40 - Is Liberal Democracy the Best We Can Do? feat. The Morality of Everyday Things

Summary

Is democracy really the worst form of government except for all the other ones or is it just the worst?

This is a crossover with the delightful Morality of Everyday Things podcast. Jake and Ant and I discuss what liberal democracy is, the arguments in its favour, and some big critiques. Episode includes Plato, Nazis and Lizards. Enjoy!

Also, go listen to MOET pod!

References

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

Carl Schmitt The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy

Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies

Transcript

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.

GiTxMOET

[00:00:00] Clif Mark: Today, a crossover episode with the morality of everyday things podcast. We talk about liberal democracy. Why it's good, why it's bad. If it's the best we can.

[00:00:33] Anthony Collias: Hi guys, welcome to a crossover episode. Uh, today we're talking with cliff mark from good and theory. You may, if you listened to the last episode recall, I mentioned that I'm a big fan of his podcast. It's such a big fan. I actually reached out to him and he was willing to, uh, willing to give some time and have a chat with us.

[00:00:51] Clif Mark: Uh, thanks for having me on I'm really, I'm really glad we got to do. So for good, in theory listeners, this is Jake and Anthony. They do a podcast called the morality of everyday things and they take questions like should billionaires exist? Is it wrong to keep pets? Is there anything wrong with running red lights on your bike?

And, uh, they discuss the ethics of them. They applied philosophical frameworks. They're both really sharp philosophically. And, uh, the pod has a lot of fun. So I recommend it. I listened to it. It's called the morality of everything's of everyday things. Or as I like to call it, uh, the Molette podcast, it's like fun

[00:01:30] Anthony Collias: thing.

Right.

[00:01:31] Clif Mark: And yeah. Um, I wanted to ask you guys was that intentional because I didn't realize good in theory was going to be good when I,

[00:01:39] Anthony Collias: um, that's how it turned out. You know, actually I run ugly. I made a mistake and I put our URL is Moe, D T uh, forgetting that every day is this.

Uh, but yes, today we are going to be discussing with cliff. A big question is liberal democracy. The best that we can do, um, for, for those who don't know or didn't hear me in the last episode, cliff runs an excellent podcast called getting theory. It's about political theory. Um, he talks through places, Republican, uh, amongst other discussions with, uh, eminent philosophers.

[00:02:13] Clif Mark: Yeah. And the reason we came up with this question is liberal democracy. The best we can do is because I guess, because liberal democracy has a really good record. Right. I personally came up during the end of the cold war and under those conditions, democracy was just almost synonymous with good government.

You didn't really get, or I didn't really get my education much critique of liberal democracy. So we thought it would be a good crossover to discuss whether, you know, democracy really is the worst form of government, except for all the others. You know, what can we really say in favor of liberal democracy that will stand up to some scrutiny?

[00:02:53] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Um, I mean, speaking above both of us, we grew up off to the cold war. I grew up my entire life in the UK and had

[00:02:59] Anthony Collias: a more clear for you are so old.

[00:03:05] Jacob Wedderburn Day: And at a, at a more like, uh, well, you grew up across different parts of Europe, right? I grew

[00:03:09] Anthony Collias: up in different parts of Europe and interestingly, my mum is Bulgarian. So I have some insight into what it was like to actually live under the communist regime behind

[00:03:17] Jacob Wedderburn Day: the iron curtain. Yeah. Um, but yeah, uh, effectively that's kind of been the norm for us.

Um, and I mean, people often package our system together as capitalists liberal democracy. There's like those sort of

[00:03:27] Anthony Collias: three words sort of fit fairly hand in hand and we'll,

[00:03:29] Jacob Wedderburn Day: we'll break that up. But, um, I'd say what's interesting is at least from my perspective, the main part of that I've seen critiqued has been the capitalism part because we grew up really in the sort of financial crisis.

Like we were, we were at school when that broke out. We applied to read economics at uni in the sort of years that followed that. Um, I mean, yeah, for the scope of this episode, we're talking specifically about liberal democracy, but, uh, uh, and we've talked about capitalism in other episodes, for example, there should billionaires exist.

We'll no doubt. Talk about that again in future episodes, but, uh, yeah. Interesting. It's that, that as you say, Framer

[00:04:02] Anthony Collias: aspect of it. Yeah. It's interesting that being just a bit younger than you, we basically missed that way. Um, obviously it's way better. And yeah, I think like when I think about the, the political zeitgeists through my, uh, at least teens early twenties was more kind of like, Hey man, capitalism is bad.

Um, but yeah, I mean, like when you, when you think about, when you think about the challenges to liberalism as well, um, I mean, we've seen them pretty recently, right? So, I mean, certainly from us UK, uh, Brexit referendum was big and then the election of Donald Trump, uh, and you know, it's funny that they both happened in the same year, which really sets as a marker, like 2016, the year of like, what's what is wrong with liberalism?

Right. All the celebrities died,

[00:04:42] Jacob Wedderburn Day: a

[00:04:43] Anthony Collias: coincidence. I think the lizard people were pretty sick of it, but yeah, I mean, until those two, like kind of events, it felt like the world was moving in a, in a generally liberal direction. Right. There's, there's certainly the sense in, in the kind of nineties into noughties of, of like things are progressively getting better.

Uh, and, and certainly like a kind of move also towards this kind of supernational. Governmental organizations and stuff. Um, so I mean, it's funny to, to, you know, generally when you think of people now rejecting liberal values, it almost feels like a kind of, uh, a dirty nostalgia for like a bygone era. Uh it's like, okay, grandpa.

[00:05:24] Jacob Wedderburn Day: And I think you mentioned Brexit, particularly because that took the form of a referendum, um, and the risks that, that caused afterwards that, that talking about liberalism, that Brexit felt like a really interesting challenge to democracy. So, uh,

[00:05:36] Anthony Collias: yeah, I mean, we, we, we mentioned just before, like the, the, kind of the, the juxtaposition of like democracy and liberalism, where in a more democracy doesn't necessarily correspond with more liberalism, that'd be a good example.

I was

[00:05:48] Clif Mark: going to say it brings it, is it interesting? Cause you frame, if, when you frame it as a challenge to democracy, I'm not sure I buy it because a referendum is really the people speaking at swell it's uh, exactly, exactly. So, um, I think that the whole. The whole discomfort that people have with, with referendums is really a discomfort that people have with democracy.

And they're interested. They're interesting for that reason.

[00:06:17] Anthony Collias: Um, yes, exactly. And it's so deeply enshrined that democracy is a good thing. There's suddenly this inability for people to articulate. Well, we'll wait, maybe there, maybe there is a limit to this to like maybe there's a limit to which this actually insurance could government, like maybe not every decision should just be put out to a referendum.

And then we say, because this is maximum democracy, this is best government. Exactly, exactly.

[00:06:37] Jacob Wedderburn Day: That I think was a challenge that the liberals struggled with because it was generally people on the liberal left to a. Probably remain anti Brexit. I'm like, okay, we have to one of this folk, but it's disagree with

[00:06:49] Anthony Collias: it.

[00:06:50] Clif Mark: Very tough because, because you know, then they have to make up stories about the people, you know, the people is never wrong, but the people has been misled. Right.

