone aircraft. The citizen-administrators have disappeared, too, replaced long ago by professional bureaucrats. Americans may still regard each other as fellow citizens with common causes and commitments. But the candidates seeking votes on Tuesday see us as something less: not a coherent public with a collective identity but a swarm of disconnected individuals out to satisfy our personal needs in the political marketplace. We see them, in turn, as boring commercials to be tuned out."
Frederic Bastiat's quip about the grand fiction by which each attempts to live at the expense of everyone else comes to mind.
(text slipped at Reading)
"This transformation of citizens into customers is not the result of some conscious campaign by the political class to restrict access to public decision-making. On the contrary, ostensibly democratic reforms have lowered the barriers to citizen participation. Freedom of information statutes, sunshine laws, mandatory public hearings, public notice and comment requirements, public agency hotlines and access to the courts through class action suits -- all these and other arrangements would seem to have enhanced the public's opportunity to engage in the formation of public policy.
"But that didn't happen. Instead, our customer-friendly government made it possible for private citizens to play politics on their own, without hitching their interests to those of like-minded citizens. The new political order is a "personal" rather than a popular democracy. Personal democracy lowers the barriers that citizens once breached only by collective assault. But the reality of personal democracy is less benign than it sounds. For ordinary citizens, the most potent political resource is the power of numbers. When they deal with government one by one, they lose their leverage."
Is that a bug, or a feature? In the limit, isn't the power of numbers the power of the mob? Do we really want to go there?
"The new avenues of democratic access were not designed for ordinary citizens in the first place. Ordinary citizens rarely look at the Federal Register for opportunities to comment on new regulations, attend public hearings or litigate on behalf of the public interest. The new channels of access to public decision-makers permit political and economic elites -- with the aid of the lobbyists and lawyers on K Street -- to get what they want from government without the nuisance of mobilizing a constituency of citizens to support them."
Ever hear of specialization and the division of labor? Wasn't the idea behind the independent regulatory commissions and the other agencies PRECISELY to get the best and the brightest to make the RIGHT decisions? Isn't the whole mind-set behind fuel efficiency standards, or nondiscrimination policies for business, or zoning codes, or smart growth, or selective service, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, et vitam venturi saeculi, amen, the mindset that the people are not quite clever enough to figure these things out on their own, whist the wise experts can?
"Rather than take issues to the electorate for resolution, they litigate and pose as "stakeholders" for diffuse interests such as the disabled, the elderly, children or endangered species -- or they exploit bureaucratic procedures to remove the making of policy from the sight of the public. In the process, millions of citizens who might once have been called to the aid of their parties remain passive bystanders. These are the people who will not show up to vote on Tuesday, because no one has sent them a sufficiently compelling invitation."
Including the Libertarians. Are you listening, Harry Browne?
"Today there are even some movements that don't take on the traditional form of a movement. The large number of groups associated with consumerism, for example, hides the fact that most of these groups never had many active members. Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, argued that the term "movement" mischaracterized the character of consumerism. According to Pertschuk, consumer advocacy has been the product of a small number of groups and Washington policy entrepreneurs rather than the result of grass-roots efforts. The absence of a mobilized popular base has narrowed the movement's agenda to issues that interest the fortunate few for whom consumption is a way of life. Those would include "consumers" who look to Consumer Reports for advice on choosing everything from toasters and CD players to home gyms and SUVs."
And your point is? Do we really want the readers of Consumer Reports (can you say small-sample bias and selectivity bias) telling us what kinds of cars to drive?
"The consumer movement should not be singled out for scorn. These days, Washington is full of "citizen" groups whose membership is nothing more than a mailing list. A so-called "advocacy explosion" of the past 30 years has doubled or tripled the number of organizations with offices in Washington. But the percentage of Americans belonging to organizations has not increased, because today's citizen groups rarely mobilize citizens. They litigate, they respond to notice and comment announcements in the Federal Register, they testify at congressional and administrative hearings, they network -- but they seldom turn out the troops. Personal democracy provides them with other means to reach their political objectives."
Again, bug or feature? Doesn't a constitutional republic mean some people act as agents, perhaps for a few interested principals (can you say public choice), perhaps for a larger population of principals. But to expect that a few people can adequately represent the interests of ALL the principals strikes me as a bit much. Consider the implications of the Arrow impossibility theorem.
