06-04-2026, 06:05 AM
(continued from above)
The "Should" question, at last
The digression about technocracy was necessary because this is where we start to see the conflation between the Author's "is" and "should" and this is a critical weakness for his work. It is worth quoting President Sandow in full here:
"... [The] most important political questions lie outside any expert domain. They are questions that belong, irreducibly, to the community of persons whose lives will be shaped by the answers. The deliberative democrat insists on this point not out of romantic populism but out of a clear-eyed recognition that the alternative. That is, the permanent delegation of political authority to self-selected or institutionally selected elites is incompatible with the equal moral standing of persons that democracy exists to honor." (The emphasis is ours.)
This is the assumption behind the entire project, and we dare say, behind the entire argument for democracy writ large. That all people hold an equal moral standing, and that democracy honors that. These are very profound words indeed. Kalistan, largely made up of Brethrenists, would agree that all men and women who draw breath possess an equal moral standing. Men, women, children, the elderly, and indeed, law abiders as well as even violent criminals hold an equal moral standing because they are all judged by a single solitary and objective moral law that determines the goodness, neutralness and badness of their actions. In purely secular terms, all are equal under the law, and all people may be judged as moral or immoral, good or bad based on their observance and adherence to that law.
We do not disagree here.
We do disagree with the jump in reason that the author makes in the second half of the sentence. More because we don't think the author himself actually believes it. We don't think any democrats do.
Why does the author say that democracy exists to honor the moral equivalence of all people? They clearly do not even do this in practice. Nobody lets a 6 year old vote, though that 6 year old is indeed an equal member of the human race. Nobody allows a foreigner to come into their nation to vote or to manipulate their government officials, though indeed, those foreigners are morally equal to all citizens in this nation. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise.
Which puts that statement out there as an absurdity: Democracy honors the moral equality of all humans. Do other systems not? Or is it really a matter of magnitude? Perhaps democrats allow more people to participate than authoritarian states, but there is nothing inherent in democracy that honors the moral equivalence of all humans, and nothing inherent in authoritarianism that rejects that equivalence. It is very possible that the democracy's rules will exclude some categories of people from participation, like children, or convicted felons. And yet this doesn't affect one iota the moral equivalence of humanity. It seems those two things then were tied together for some reason that the author chose to omit.
That moral equality however, is shown to be the moral basis for the author's apology for democracy after all just below this. Again, we quote in full, and please forgive the repeated quotation but it is necessary:
"Democracy, properly conceived, is a system of collective self-governance whose purpose is to enable a community of free and equal persons to shape the conditions of their common life through processes of public reasoning. Its value is not purely procedural – not simply a matter of following the right rules regardless of outcomes – nor purely epistemic – not simply a matter of reliably producing correct answers. It is both simultaneously. Democratic procedures are valuable because they embody equal respect for persons, and because ( talking always under the right conditions) they tend to produce outcomes that are wiser and more just than those that any individual or small group could generate alone." (Again, emphasis is ours.)
There is the reason why you should support democracy, according to our Author. Not just any democracy, of course, but "democracy properly conceived," and "under the right conditions," i.e., deliberative democracy. We can agree that deliberative democracy is a better form of democracy than simple formal performative democracy. And yet... we do not find the argument that democracy is preferable to non-democracy, however you wish to describe this, on the basis that it provides "outcomes that are wiser and more just than those that any individual or small group could generate alone" to be compelling at all.
Why? Why does the author just assert this? We have demonstrated above that central tendencies fall apart under interest. The author is arguing for deliberation to determine the line between preference and interest, and then deliberation to determine what is in, ostensibly, the general interest. So why does he then fall back on central tendency thinking as the mechanism to achieve that "general interest"? And why can more people do this more effectively, more wisely, and more justly than one or a few people can? What makes 5 million opinions about what a person should do more just than that person's own opinion?
That mechanism is the fatal flaw in the logic of all democracy. It is the notion, ultimately that "more" means "more correct". At its very core, the minority can always be outvoted, can be stifled. And yet, the author asserts that the moral justification for that mechanism is that human beings are equal, and democracy is the system that honors that best. He says as much in the above passage, where a large group will always be wiser and more just than a small group. Will a large group of illiterates provide a more just, wiser decision than a single philosopher? Perhaps, but certainly not as a function of the group size.
What then is Good Government?
Mr. Sandow undermines his otherwise brilliant and well argued point in that little phrase. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, all forms of government are mere methods of ratifying the decisions of the powerful and directing the efforts and resources of society to accomplish what members of the society may not accomplish alone. From top to bottom, there is no other reason for government to exist. If one person can govern himself better than he is governed in a society, he would leave society and just do so. But he stays within the society for the obvious benefits of being in that society (namely the benefits of social distribution of goods and resources), and thereby surrenders the right to be the judge in his own case. This is classic liberal theory. Even the liberals do not believe that the system of government values the inherent equality of each individual person, in and of themselves, but only as a society.