[00:06:58] Anthony Collias: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Which to be fair, we'll come to some kind of critiques of that. And, you know, we will discuss, I think in, in some fair terms, like, you know, some perspectives over which actually, um, you might say that that is not a totally incoherent perspective, but I mean, again, like we said, like, you can't really argue with the fact that this is maximal democracy.

[00:07:21] Jacob Wedderburn Day: So we talked a bit about democracy here and what we normally do in our episodes structurally is we, we start with definitions. So let's start first with democracy. We'll talk about liberalism too. Um, I guess interesting place to start is that democracy is we understand that. It is different from its its origins,

[00:07:37] Anthony Collias: right?

Yeah. I also, I think it's interesting and important to do definitions in this sort of context, because, you know, terms like capitalist liberal democracy, like so much of this is, uh, like modern political, uh, like context or, or loading or, um, close to term, uh, like sentiment, uh, people can, you know, if you sat someone down and said define liberalism, uh, and they weren't, you know, say, you know, in, in your position cliff where you probably spent far too long having to actually answer that.

Um, I think if you took the average Joe Schmoe off the street, they probably struggled to give like a coherent definition of it, of that term.

[00:08:17] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Yeah. But we're fortunate we do have cliffs, so

[00:08:20] Anthony Collias: yeah.

[00:08:22] Clif Mark: Yeah. Well, look, I don't get your hopes up too much because there are serious academics who spent their career trying to define liberal.

And we'll tell you that you cannot give a coherent definition of it, um, that accounts for how most people use it. Anyway, one thing I want to mention another important thing about definitions in this context is that the words we're talking about, Liberty democracy, liberalism, these aren't just analytical terms, right?

They're value terms. They're highly charged ideologically. And that means they're contested people, use them to mean different things. So, you know, for example, North Korea calls itself a democracy and maybe it means something else than when America calls itself a democracy. So all to say there's a lot of different uses.

And we need to be careful just to clarify what we mean when we use these terms.

[00:09:16] Anthony Collias: Oh, sorry. I can totally see how, like in an American context, you know, someone might say something and you know, someone be like, oh, it's such like a liberal perspective. And it's like, well, I mean, you know, no, neither the Republicans or the Democrats are arguing that we shouldn't be in liberal democracy actually.

Actual meaning of that word, but like you would, you know, you say, oh, that's such a liberal thing to say.

[00:09:35] Clif Mark: Um, well, I mean, and that's a legitimate use. That's why it's just, it's important that we got to clarify what we mean. So democracy let's take the first, the second part first, the Greek word is Democrat Tia, which is something like people power.

And the essential idea of democracy is that the people are ruling themselves so popular sovereignty, that kind of thing. Um, and the association, the historical association here is of course, with these ancient democracies, with Athens, where the people were there, assembled, debating with each other and making decisions together.

Uh, but you know, notice that whilst that's the association that philosophers and theorists and. That's the bell. People are trying to ring in our mind when they talk about democracy. That's actually very different from how our democracies work because ancient democracies were direct. It was the people there themselves making laws, deciding to kill Socrates and whoever else deciding to go to war.

Uh, whereas obviously when the people vote, like in the Brexit referendum, all the actual people with political power are up in arms, freaking out. Um, and that's because modern democracies are representative, right? We don't do the politics ourselves. We elect, uh, we, we elect our rulers and they go represent us, but we're not actually being yourself.

So there's a big contrast between ancient, direct democracy and modern representative tomorrow.

[00:11:07] Anthony Collias: So, I

[00:11:07] Jacob Wedderburn Day: mean, you're, you're highlighting the main difference is whereas we vote people to make our decisions and poetics, for example, like in the UK, we have members of parliament in ancient democracy. Citizens would attend their governments and decide for themselves, but how did that work in practice?

And, you know, does that mean from an ancient Greek perspective? Our current system doesn't actually look that democratic.

[00:11:27] Anthony Collias: Yes.

[00:11:28] Clif Mark: Okay. So to take the first part, how did it work? It was kind of that if you were in town that day, or if you wanted to participate in the assembly and they would have these all the time regularly every week, uh, you would just turn up at this big amphitheater, like a place on a hill, uh, the clinics in Athens, and you'd listen to the speakers.

You'd maybe heckle a bit, you could get up and speak. You had the right to yourself, but usually it was a few kind of posh guys who were doing it. And, uh, And you could vote on whatever emotions were put to the assembly. So you were doing it all their stuff was referendum of whoever turned up. Um, yeah. So that's how it worked.

And um, to your second question, whether today's democracies would seem democratic to them. Absolutely not by any kind of, even, even not even the ancient Greeks would say, this is not a democracy. They would say it's an oligarchy. There's very, very few people making the laws. Um, and you get this throughout political theory, right?

So there was this big thing in the enlightenment, French, continental thinkers were getting interested in English government because it seemed like it was going pretty well. Uh, is it Republic? Is it democracy and Russo. In the social contract, he says these Britons they're slaves, except for the one day when they elect their own like slave masters.

Um, so, so unless you are actually exercising government, a lot of democratic theorists would say, look, this isn't a democracy and it's intentional. I look, I'm not going on. I want to throw in more detail, which is the American founding fathers. And you get this a lot. Whenever you have these big complaints about election results in the electoral college, they designed the American Republic specifically to not be democratic.

They don't want the people involved. Um, so right. Uh, according to the ancient perspective, we wouldn't be democratic, but we're talking about the kind of democracy we do have because nonetheless. Modern democracies still build themselves as somehow adhering to popular sovereignty because we get to inject bad leaders.

Um, if they, if they do a bad job afterward, let's

[00:13:56] Anthony Collias: go. Yeah. So, so we can say that. I mean, certainly ideologically it's linked to ancient democracy, but really when we say democracy today, It's it's more than it kind of refers to this idea that people are sovereign, not to the fact that literally all decisions are, um, you know, referenda or that everyone actually has the ability to vote in every decision we don't meet in a running assembly, uh, in the sense that like ancient communities did fun as that sounds

[00:14:23] Clif Mark: really fun.

Oh, I mean, it would be great. It would take up a lot of time. I don't think anyone, you know, people got stuff to do in the modern world. Yeah.

[00:14:30] Anthony Collias: What made me actually interesting. I mean, maybe we'll come to this in a bit, but I think one thing that's curious to consider is that like, uh, one of the main arguments for representative democracy, um, aside from some argument of like, uh, competency or expertise, uh, which I, it's a, it's a practical one, right?

Like, okay. The, you know, Greece was a city state and you know, what, if you're managing many city states, et cetera, but you know, with modern technology, it's kind of hard to make the argument that we couldn't just let everyone vote in any everything. The question is whether that's a good way to govern. Um, but w what kind of, obviously we'll come back to some of these concepts for now talking about definitions.

The other part that we obviously want to touch on is, is liberalism or liberal. Cause when people talk about democracies in the modern context, it's, it's pretty much, you know, synonymous with liberal democracies.

[00:15:19] Jacob Wedderburn Day: So you mentioned this already cliff, but for a word that is so like widely. Liberalism is notoriously difficult to define.

And the context of political philosophy liberalism refers to a school of thought that takes freedom, consent and autonomy as foundational moral values, liberals agree that it's generally wrong to coerce people, to seize control of their bodies or force them to act against their will, that they disagree among themselves.

