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Democracy Doesn’t Work
Look, democracy doesn’t work in the best way, depending on its manifestation in its various different forms.
Electoral College. Gerrymandering. Proportional representation. First past the post. Ranked choice voting. Parliamentary democracies. All of these factors and systems influence the outcome of an election.
Democracy has some issues and I will discuss my largest problem with it below (hint: it’s related to populism), but in the words of Winston Churchill, it’s the best we’ve got:
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been.”
One of the largest problems with democracy, as Plato outlined in his Republic, is that people can be swayed by demagoguery.
Churchill noticed this as well and is reported to have said: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
I will share one exchange I have recently had that could testify to Churchill’s (granted, elitist) experience. Fear of being elitist in this regard really gets overplayed. I am no fan of elitism, but structural problems with the average voter should be addressed, despite our fear of being labeled elitist.