As our government is therefore the method of ratifying the decisions of the powerful--or let's be nicer about it and pretend that the fiction is the truth, of "the society as a whole"--and organizing collective action, it inherently does not value the moral equality of each and every individual. It allows some to win, and others to lose. Or at its best, it allows all to win some, but never anyone to win everything. Either way, the notion that democracy, as a discrete example of the general category "government organizational systems," can somehow transcend one of the necessary characteristics of the general category, is on its face unintelligible.
Our author makes this very bold claim at the end of the argument, in the summary section. We could very easily give him the benefit of the doubt, because the rest of the article was, for the most part, very well reasoned and made his point effectively. But this is how democrats see their system. Democracy is better than non democracy, or in this case, other forms of democracy because it is the only system that inherently values the equality of all humans. That's nonsense, and is the greatest weakness in the arguments of those who attempt to justify democracy.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, that particular point shows that the author has fallen to the trap of confusing "should" for "is." We have countless examples of how democracy has produced far inferior, far less wise and far less just outcomes for its own people than many non-democracies. How democracies go to war when authoritarian states would prefer not to. How democracies are susceptible to corruption in ways that closed absolutist states like Kalistan have been able to avoid. How demagogues so easily trick masses of voters who are regrettably too busy living their lives but must take the time out of their lives to be inconvenienced at the polls. Democracy doesn't produce wiser or more just outcomes, not in a performative formal setting, and not in a deliberative setting either. There is no evidence that deliberation won't lead to the same local prejudices getting voted in, and this time clothed with the fabric of reason. The author doesn't bother to provide any: he merely asserts it as a justification for the system he is advocating on behalf of.
If democracy produces socially optimal outcomes, it is only accidental, it is never clean or usually honest, and it certainly doesn't honor and uphold the inherent moral equality of all humanity. It should be, but it regrettably is usually the result of elite deal making, where the people themselves do not see their interests in the final outcome. Perhaps this is for the best: for the democrat, it is certainly a moral bad. Democracy certainly does not more reliably produce morally good outcomes more often than a correctly ordered regime of any size, because the moral good is the function of the correct ordering of the society and its government, not of the amount of participation among the electorate.
Or, to put it another way, it is not the "deliberative" part of President Sandow's argument which is weak. It is the "democracy" part.
The "Should" question, at last
The digression about technocracy was necessary because this is where we start to see the conflation between the Author's "is" and "should" and this is a critical weakness for his work. It is worth quoting President Sandow in full here:
"... [The] most important political questions lie outside any expert domain. They are questions that belong, irreducibly, to the community of persons whose lives will be shaped by the answers. The deliberative democrat insists on this point not out of romantic populism but out of a clear-eyed recognition that the alternative. That is, the permanent delegation of political authority to self-selected or institutionally selected elites is incompatible with the equal moral standing of persons that democracy exists to honor." (The emphasis is ours.)
This is the assumption behind the entire project, and we dare say, behind the entire argument for democracy writ large. That all people hold an equal moral standing, and that democracy honors that. These are very profound words indeed. Kalistan, largely made up of Brethrenists, would agree that all men and women who draw breath possess an equal moral standing. Men, women, children, the elderly, and indeed, law abiders as well as even violent criminals hold an equal moral standing because they are all judged by a single solitary and objective moral law that determines the goodness, neutralness and badness of their actions. In purely secular terms, all are equal under the law, and all people may be judged as moral or immoral, good or bad based on their observance and adherence to that law.
We do not disagree here.
We do disagree with the jump in reason that the author makes in the second half of the sentence. More because we don't think the author himself actually believes it. We don't think any democrats do.
Why does the author say that democracy exists to honor the moral equivalence of all people? They clearly do not even do this in practice. Nobody lets a 6 year old vote, though that 6 year old is indeed an equal member of the human race. Nobody allows a foreigner to come into their nation to vote or to manipulate their government officials, though indeed, those foreigners are morally equal to all citizens in this nation. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise.
Which puts that statement out there as an absurdity: Democracy honors the moral equality of all humans. Do other systems not? Or is it really a matter of magnitude? Perhaps democrats allow more people to participate than authoritarian states, but there is nothing inherent in democracy that honors the moral equivalence of all humans, and nothing inherent in authoritarianism that rejects that equivalence. It is very possible that the democracy's rules will exclude some categories of people from participation, like children, or convicted felons. And yet this doesn't affect one iota the moral equivalence of humanity. It seems those two things then were tied together for some reason that the author chose to omit.