And many of the wives and house of those particular.

[00:15:44] Anthony Collias: Yeah. And, um, given that people will always disagree about politics. Uh, liberalism's core aim is to create a generally acceptable mechanism for settling political disputes without undue coercion. Uh, so to give everyone a say in government through fair procedures, so that citizens consent to the state's authority, even if they disagree with its decisions, uh, I, you know, wow.

Reading that really gave me flashbacks of first year. So the social contract, I suppose, the will of the people like the general will and stuff, um, But, uh, sorry. I, I, I immediately threw out myself. So the foundational liberal vision is typically associated, uh, with a group of European and American thinkers.

So from John Locke in the 17th century up to roles and the 20th, uh, and is often treated as a sort of Western political inheritance. Uh, but seeing liberalism as a product of a particular cultural tradition might be more of a mistake. Yeah. I might

[00:16:39] Jacob Wedderburn Day: just send, makes this point. So as argued in his brilliant 1997 essay, many of the core principles, we identify liberalism today.

For example, religious toleration, popular sovereignty, equal freedom for our citizens, et cetera. These can actually all be found in right things from pre-modern Europe, from the ancient Buddhist tradition and even 16th century Indian Kings among a range of sources. So liberalism has taken root in diverse societies across the globe, uh, today from, you know, you sit in Japan, you sit in Uruguay, you sit in Namibia, Very widespread.

And since paper suggests that instead of defining liberalism by books written by dead white men, it makes more sense to treat it as a set of parts, a grouping of principles and animating ideas that when combined add up to an overarching framework for understanding political life of these components, at least for political principles are common to the various species of liberalism.

All of which relate to its core moral premise about freedom. So these principles are familiar to most citizens in liberal regime, and they are democracy. The rule of law, individual rights and equality, super, super familiar. If you studied rules in some, let's go philosophy 1 0 1 class, uh, these ideas, the minimalist core number was in was so foundational to political life and advice Marxists that they're basically taken for granted with debates about public policy taking place inside of the parameters of these liberal values.

Yeah.

[00:17:57] Clif Mark: Okay. Yeah. Great summary. Uh, the caveat is liberalism means many different things to many different people and has over the course of history and. We are talking about the kind of liberalism that is all about individual freedoms, individual rights, a rule of law, constitutional government, that kind of thing.

And I guess that takes care of the definitions part of the, uh, episode and we can move on to evaluating it. So, yeah. What is so great about liberal democracy?

[00:18:32] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Yeah. And I guess the point that you make there, something that gets to be aware of as we go, when we're talking about democracy and liberalism is, um, while we're breaking down, what's good and bad about it.

What we're probably doing is implicitly making contrasts with other viable or less viable alternatives to that for me. Um, I mean, throughout history, as we said, like lots of different alternatives have existed from the ancient Greeks, more pure form of democracy to communist totalitarianism, the USSR.

And there's been monarchies, there's been aristocracies, it's been fascism, BU there's been ancient, oligarchy, anarchy, maybe deserves a mention of there been many famous anarchy's industry. I don't know if this was in the notes and the big one. Of

[00:19:08] Anthony Collias: course it's the lizard people, not just a secret fascist state.

Yeah. There are a subset of fascism. Oh no. Wait, where would it be? An aristocracy, the aristocrats illicit elite. And they just feed off feed off of us, like

[00:19:22] Jacob Wedderburn Day: capital. But yet the point to make is just that if we're critiquing the brood, Moxie, it's worth noticing what we're comparing it to, that makes it better or worse.

And we'll try and be explicit about that. But we're going to start with when it's good. And I guess that again, the way we've broken that down is, is, is sort of a reference to values that we like about systems. And in contrast with things that

[00:19:42] Anthony Collias: we don't like about the systems. Yeah. First of all, presidents would lose

Um, but yeah. Okay. So there's a bunch of fundamental goods that we may kind of want from a system of government, or basically be the bars that we'd say like, oh, this is a good system of government because it achieves X. Right. Uh, and we can see how liberal democracy can be quite good at a bunch of them.

It's, it's difficult to make some of these arguments from the society or social context of someone who was brought up in a liberal democracy. So maybe I, maybe I've just been taught that I value these things indoctrinated. I know I'm taught to think that I'm free. You've, you've

[00:20:15] Clif Mark: definitely indoctrinated.

And it's just a question of whether or not the indoctrinated with the right, with the right. Exactly.

[00:20:22] Anthony Collias: Am I liberal in the right ways? Um, yeah. Uh, so one, one extra massive thing that we can say is that a good political system should, should generally improve our freedom. I mean, really it's, it's, it's kind of.

Core struggle with political theory, right. To, to reconcile how we can organize collectively, uh, which necessarily will include constraining our freedoms in some extent, to some extent, uh, but to do so in a way that ultimately maximizes our individual freedom. That that is the core problem, uh, that we're trying to basically solve in, uh, informing governments.

Is that fair to say cliff?

[00:20:55] Clif Mark: Well, no, it's fair. It's fair to say, but it is very much from already liberal perspective. So, um, the first thing I would say is, oh, the goal is to maximize freedom. One freedom is even more contested than democracy in liberalism, right? So what do you mean by freezing freedom? You unpacked it by saying individual freedom.

The government stays out of our business. We stay out of each other's business. I value that. I like that. I don't like a busy body, but. This is very much a liberal value. Your, when you say in shrine individual freedom, you're taking a value that is core to liberalism, as opposed to the other ones. So you're a little bit stabbed in the neck, but,

[00:21:41] Anthony Collias: you know, I think take your point.

I mean, I'm, I'm going to use an example that is against act, but, you know, I suppose for example, the Chinese government would argue that the weakers aren't are, are free to correctly understand, you know, the brilliance of China, for example. Sure. There's some sort of freedom issue as opposed to a lack of negative freedom

[00:22:00] Clif Mark: issue.

I mean, if you want to, you know, take one that might be a little closer to home. You could say that if you allow everyone, the individual freedom to decide on their own about vaccines and masks, you actually undermine the freedom of others to, uh, collectively organize, to reduce the danger to everyone. So, yeah.

Um, I think. So simple to say, well, you know, these people like totalitarian governments, just say, you're say you're free because they're forcing you to do the right thing. There is that argument, but, um, the, the whole maximize individual freedom, I, I want to say that we were talking about what's good about democracy.

What's good about liberal democracy, individual freedoms, and one of those things, but I wouldn't count it as the fundamental goal of government to maximize individual freedom, unless we have a long talk about what you mean by individual freedom and it's not going to be, do whatever.

[00:22:58] Anthony Collias: I will rephrase that to a, a major issue of, of the political theory information to government, uh, reconciling, you know, assuming from a liberal perspective that you do care about individual freedom, uh, How we can reconcile that with the necessary loss of freedom that comes with collective organization.

The example you gave with vaccines is actually really a good one where it's like, how do we square? You know, forcing someone to make a decision around their bodily autonomy versus the externalities imposes on the people around them. Right.

[00:23:28] Jacob Wedderburn Day: What would you say is the core function of government cliff?

[00:23:33] Clif Mark: The core function of government I would say is to, uh, Ooh, I don't know, make, make mutual domination, less violent.

