What? I've been waiting to make a "nein" joke again for years. Let me have this.
Anyway, as you may have read, Trump's other Fed pick is also interesting. And... not remotely competent. However, something else about Stephen Moore has gotten the left in a tizzy. He has stated that he doesn't really believe in "democracy," and he has described "democracy" as "two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."
Where are my pearls? I need something to clutch, and I haven't driven a stick shift in years!
"Democracy" is one of those funny words. People frequently don't know what it means, but they know they're supposed to like it. In my corner of political science-- game theory-- those of us who don't shield our eyes from the Nobel Prize-winning work of Kenneth Arrow know that it is a mathematical impossibility (hard math, don't ask), but lots of people see the word as something intrinsically good, even if they don't know what it means, precisely. So, clutch those pearls!
The key here is Moore's use of the analogy to two wolves and a sheep. There is actually a scholarly reference here, and there is a reasonable likelihood that Moore has read it. James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent. There is zero chance that he fully understood it, because he's a bloody moron, and that book is hard, but he has probably had someone try to explain it to him, in dumbed-down form. (Remember: Moore=not smart.)
Anyway, Buchanan & Tullock were the founders of what came to be called the "public choice" school of economic thought, and were deeply influenced by... um... Kenneth Arrow. Essentially, if you have a group of people making any kind of collective choice, any rule short of unanimity implies the imposition of an outcome on an unwilling subset, and that creates all sorts of opportunities for exploitation. (Like... the wolves exploiting the sheep, although "exploiting" maybe wouldn't be the ideal word there.) Since Buchanan & Tullock were economists, they were concerned mostly with economic exploitation, but the principles are broadly applicable. That's the nice thing about economic modeling.
Do you think you believe in "democracy?" You don't. Watch.
Moore was defining democracy in terms of majoritarianism, which is a key component of every existing definition of democracy. Sure, lots of people load lots of other stuff onto the term, but at some point, that demos part needs to be in there. Governance under "democracy," at some level, is about the translation of the public's preferences into outcomes, in some way, and thresholds other than the majority threshold wind up meeting other problems. Buchanan & Tullock propose that the only standard without exploitation is unanimity, but even they don't argue that unanimity is the only viable standard. Sure, you can propose supermajoritarianism for certain kinds of stuff, but whatever. The key question for whether or not you believe in "democracy" is whether or not you believe that there are times when it is right and proper for you to lose. Whether or not there are times when you look at public opinion polling and demand that you lose because the polls are against you. You see where I'm going with this, right?
OK, so these days on college campuses, gay marriage is pretty much not just a settled issue, but the students who oppose it-- and I know they exist-- keep their mouths shut. Why? Because on a college campus, you can't fuckin' say that you oppose gay marriage anymore. Free speech doesn't really exist on college campuses. Y'all know that, right? Anyway, are you old enough to remember that attitudes on this one have changed rather quickly? Here's a funny, little historical tidbit. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the "Defense of Marriage Act," prohibiting the recognition of gay marriages because he was running for reelection, and he was afraid someone would accuse him of supporting gay marriage. In 1996, support of gay marriage was such a fringe position that the Democratic President signed a bill to try to inoculate himself against the "accusation" that he might have held that position.
Now, if you believe in "democracy," as Moore was defining it, you'd have to take the position that in 1996, gay marriage would have been horrible and unacceptable because it was so unpopular.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that if you are reading a snarky, Trump-bashing political scientist's blog rather than Fox News, or Breitbart, or whatever, you probably don't want to argue that.
Or hey, you know what? Let's go back further. Shall we talk about segregation? Slavery?
You may try to weasel out of my DOMA argument by saying that DOMA was unconstitutional and Obergefell was correctly decided, but if you do that, a) you're missing the point, and b) you can't pull that with slavery because unlike the rest of the world, we needed a civil war to handle that one constitutionally.
And you know what? Even if slaves had been allowed to vote, by the numbers, if whites outnumbered them and supported slavery, slavery would have continued. Yay, democracy, right?
What's going on here? There is a set of stuff that we cordon off and say majority opinion doesn't get to touch these issues. Civil rights and civil liberties. We write them into a document. That constitution-thingy. Back when we had one... A prohibition on infringements is a statement that says, "no matter what democracy says, this stuff can't be touched." Civil rights and civil liberties are, in the majoritarian sense, fundamentally anti-democratic, and that is what Moore means, except that the only thing Moore cares about is money.
Remind me, again, what color is Stephen Moore?
Oh, right.
Anyway, the logical follow-up question is this: which issues are the issues that don't get touched by majority opinion? Alternatively, which issues would you concede upon finding yourself on the other side of majority or even supermajority opinion? For the purposes of what follows, I'm going to assume that you, the reader, are a lefty because you are reading a Trump-bashing political scientist's blog.
If supermajority opinion said that we shouldn't do anything about climate change, would you say that any action on climate change becomes illegitimate?
If supermajority opinion said that we should bomb the shit out of Venezuela, would you say that inaction becomes democratically illegitimate?
If supermajority opinion supported Trump's whims about closing the southern border, releasing whomever into "sanctuary cities," and cutting off all further refugees, would you demand that supermajority opinion be implemented because... DEMOCRACY!!!?
You know all those public opinion polls y'all love to cite about support for "background checks?" What if the polls showed opposition to any form of gun control. Would you insist that "democracy" prevail and that all forms of gun control be eliminated because... DEMOCRACY!!!?
OK, so I set these up as hypotheticals. Y'all like to tell yourselves that you are in the majority. Everyone does. It's comforting. But... you're not. Framing.
Try this. Late-term abortion bans are actually kind of popular. Do you want to get rid of private health insurance for your single-payer healthcare system? Have you seen the polling on that? I could keep going... Are you buying into this "reparations" thing that the Democratic candidates are doing? Have you seen the polling on that?!
You don't believe in "democracy." No one does. Stephen Moore just said it out loud.
This is, however, unrelated to the fact that he's a moron.