That moral equality however, is shown to be the moral basis for the author's apology for democracy after all just below this. Again, we quote in full, and please forgive the repeated quotation but it is necessary:
"Democracy, properly conceived, is a system of collective self-governance whose purpose is to enable a community of free and equal persons to shape the conditions of their common life through processes of public reasoning. Its value is not purely procedural – not simply a matter of following the right rules regardless of outcomes – nor purely epistemic – not simply a matter of reliably producing correct answers. It is both simultaneously. Democratic procedures are valuable because they embody equal respect for persons, and because ( talking always under the right conditions) they tend to produce outcomes that are wiser and more just than those that any individual or small group could generate alone." (Again, emphasis is ours.)
There is the reason why you should support democracy, according to our Author. Not just any democracy, of course, but "democracy properly conceived," and "under the right conditions," i.e., deliberative democracy. We can agree that deliberative democracy is a better form of democracy than simple formal performative democracy. And yet... we do not find the argument that democracy is preferable to non-democracy, however you wish to describe this, on the basis that it provides "outcomes that are wiser and more just than those that any individual or small group could generate alone" to be compelling at all.
Why? Why does the author just assert this? We have demonstrated above that central tendencies fall apart under interest. The author is arguing for deliberation to determine the line between preference and interest, and then deliberation to determine what is in, ostensibly, the general interest. So why does he then fall back on central tendency thinking as the mechanism to achieve that "general interest"? And why can more people do this more effectively, more wisely, and more justly than one or a few people can? What makes 5 million opinions about what a person should do more just than that person's own opinion?
That mechanism is the fatal flaw in the logic of all democracy. It is the notion, ultimately that "more" means "more correct". At its very core, the minority can always be outvoted, can be stifled. And yet, the author asserts that the moral justification for that mechanism is that human beings are equal, and democracy is the system that honors that best. He says as much in the above passage, where a large group will always be wiser and more just than a small group. Will a large group of illiterates provide a more just, wiser decision than a single philosopher? Perhaps, but certainly not as a function of the group size.
What then is Good Government?
Mr. Sandow undermines his otherwise brilliant and well argued point in that little phrase. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, all forms of government are mere methods of ratifying the decisions of the powerful and directing the efforts and resources of society to accomplish what members of the society may not accomplish alone. From top to bottom, there is no other reason for government to exist. If one person can govern himself better than he is governed in a society, he would leave society and just do so. But he stays within the society for the obvious benefits of being in that society (namely the benefits of social distribution of goods and resources), and thereby surrenders the right to be the judge in his own case. This is classic liberal theory. Even the liberals do not believe that the system of government values the inherent equality of each individual person, in and of themselves, but only as a society.
As our government is therefore the method of ratifying the decisions of the powerful--or let's be nicer about it and pretend that the fiction is the truth, of "the society as a whole"--and organizing collective action, it inherently does not value the moral equality of each and every individual. It allows some to win, and others to lose. Or at its best, it allows all to win some, but never anyone to win everything. Either way, the notion that democracy, as a discrete example of the general category "government organizational systems," can somehow transcend one of the necessary characteristics of the general category, is on its face unintelligible.
Our author makes this very bold claim at the end of the argument, in the summary section. We could very easily give him the benefit of the doubt, because the rest of the article was, for the most part, very well reasoned and made his point effectively. But this is how democrats see their system. Democracy is better than non democracy, or in this case, other forms of democracy because it is the only system that inherently values the equality of all humans. That's nonsense, and is the greatest weakness in the arguments of those who attempt to justify democracy.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, that particular point shows that the author has fallen to the trap of confusing "should" for "is." We have countless examples of how democracy has produced far inferior, far less wise and far less just outcomes for its own people than many non-democracies. How democracies go to war when authoritarian states would prefer not to. How democracies are susceptible to corruption in ways that closed absolutist states like Kalistan have been able to avoid. How demagogues so easily trick masses of voters who are regrettably too busy living their lives but must take the time out of their lives to be inconvenienced at the polls. Democracy doesn't produce wiser or more just outcomes, not in a performative formal setting, and not in a deliberative setting either. There is no evidence that deliberation won't lead to the same local prejudices getting voted in, and this time clothed with the fabric of reason. The author doesn't bother to provide any: he merely asserts it as a justification for the system he is advocating on behalf of.
If democracy produces socially optimal outcomes, it is only accidental, it is never clean or usually honest, and it certainly doesn't honor and uphold the inherent moral equality of all humanity. It should be, but it regrettably is usually the result of elite deal making, where the people themselves do not see their interests in the final outcome. Perhaps this is for the best: for the democrat, it is certainly a moral bad. Democracy certainly does not more reliably produce morally good outcomes more often than a correctly ordered regime of any size, because the moral good is the function of the correct ordering of the society and its government, not of the amount of participation among the electorate.
Or, to put it another way, it is not the "deliberative" part of President Sandow's argument which is weak. It is the "democracy" part.
Primary: Institutionalist Party of Kalistan (IPoK), 5146-
Inactive:
Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK), 2591-
Inactive:
Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK), 2591-