Um,

[00:23:46] Anthony Collias: he was very homesick

[00:23:48] Clif Mark: to live with each other, like a non murderously. I, I think that there's, I think that there's just a lot of functions of government, right? So that's why I don't, I'm not, I don't want to throw away individual freedom because actually I think that's a, it's an important value. I'm just saying, we're assuming we're already making liberal assumption.

Like Plato in the Republic. He has no truck with individual freedom.

[00:24:10] Anthony Collias: This is true. Uh, yeah, my, my, my zealous use of the word core rather than, you know, important, uh, as

[00:24:17] Clif Mark: kind of sidetracked, it might be to realize the human good, you know?

[00:24:21] Anthony Collias: Yeah. Um, we've

[00:24:22] Jacob Wedderburn Day: got, we've got some other axioms here. I get nervous to read this cause I can get the first answer wrong.

Uh, what we've got here. Uh, there's the, I mean, I guess it's the same sort of paradigm, right? If it took then other key rights that we care about the democracy promotes would be, uh, you know, rights, uh, being specific activities. We consider it important. Everyone has access to. So I guess that's like freedom of speech, stuff like that, actually, to be fair to you when you have made the point that these are deeply intertwined in liberalism.

So you've acknowledged the bias that comes with that. Uh, But yeah, it's access to certain key rights in democracies tend

[00:24:58] Anthony Collias: to be quite, yeah. Promote it's a little bit circular, but I think a lot of people would think, you know, one of the things that's good about liberal democracy is that it maintains our rights, rights, that property

[00:25:07] Jacob Wedderburn Day: access to food

[00:25:08] Anthony Collias: and water.

But the fact that you might feel that way is because, or a lot of listeners may think that that's something important is because we are from liberal democracies. Uh, and it is kind of part of the definition, isn't it?

[00:25:20] Clif Mark: Yeah. And I'll also add that people who do not live in liberal democracies also like the idea of individual rights, this is not, it's not, it's super controversial thing that we've all been hypnotized into liking.

There is a, there is upside to, yeah,

[00:25:32] Anthony Collias: we, we, we, we swung too far the other way.

[00:25:36] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Um, another good point about democracies is self rule. Um, which I suppose is just the idea that I guess it's the absence of tyranny in some respects, right? It's just the idea of people.

[00:25:49] Anthony Collias: Choose for themselves, but I mean, it's also a kind of, you know, a lot of people see it and this kind of links to the next point.

It's quite a natural check and balance. When, when people have access to self rule, there's a natural alignment of incentives where that means that you would not want, uh, well, we'll come to this. Cause there's also the issue of the tyranny of the majority. But generally, you know, if people are represented, uh, fairly, then they will not want, um, some system of government.

That's actually not in the interest of the majority of the people. Um, there can still be, as I mentioned, some issue whereby the majority of people, uh, can agree with something that bad for the minority. But, uh, it introduces a check and balance, which comes to the point that actually liberal democracies generally, uh, do help to promote stability.

I mean, stability generally in most forms of government is, is kind of seen as a fundamental good. Um, you know, I, if you study for example, African dictatorships and democracies in Africa, uh, it's generally better to have a stable desktop than it is to have frequent revolts and uprisings and switchings, uh, forms of government or, or leaders.

Um, stability even in a, in a kind of unhappy equilibrium is generally seen as a relative positive. Um, and actually liberal democracies are generally quite. Uh, generally constructed with a lot checks and balances, uh, and often actually also because they help promote prosperity. That also helps to keep stability and peace, um,

[00:27:13] Jacob Wedderburn Day: linked to prosperity.

Uh, you've also got the fact that liberal democracies tend to play really well with capitalism. Uh, and that might be considered a fundamental good given the experience of the last few hundred years, human beings have become much better off. Uh, we want a system that supports free markets to trade in liberal democracies, do a really good job of this.

Now markets not only seem to bring prosperity, but compared to previous models of governance, they maybe even express help us express our freedoms. And I cliff, this was something you talked about recently on your podcast, right? But the guests, when you talk about how

[00:27:40] Clif Mark: you go, yeah. Uh that's right. So the Galean argument for what he calls civil society, but we would call the market is that it gives you a venue in which you can just determine your own wants and needs and pursue them.

And this is a kind of human freedom. And so, because we have that venue, we can act and we can be. A being that that is free in that way. So it's a kind of actualization of this aspect of our identity of having needs and wants and just they're legitimate. We can pursue them. Uh, I talk about it with Jeff Berkson it's episode 20, I believe, do free markets make free humans.

So if you're interested, uh, go listen to it.

[00:28:19] Anthony Collias: Yep. Um, and I guess this kind of linking to that last one, about capitalism and prosperity and stability, and previous point it kind of an overarching point that, uh, irrespective of, you know, theoretical or ideological fundamentals that you might agree with. Um, a lot of the countries who have seen some of the most economic prosperity over the last century, I've been capitalist liberal and democratic.

Uh, so there's a sort of, uh, empirical argument that perhaps from a policy perspective, irrespective of what we like ideologically, it seems to just work well as a system of government. Uh, the same way that I think a lot of people will think that there's lots of, you know, Marxist thinking that is informative and interesting and idealistic, but actually a terrible guideline for actual policy.

Yeah. It's

[00:29:02] Jacob Wedderburn Day: kind of the opposite of that, right?

[00:29:03] Clif Mark: Yeah. I would say that this is the main line that people give about liberal democracy that, Hey, look, it's making us all rich. This is like Fukiyama, uh, our uses and stuff. Um, but I would say just to throw us little counter view in there is that the liberal democracies that people have in their mind, the, uh, America's Canada's a UK is a Western European countries.

They also won the last big war and have been severely, severely messing with. States that have any other form of government, right. Even other forms of government that have been democratically elected. So, so a lot of this prosperity might be the result of just having, having one and being on the right side rather

[00:29:47] Anthony Collias: than, so it might be, it might be more a case of, yeah, this is, this is the one issue.

I say one, uh, one issue, an issue with the empirical perspective, um, correlation isn't necessarily causation. It can be more that some underlying factor that happens to, uh, you know, be common to all of

[00:30:04] Clif Mark: the American power, for example.

[00:30:06] Anthony Collias: Yeah. Americans might have, for example, winning the second world war, like you mentioned as a block, um, get undermined and then actually taking the specific example.

You know, introduction of, uh, or attempted introduction of, uh, capitalist liberal democratic values into countries where actually there wasn't necessarily a strong rule of law already or, or, you know, similar other issues. Uh, they liked bureaucratic, uh, framework and, and I don't know, strong cultures of trust or whatever, uh, you know, set those up in, in Africa and south America.

And actually it doesn't work. So maybe it's not a great form of government. And then also, you know, we can say like, oh, you know, if we look at the most successful con um, countries over the last, however long, that's a very 20th century perspective because the 21st century perspective is, wow, damn, China's growing really fast, right?

Exactly. The financial

[00:30:53] Jacob Wedderburn Day: collapse in

the

[00:30:53] Anthony Collias: west, the collapse in the west, there's a political deficit and now China is doing really

[00:30:59] Clif Mark: well. And one thing I just want to mention about the, uh, maybe there are some countries where, you know, Liberty can not take root, um, There are also a lot of countries where it seemed to be democratic and maybe even liberal enough, but had not been capitalist enough.