"A show of citizen support used to be a trump card in American politics, and politicians were almost always trying to accumulate more evidence of their ability to bring out the masses -- especially when they got into fights with rivals. The established wisdom of political science says that the more politicians compete with one another, the more citizens will become politically active. But it hasn't worked that way in recent elections. In 1998, for example, the partisan rancor surrounding the election could not have been more intense. A president was under impeachment, the parties were locked in mortal combat. Yet, slightly more than a third of the eligible voters went to the polls. And the 2000 election, one of the most closely fought presidential contests in recent history, managed to turn out only about 51 percent of the electorate."
Given what we knew then, was there that much difference between the Governor of Texas and the Vice President? Given what we understand about political business cycles, how could the Vice President have blown it as badly as he did? (reducing tonnage)
"The new order of personal democracy extends even to the way we educate our children. In the 1950s, civic education was about electing leaders -- class officers, student government presidents, team captains. We had debates about public issues. Schools had mock elections that paralleled real elections. (One of the authors of this essay represented Adlai Stevenson in a 1952 elementary school contest, and lost badly to the student who represented Dwight Eisenhower.) Civic education was organized around the processes by which citizens asserted their ownership of government and expressed their collective views about what the government should be doing."
Ah, time, gentlemen, to look in the mirror. Here is another illustration of process, nuance, failure. Should it really be a surprise that if governmental institutions (heck, life itself) has become more complex, and nuanced, and individuated, that people might associate more with other people, and work with institutions more specifically focused toward their wishes. Ergo, the end of leaders as we knew them. Think back to the 1950s and the America that worked. The national goals were relatively simple: beat the Fascists, contain Communism. Then the deluge: go to the moon, make people like each other, abolish poverty, abolish disease. For those who are more adept with counterfactuals, try these. Consider a civil rights policy that limited the power of government to prohibit people from trading with each other, wouldn't that have killed Jim Crow just as dead and spared us divisive quotas. Consider competitive bidding for space exploration: might Professor Reynolds be posting from Mars? Instead, we get a one-size-fits-all-policy, managed by experts (those young eggheads who loved Ambassador Stevenson in 1952?) Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
"The selfless volunteer and the self-centered customer seem unlikely soul mates, but they are both products of a political system that has less and less use for real citizens -- citizens who dare to ask both what our government can do for us, and what we can do for our government."
As you did. By your fruits shall we know thee.
"Now our government no longer needs us. The citizen-soldiers have given way to the professional all-volunteer military and its armada of smart bombs and drone aircraft. The citizen-administrators have disappeared, too, replaced long ago by professional bureaucrats. Americans may still regard each other as fellow citizens with common causes and commitments. But the candidates seeking votes on Tuesday see us as something less: not a coherent public with a collective identity but a swarm of disconnected individuals out to satisfy our personal needs in the political marketplace. We see them, in turn, as boring commercials to be tuned out."
Frederic Bastiat's quip about the grand fiction by which each attempts to live at the expense of everyone else comes to mind.
(text slipped at Reading)
"This transformation of citizens into customers is not the result of some conscious campaign by the political class to restrict access to public decision-making. On the contrary, ostensibly democratic reforms have lowered the barriers to citizen participation. Freedom of information statutes, sunshine laws, mandatory public hearings, public notice and comment requirements, public agency hotlines and access to the courts through class action suits -- all these and other arrangements would seem to have enhanced the public's opportunity to engage in the formation of public policy.
"But that didn't happen. Instead, our customer-friendly government made it possible for private citizens to play politics on their own, without hitching their interests to those of like-minded citizens. The new political order is a "personal" rather than a popular democracy. Personal democracy lowers the barriers that citizens once breached only by collective assault. But the reality of personal democracy is less benign than it sounds. For ordinary citizens, the most potent political resource is the power of numbers. When they deal with government one by one, they lose their leverage."
Is that a bug, or a feature? In the limit, isn't the power of numbers the power of the mob? Do we really want to go there?
"The new avenues of democratic access were not designed for ordinary citizens in the first place. Ordinary citizens rarely look at the Federal Register for opportunities to comment on new regulations, attend public hearings or litigate on behalf of the public interest. The new channels of access to public decision-makers permit political and economic elites -- with the aid of the lobbyists and lawyers on K Street -- to get what they want from government without the nuisance of mobilizing a constituency of citizens to support them."
Ever hear of specialization and the division of labor? Wasn't the idea behind the independent regulatory commissions and the other agencies PRECISELY to get the best and the brightest to make the RIGHT decisions? Isn't the whole mind-set behind fuel efficiency standards, or nondiscrimination policies for business, or zoning codes, or smart growth, or selective service, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, et vitam venturi saeculi, amen, the mindset that the people are not quite clever enough to figure these things out on their own, whist the wise experts can?
