Within the just-published problem of Regulation (Winter 2024-2025), I contemplate H.L. Mencken’s aphorism:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
My quick piece factors out one drawback in taking the aphorism actually:
The widespread individual does know what he desires: to enhance his situation in life in response to his personal preferences. And he succeeds so properly in his non-public life that, as soon as he was left individually free, he and his fellows generated an Industrial Revolution and what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Enrichment.” …
It’s when the widespread individual is given the facility to determine what his fellow people ought to need that issues can go very improper. … When the widespread individuals elect a robust chief or would-be grasp, Mencken’s aphorism appears to take all its pressure.
After some explanations that my readers could be keen on, I conclude by reformulating Mencken’s aphorism with extra precision however albeit a bit much less pithiness:
Non-liberal democracy (as we all know it) is the idea that almost all of voters suppose they know what they need and that everyone deserves to get it good and exhausting.
I finish the article with the hope that the present political scenario in america could “serve as a bitter lesson for a better future.”
He acquired what he needed good and exhausting