And therefore, you know, the us has a long history and the UK isn't so great either of interfering with other peoples governments. If they weren't quite capitalists enough, you could think of you think of the Congo, Italy, Japan, like Iran. These are all, these are all places that had elected government that, you know, all of a sudden we're like, Hmm, but not capitalist enough.

Uh, so, so we're going to have to, we're going to have to mess around with it. And a lot of times you get non liberal or non democratic outcomes. Um, so that's just before you, before any of the listeners start concluding, Hey, you know, these, these Africans, they just don't have what it takes for, for. Um, you might want to look at the individual cases and, and, uh, see you who's doing what yeah, right.

[00:32:05] Anthony Collias: Sorry. That was, yeah. That's a kind of like, I don't know, a Western imperialistic, uh, expression or, or superiority viewpoint more, more just that, um, again, the kind of correlation is not causation argument. Like you can't just stick, um, you know, a liberal democracy on something and suddenly we were, of course.

Yeah. So there might be other things that are important that this correlation that we seem to be seeing in Western countries actually isn't explaining. So that's, yeah.

[00:32:32] Jacob Wedderburn Day: That's quite an interesting critique of the empirical perspective already, before we go into the list of critiques more formally cliff, is there anything you'd want to add to why you think democracy is a good thing?

[00:32:41] Clif Mark: Uh, I think, I think that, uh, the main things are kind of in the definition. I liked that the people can roll themselves. I, I am indoctrinated enough that I don't love the idea that some people are just going to rule over others, even though they do. I liked that people have a say and a. I got to, I got to admit, I like, I like some individual freedom.

I'm not necessarily one to completely make property rights sacred, but I am a freedom guy. So, so in so far as liberal democracies can realize that, um, that's good. And, and once you say you're a liberal democracy, there's a lot of stuff it's really awkward to do to your own people. Uh, and so I think that's the thing

[00:33:23] Anthony Collias: I think just in there that we, we kind of went a little bit down that rabbit hole of like, what's the point of government, right?

Um, on the, on the topic of Fukuyama, we mentioned the end of history. I'm sure we'll talk about it again later. Um, I actually read, uh, it was a mistake because it was way too long. I read his book on the origins of political order. And yeah, it's interesting that like, from what you said earlier about like, um, preventing, uh, violence between people or something like that, right.

Maybe you could say that to the ultimate goal and that doesn't necessarily align with any of these values. Right. What I'm saying is that all of these values kind of come from a familiar, modern perspective where it's kind of a given that we're not in a state of constant war with our neighbors, right?

Yes. It's kind of allowing us to kind of take one level up and be like, okay, now that we're not fighting for constant survival between other nations and our people within our nation, like what system we start to value. Um, it's interesting that actually, like, you know, maybe if you start to think of your self in the context of a country, that's perhaps not, uh, got that privilege.

Maybe, actually some of this stuff falls to the wayside. Maybe there is actually like a, a superseding thing that is the most important function

[00:34:30] Clif Mark: of government, liberal democracies and ancient democracies. They have, you know, wartime measures. Yeah. So, yeah, so

[00:34:37] Anthony Collias: it actually will come through. So like ultimately all of this stuff may be is, is kind of secondary.

[00:34:43] Clif Mark: And you, you might think that the ultimate goal of government isn't the same as the basic goal of government. And if we do live in a situation where we have peace, then you know, that's not the, we can, we can do more. We can aim higher. Hmm.

[00:34:56] Anthony Collias: Mm,

[00:34:57] Jacob Wedderburn Day: wow.

[00:34:57] Anthony Collias: Fair. Okay. Let's go through some of those critiques. I mean, that was kind of touching on one of them, but what kind of semi chronologically should we start with?

Um, I mean, you, you you're probably, or do you get like PTSD when you talk about Plato? Uh,

[00:35:11] Clif Mark: it's funny. You should say that I've read as this from learning as studying as a student. No, but sometimes from making the podcast during the Republic podcast

[00:35:20] Anthony Collias: sometimes. Yes. Yeah.

[00:35:23] Jacob Wedderburn Day: For our listeners, like the context cliff literally went through the Republic and broke it down to how many episodes did you do in the end books?

Intellect.

[00:35:32] Anthony Collias: And you said how many hours of research per episode? Oh,

[00:35:35] Clif Mark: it wasn't just research, but I, so I also didn't just talk about it. I adapted the dialogue and got actors to do it, so yeah, I was doing, maybe it was around a hundred hours per episode. So it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was a lot of work.

So it is, uh,

[00:35:57] Anthony Collias: it does, it does bring something else,

[00:35:59] Clif Mark: but so it leaves me equipped to, uh, speak now for one hour straight on Plato's critique of Damaris. No, um,

[00:36:10] Jacob Wedderburn Day: buckling guys, Ms. Parker has to go

[00:36:13] Anthony Collias: to bed.

[00:36:15] Clif Mark: Um, I think that one of the most popular, at least a long time you'll look, the, one of the main critiques of democracy is that it's stupid.

Right? Because it's just. The ancient Greeks would have said, even not Plato, the oligarchs, but also Socrates. And the Republic is if you just let the people decide everything, these people have no education. They're not experts. You want someone who knows what they're doing in charge. So

[00:36:42] Anthony Collias: you sound like you're your political pundit in 2017.

Yeah. Yes,

[00:36:46] Clif Mark: exactly.

[00:36:47] Jacob Wedderburn Day: It's like people are bored of experts,

[00:36:51] Clif Mark: right? Well, I mean, so there's this thing where then it was, we can't let the giant mob in charge cause they're stupid. They're get carried away with their emotions. They don't understand anything. And, and now 2000 years later you see the exact same kind of arguments coming from people who claim to be.

Into democracy, right? So at least, at least the people making this argument in ancient Greece were they knew that they were oligarchs or supported oligarchy. Whereas now people are like, I support democracy. That's why the people have to shut up. Cause

um, so yeah, we still have this like tension between, between the sort of technocratic side where we need the experts. We need to follow the science. We need to listen to whatever the government say, and then you have, um, and then all the populous stuff we say, it's just demagoguery. It's just people being ignorant.

But on the other hand, you have, you know, right. What you said, uh, people are sick of estimates. So it was a Michael Gove quote, right?

[00:37:54] Anthony Collias: It wasn't,

[00:37:54] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Michael goes quiet.

[00:37:55] Clif Mark: Um, yeah. And people are sick of experts and that's completely fair considering how little, you know, experts have done. To listen to what people actually want.

So,

[00:38:06] Anthony Collias: yeah, and actually I think a really interesting point, a specific sentence that was in the notes, um, was, um, even experts early experts in a very narrow range of things. Right. And I thought this is one that really reminded me of the issues during COVID. Right. Because I do find really interesting that kind of argument like, oh, we're like following the science, like, first of all, as if, as if science is a monolith and there's not actually a range of opinions, even within, you know, legitimate scientific authorities.

Um, and then secondly, as if, as if, um, you know, the, the, if I think about the context of representative democracies in the modern era, um, you know, th there's lots of different experts who have intentionally narrow ranges, and you're trying to synthesize all of those opinions into a coherent policy, right.