"Rather than take issues to the electorate for resolution, they litigate and pose as "stakeholders" for diffuse interests such as the disabled, the elderly, children or endangered species -- or they exploit bureaucratic procedures to remove the making of policy from the sight of the public. In the process, millions of citizens who might once have been called to the aid of their parties remain passive bystanders. These are the people who will not show up to vote on Tuesday, because no one has sent them a sufficiently compelling invitation."
Including the Libertarians. Are you listening, Harry Browne?
"Today there are even some movements that don't take on the traditional form of a movement. The large number of groups associated with consumerism, for example, hides the fact that most of these groups never had many active members. Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, argued that the term "movement" mischaracterized the character of consumerism. According to Pertschuk, consumer advocacy has been the product of a small number of groups and Washington policy entrepreneurs rather than the result of grass-roots efforts. The absence of a mobilized popular base has narrowed the movement's agenda to issues that interest the fortunate few for whom consumption is a way of life. Those would include "consumers" who look to Consumer Reports for advice on choosing everything from toasters and CD players to home gyms and SUVs."
And your point is? Do we really want the readers of Consumer Reports (can you say small-sample bias and selectivity bias) telling us what kinds of cars to drive?
"The consumer movement should not be singled out for scorn. These days, Washington is full of "citizen" groups whose membership is nothing more than a mailing list. A so-called "advocacy explosion" of the past 30 years has doubled or tripled the number of organizations with offices in Washington. But the percentage of Americans belonging to organizations has not increased, because today's citizen groups rarely mobilize citizens. They litigate, they respond to notice and comment announcements in the Federal Register, they testify at congressional and administrative hearings, they network -- but they seldom turn out the troops. Personal democracy provides them with other means to reach their political objectives."
Again, bug or feature? Doesn't a constitutional republic mean some people act as agents, perhaps for a few interested principals (can you say public choice), perhaps for a larger population of principals. But to expect that a few people can adequately represent the interests of ALL the principals strikes me as a bit much. Consider the implications of the Arrow impossibility theorem.
"A show of citizen support used to be a trump card in American politics, and politicians were almost always trying to accumulate more evidence of their ability to bring out the masses -- especially when they got into fights with rivals. The established wisdom of political science says that the more politicians compete with one another, the more citizens will become politically active. But it hasn't worked that way in recent elections. In 1998, for example, the partisan rancor surrounding the election could not have been more intense. A president was under impeachment, the parties were locked in mortal combat. Yet, slightly more than a third of the eligible voters went to the polls. And the 2000 election, one of the most closely fought presidential contests in recent history, managed to turn out only about 51 percent of the electorate."
Given what we knew then, was there that much difference between the Governor of Texas and the Vice President? Given what we understand about political business cycles, how could the Vice President have blown it as badly as he did? (reducing tonnage)
"The new order of personal democracy extends even to the way we educate our children. In the 1950s, civic education was about electing leaders -- class officers, student government presidents, team captains. We had debates about public issues. Schools had mock elections that paralleled real elections. (One of the authors of this essay represented Adlai Stevenson in a 1952 elementary school contest, and lost badly to the student who represented Dwight Eisenhower.) Civic education was organized around the processes by which citizens asserted their ownership of government and expressed their collective views about what the government should be doing."
Ah, time, gentlemen, to look in the mirror. Here is another illustration of process, nuance, failure. Should it really be a surprise that if governmental institutions (heck, life itself) has become more complex, and nuanced, and individuated, that people might associate more with other people, and work with institutions more specifically focused toward their wishes. Ergo, the end of leaders as we knew them. Think back to the 1950s and the America that worked. The national goals were relatively simple: beat the Fascists, contain Communism. Then the deluge: go to the moon, make people like each other, abolish poverty, abolish disease. For those who are more adept with counterfactuals, try these. Consider a civil rights policy that limited the power of government to prohibit people from trading with each other, wouldn't that have killed Jim Crow just as dead and spared us divisive quotas. Consider competitive bidding for space exploration: might Professor Reynolds be posting from Mars? Instead, we get a one-size-fits-all-policy, managed by experts (those young eggheads who loved Ambassador Stevenson in 1952?) Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
"The selfless volunteer and the self-centered customer seem unlikely soul mates, but they are both products of a political system that has less and less use for real citizens -- citizens who dare to ask both what our government can do for us, and what we can do for our government."
As you did. By your fruits shall we know thee.
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