Um, there, there is no, there is no, uh, everything expert who can just understand everything perfectly and make those decisions. It's, it's why it's difficult to make trade-offs, uh, which is why I found. So I find it so interesting in the context of COVID like the whole, um, you know yeah. The whole we're following the science context,

[00:39:11] Clif Mark: that's it isn't that politics is supposed to be the architectonic science, right.

The one that brings everything together, that's a subtle Aristotle idea. Hmm. Um, yeah, so I mean, the way I like to put that sometimes is that democracy is structurally stupid because if you take a majority decision, since experts can be the only experts in a very narrow thing, the collective will necessarily not be wise in any one thing.

Um, there's a Contra argument, the wisdom of crowds, but, uh, anyway, that's, that's, that's the, that's the big ancient critique. One of the big ancient critiques of democracy is that it's dumb in the wrong people. Right?

[00:39:52] Jacob Wedderburn Day: The wisdom of crowds is more of a statistical thing anyways, isn't that like definitive, you take enough people to guess, like how many beans are in a jar like

[00:40:01] Clif Mark: that

[00:40:02] Jacob Wedderburn Day: isn't actually true, correct.

Well, it tends to work out quite well, but I think it comes from statistics more than like yeah. Crowds being

[00:40:10] Anthony Collias: wise fair. Um, there must be, there must be enough smart people in scratch. I mean, so that, that would be kind of a platonic or, or ancient Greek perspective. Um, another relevant one, uh, for editing purposes, uh, cliff not gone through this much and not super familiar with marks on, um, on this stuff.

So quick research, but kind of correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. Um, I think it's hard to talk just about marks and democracy, because a lot of, uh, of his perspective is to do also with the kind of interplay between liberalism democracy and capitalism, capitalism, and particularly capitalism in particular.

Um, And I mean, on one hand, obviously, you know, there's, there's some liberal ideas that are kind of similarly important. Uh, I mean, free path, fresh and free expression were literally a necessity for him to have even published his own manifesto. Um, the communist one for those who wanted to get. And actually interesting, like, I think most people don't realize, like, because you see like a Marxist capital or whatever, um, like people don't realize I actually come to the manifesto is literally a pamphlet practical piece of writing to encourage political, um, interaction.

Uh, so it's actually totally worth reading. I mean, like it, the same way that, you know, any, you know, anything. It has been hugely influential is probably worth a quick, you know, knows through if it's relatively quick read. It is, it is

[00:41:34] Jacob Wedderburn Day: really short that I literally, I read it on a tube, Johnny. I was like, wow, just take off a major work of

[00:41:40] Anthony Collias: historical literature.

Um, but yeah, obviously one of the foundational rights in shrined in most liberal democracies, along with political representation is that a property rights and free exchange of goods. And it just can't, you can't really square that with Marxism. Uh, as, as people probably know, uh, it encapsulates that kind of ideological conflict that it has, um, liberalism promotes political democracy with economic and social rights.

Whereas Marxism might say that this political democracy is, is basically insufficient in the absence of a true economic and social democracy. Uh, and this can't really exist in the context of a capitalist class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Um, basically absent, resolving that class struggle, uh, the infrastructure of a quote unquote political democracy.

Uh, really more just provides the tools to undermine the freedom it's supposed to promote. Um, it's closely linked to liberal democracies attachment to capitalism. Uh, although, you know, in strict terms, they like, you know, you don't have to be liberal on capitalistic, tend to go together. Uh, long story short capitalist interests are bound to capture political interests.

Uh, and political interests will then mostly serve to promote the, uh, interests of capitalism, uh, over the pursuit of freedom for individuals or their, or the importance of their individual representation, uh, individuals and their political will is, is sidelined and captured the same way that, you know, laborers are alienated from the, from both the value of their work intrinsically and the product of their labor.

Um, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a long way of saying basically. Mark's might say something along the lines of absent of, you know, resolving class struggle. Uh, political representation is really just theater to placate people and make them feel like they're involved, but actually the politically captured and alienated.

Anyway. Uh, and then, I mean, when you consider that in the Corp and the context of, you know, corporate capture of the political system of America, for example, maybe that doesn't sound that stupid. Uh, you know, you, you kind of think of the famous revolving door between Goldman Sachs and the white house. Um, you know, so many of the last, uh, however many, um, treasury secretaries have been ex Goldman Sachs exactly.

Uh, Ajit PI who put forward that net neutrality bill was, you know, used to be general counsel at Verizon, uh, you know, considered lobbying in the lobbying industry, political contributions and, you know, private media conglomerate who can kind of push, uh, political agendas. You know, it's perhaps not a totally out of.

[00:44:11] Clif Mark: Perspective. I don't think it's totally out there at all. So I want just to clarify, I think a lot of what you said, which is awesome and right on, is that a, you say it in a shorter form Marx's critique, this kind of critique of democracy is really aiming at the liberalism part. Okay. Marks is not saying the people shouldn't rule themselves.

He's being into the people, ruling themselves in freedom. He's saying that when you formulate it in terms of individual rights and in shrine property rights, then. The people actually can't rule themselves because once you make a private property, sacred, people are going to use that to dominate each other.

Yeah. Yeah. It's that

[00:44:50] Anthony Collias: whole it's that whole political democracy is insufficient without that, uh, economic democracy as well. Right. And social. Exactly. We

[00:44:59] Jacob Wedderburn Day: have another one that's um, pretty short, which is, um, there is a criticism of liberal democracy that goes something along the lines of the possibility of the poor exploiting the rich, uh, I think this is kind of funny, cause I don't think it's ever really happened.

Right. But,

[00:45:12] Anthony Collias: um,

[00:45:12] Clif Mark: in modern, right. Well, I mean, this is, I, I checked this in because this is the big, this is one of the big fears in ancient debates over democracy, right? Like if we, if we, if we let the people vote, they're just going to take all of our stuff. The oligarchs would say Texas. Exactly. But today it's exactly the same thing everyone says, oh, you know, we can't, we can't have this social program.

We can't. You know, we can't have a public education, Medicare, et cetera. What's what's next flying cards for everyone,

[00:45:43] Jacob Wedderburn Day: I suppose. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. So you can look at that statistic about like the richest 1% pay. I can't remember exactly how much percentage of taxes, but in the UK, I think it's like, it's well, over 30% of income tax receipts come from the richest 1%.

Right. And you could look at that as like, you can see that as a, from the point of view of the rich, like we're just subsidizing everyone, but then I now have this, like, why, why is that like, distribution is so on equal in the first place that, that needs to be the case.

[00:46:07] Anthony Collias: And also, I mean, yeah, that's just, yeah, isn't that basically just an expression of how much they're earning relatively.

Yeah. And the fact that a lot of them, you know, that's their, their income tax, uh, contribution is kind of irrelevant. It's more about what you're not contributing for. Um, it doesn't doesn't

[00:46:21] Jacob Wedderburn Day: feel like there's much exploitation going on, uh, from, from my point of view, but I, I take the point

[00:46:26] Anthony Collias: that you've, you've made that clear.

Yeah. Um, one that we've seen or, you know, people have certainly said recently, um, perhaps the liberal democratic apparatus, the same thing that makes it quite safe and stable, it means that it just can't respond to, um, urgent issues. Um, at least not without behaving elaborately. Uh, that's kind of like a Schmidt thing that we'll come to later, but, uh, this is the kind of, you know, if you think in the COVID context, this is the, the China was more effective sort of, uh, argument, right?

Uh, when faced with a major problem, uh, that required decisive action, COVID lockdowns, et cetera. Uh, and then we can also think on a global scale or at least, you know, super national scale, something like climate change, uh, they just liberal democracy might not be able to act decisively. Yeah,

[00:47:11] Jacob Wedderburn Day: it's a speed thing, right?

That effectively, this is the dark side of checks and balances. It's just that it makes stuff. So yeah, you have policies that seem obviously positive. Again, that's a highly loaded sort of value statement, but when you have policies that are obviously supportive and then actually it takes ages to get them

[00:47:26] Anthony Collias: through.

And there's been a political infighting. I mean, sometimes take climate change, for example, uh, you know, some people, yeah. Okay. Maybe there's political interests that are kind of driving these decisions, but you know, some people be like, oh, climate change. Isn't the thing. And trying to argue with people about that is, is basically, I don't have time to argue about this.

We need to do something. Yeah. Well, it's

[00:47:46] Jacob Wedderburn Day: the fact that you can put self-interest in terms of like the benefits of coal to your economy ahead of like the sort of collective interest. And then that's a problem. It's a floor of the way that we organize.

[00:47:56] Clif Mark: This is the class classic critique of democracy in the Republican forms of government, but it's supposed to be slow.

They're supposed to be checks and balances. Oh, I think

[00:48:05] Anthony Collias: it's deliberate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's in a sense, it is constructed in that way as well. We mentioned,

[00:48:10] Jacob Wedderburn Day: yeah, we mentioned Trump before, but I think that was actually, this was a weird example of the beauty of checks and balances. Again, that's my perspective.

But it was though they existed in a way that actually slowed Trump's ability to make sweeping, potentially problematic

[00:48:24] Anthony Collias: changes. And also, I mean, the amount of offers.

[00:48:27] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Yeah. Cause he only lasted one term. Yeah.

[00:48:30] Clif Mark: Nice, nice. Illustration of the point I was trying to make earlier about the tension between the liberal part, which is all the checks and balances and the individual rights and the rule of law and the democratic part, which is the people getting what they want, which was, you know, that Trump gets to do what he wants.

So yeah, there's, there's a real tension there. Sorry I interrupted you.

[00:48:49] Anthony Collias: I mean, I was just going to say it's, you know, if I spend a lot of time in Istanbul as a teenager, um, and it's interesting, you know, it feels like far away places, but you know, it's not that abnormal to add places that. You know, democratic and, you know, still market themselves as democratic.

But if, you know, for all intents and purposes has been captured by a, uh, you know, dominant, uh, political figure, strong man who was elected democratically and then uses weakness of political apparatus to cement themselves there. So, you know, you could say Trump is a good example of like, actually we managed to displace him.

So checks and balances worked. Yeah.

[00:49:27] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Last point that we had as a, as a sort of fairly common critique of democracy. This is actually one of my dad's favorites is this, uh, it's this problem of like you elect new leaders, uh, over different terms and, and things just kind of get stuck like that. You, you change your mind.

Things don't happen. Uh, there's a

[00:49:42] Anthony Collias: lot of, there's a lot of political, politically important stuff that can't happen within a four year term. And suddenly it doesn't make sense for people to create a plan, to quit, to commit to actually doing this irrespective of change of power

[00:49:54] Clif Mark: and stuff. And China's a great contrast, right?

Cause everyone's always scared of their long, long range plan, strategic plan. Whereas in the states it's every two years as massive elections.

[00:50:05] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Yeah. Yeah. You look at something like Obamacare, which like still didn't get through in the, in, in, in all the time that they had to sort of push

[00:50:10] Anthony Collias: that, right? Yep.

Yeah, exactly. I think it, I mean, it's kind of a function as well as the fight, what they were saying earlier, liberal democracies move slowly, you know, the, the scale of time for, for countries is larger. Um, and it's, I mean, yeah, it's, it's a bit like, it's a bit like if we swap to is running the company every six months and you know, and it was, it may well have been someone who had a fundamental difference in how to run it.

Uh, like we couldn't run our businesses if we weren't thinking about a strategy that was multi-year right. And in the context of countries that the appropriate timeframe is probably multi-decade which yeah, like you say, China, everything about China's. Um, Investment into, you know, internal infrastructure and an external infrastructure as part of their trade deals and stuff.

Um, that's the kind of, that's the kind of policies that are hard to enact when your, your, um, leadership is changing so often.

[00:51:02] Clif Mark: Yeah. One of the thing that I wanted to say about critiquing liberal democracy and particularly liberalism, and maybe even a little bit capitalism is that it's not just marks, right?

There is a strong tradition of a conservative critique of liberalism and capitalism. Sometimes that gets obscure because libertarians have become right wing. But this is like a artifact of the past 30 years of mostly America. What I mean is if you're concerned with community with a traditional values are even with say the environment with ecology, these have all been very core, traditional, conservative concerns.

And from that perspective, You can critique the liberal capitalist aspect of liberal democracy. This idea that everyone has, can make their own individual choice, that the community has no say over how people live. Um, this is a kind of solvent that pulls apart the, uh, the adhesives that holds together community.

And so this notion that individual freedom and capitalism are a threat to society. Isn't just a Marxist one. This is also a kind of traditional conservative critique. People are afraid. If you care about society, you might be worried about liberalism.

[00:52:24] Anthony Collias: And is that

[00:52:25] Jacob Wedderburn Day: just purely because it's promoting self-interest ahead of like community interest?

Is it just this idea that like people will sort of run a mock looking out for themselves, putting profit ahead of like community values? What's what's.

[00:52:38] Anthony Collias: Essence of that critique.

[00:52:40] Clif Mark: Yes. Well, I mean, even if it doesn't change the people's motivations, right? Let's say we have a take, take a concrete example of a community, say you live in a neighborhood.

Um, it's some kind of, I don't know, you have a council, there's always rules about what you can do with your house, how you can use your property. Right? And so your neighbors want to have a say about what the neighborhood looks like, and you don't have complete individual freedom. So you can go either way.

But a lot of people don't like full individual freedom. They don't like to push it to the liberal far liberal side of it because then, you know, some crazy people might move in, paint their house purple and I don't know, have really tacky decorations, but this is a, this is a real thing in actual neighborhoods, even people who are self proclaimed, you know, uh, Democrats who believe in Liberty, We'll still want to exert this kind of control over their neighbors.

And there, there might be reasons for it. You, you want to be able to say, oh, we want to have a park. We want to have to this, this kind of festival or whatever every year. But if some people like I won't contribute, I won't pay, I don't want it to happen. It violates my property. I'm going to call it off. Um, some people want to choose the will of the group or the good of the community over letting people make individual decisions.

Because when you let people make individual decisions, it has collective con.

[00:54:06] Anthony Collias: And it's

[00:54:07] Jacob Wedderburn Day: funny. Yeah. When you put it in like that sort of neighborhood level perspective, it's, uh, it makes it quite relatable.

[00:54:14] Anthony Collias: One, uh, one

[00:54:15] Jacob Wedderburn Day: final criticism of liberalism to, to touch on is, um, is called Schmitz. Uh, now Schmitz, Schmidt's an interesting guy.

Um, and I say a little bit about why in a second, uh, if you, if you haven't come across. But he argues that liberalism is basically a sham because it can only truly tolerate belief systems that can hear with its own vision of freedom. And it has to actively stamp out worldviews that are hostile to that

[00:54:40] Anthony Collias: ideal.

That should be, that should feel familiar to anyone who's been in a university campus. Right. Yeah. And liberal, as long as you think the same things as me. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:54:51] Clif Mark: Now that you're, now that you're mentioning, uh, Carl Schmidt is this, when you give us your answer to, uh, is liberal democracy the best we can do, do you have an alternative?

Because I don't know if the audience knows Carl Schmidt was a Nazi lawyer.

[00:55:08] Anthony Collias: He was, he was

[00:55:09] Jacob Wedderburn Day: quite an active member of the Nazi party. Um, we'll come back to that in a second, but, um, Karl popper, uh, hopefully it's also, uh, familiar. I think it's a to. He took Schmitz from here. He still framed. This is the paradox of tolerance, which I think is a really nice way of phrasing it.

And effectively the paradox of tolerance goes, liberalism can tolerate everything except intolerance. And I guess like when Papa was looking at it, he sort of, he saw it more as an interesting thought experiment into where'd. You draw the line. For example, if there's a fascist uprising in the democracy, at what point are you permitted to squash it?

Now, Schmidt would say all of that's a deception politics is not about compromise between equal individuals. It's about conflict between groups. Uh, as you said, Schmidt was writing in the early 20th century. He went on to become a famous Nazi. Um, but, uh, he was writing ahead of the rise of Nazi. And he said, even if Bolshevism is suppressed and fascism held at bay, the crisis of contemporary parliamentarianism.

Is that how you say that the crisis of contemporary parliament, terrorism? How do you say that the crisis of contemporary politics terrorism would not be overcome. It is in its depths, the inescapable contradiction of liberal individualism democratic homogeneity. So yeah, uh, the struggle between the Nazis and their opponents, couldn't be resolved through parliamentary compromise as, as, as history shows in the Weimar Republic, fell to fascism and took the rest of the continent down with

[00:56:32] Anthony Collias: it almost interesting, interesting real life example of this, uh, Greek parliament,

when I say real life, I mean, within our living, uh, contact, uh,

[00:56:49] Jacob Wedderburn Day: recent, recent, recent life, real life fantasy

[00:56:54] Anthony Collias: to clarify,

[00:56:55] Jacob Wedderburn Day: uh,

[00:56:59] Anthony Collias: um, sorry. Uh, a good recent example of that actually, um, is, uh, there were Nazis. Uh, the golden Dawn party. Um, and they were there for the extreme right-wing yeah, they were the extreme right-wing party who knew they were, they were self-expressed neo-Nazis uh, and then it was recent that they, uh, basically, I think someone, you know, took a step too far.

I can't remember what it is. Sorry. I should, this is just reminded me. Um, and they did get kicked out and, um, a bunch of them thrown in jail eventually, but yeah, it was a liberal democracy that had the literal neo-Nazis in the cabinet and not in a cabinet, in, in a polo.

[00:57:40] Jacob Wedderburn Day: I mean, it, it's, it's a really interesting problem.

And it sounds, it sounds maybe a little bit semantic when you first phrase it, but actually it is, it's almost a riddle, right? It's like, how, how, how, how can you be tolerant of everything? And or if you want to learn everything, what do you do about people who are completely intolerant to your worldview?

[00:57:55] Anthony Collias: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the basically the point is. You know, take the example of the Nazis in Greek parliament, right? If you said you're not allowed to be in this parliament, then actually you are intolerant of at least one thing. So you're not totally tolerant. Um, and also, you know, then you kind of enter this argument of like, well, how do we communally agree?

What the things that we should be intolerant of are. Um, and then if it is, if it's not like, should they be in at all? If it's like, well, we can have them as long as they were minority, like, where's the line of like, how many of them is like, okay, wait, we need to stop this. Right. And,

[00:58:27] Clif Mark: but in, in, depending on where you draw the line, then that throws into question whether you're a democracy at all.

[00:58:33] Anthony Collias: Yeah, exactly. Um,

[00:58:36] Clif Mark: yeah. That's, uh, look, it's a, it's, it's an interesting problem, but I don't know

you can tolerate, I do think that there's something to, to Schmidt's line that is. Look, you have rules. There has to be decision and you enforce it. Um, you don't really want that to come to the surface all the time. Yeah. But it's

[00:59:01] Anthony Collias: one of those things where it's, it's, you know, it's a discussion of like, you know, that there's a difference between discussing like liberalism and like kind of, you know, philosophy, ideal land versus liberalism in practice.

Right? Like in practice, it doesn't feel like such a big issue. It's more in the kind of, uh, ideal land that it is. I mean, like, you know, take the Greek example, like yeah. Like a couple of them go into parliament and they probably found some kind of sideway to basically, you know, use an excuse to kick them out.

Um, it does undermine the fact that is it really a free and fair democracy, but I think community people are kind of comfortable with it.

[00:59:37] Clif Mark: Yeah. And, you know, uh, even also in fascist and communist governments, people, our community comfortable with, uh, oppressing their minorities. So yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. So I wanted to mention Fukuyama. He has a, he's a kind of interesting take on what's good about democracy and what's wrong with it. I have an episode on this. People should go listen to it, but in the early nineties, Yama writes this essay, the end of history. And then he writes a book based on the end of history and last man.

And when he comes out with this, this is right after the F right before the fall of communism is the essay. The book is right after, uh, and everyone's saying this guy would not asshole, he's this liberal triumphalist, he's just doing this touchdown dance on UN on Soviet Soviet communism. He's just saying in his argument is that, you know, liberal democracy is the end point of human political development.

It's the end of history. And, uh, everyone is aiming for, even if they're not there, all the wagons run the same road, they're heading to the final destination, which is liberal democracy and great. Um, so did you guys, did you guys ever have to read this, uh, in your degrees?

[01:00:52] Jacob Wedderburn Day: No, I actually, I listened to your podcast under there

[01:00:55] Clif Mark: much better, much better, much faster.

[01:00:57] Anthony Collias: I never, I don't have to read you. I didn't have to. Yeah. Okay. Well, I

[01:01:02] Clif Mark: think like, I think he's interesting because he has a slightly different take that we haven't talked about, about both. What's good about democracy and bad. So he said, The reason liberal democracy is going to be the end of history. It's the best we can do, uh, in terms of human government, is that it delivers the goods in two ways.

One with capitalism, it generates wealth. So everyone will have a decent standard of living. They can go to restaurants, they can have like a new gadget time-saving devices, whatever capitalist governments were much richer than communist governments this time. Um, and it also delivers recognition. So in a liberal democracy, everyone is seen as kind of an equal their own autonomous person that, um, that is recognized as having status.

And, you know, you compare that to in a restrict aristocratic form of government where there's just the fancy, fancy pants, aristocrats, and then the commoners. And nobody likes to be looked down on that way. So, so that's why everyone is eventually going to wind up at liberal democracy because it gives you equal recognition.

And prosperity.

[01:02:12] Anthony Collias: There's something intuitive to

[01:02:13] Clif Mark: that. Yeah, it totally is intuitive. And that's Fukuyama's idea of the upside of democracy. What's good about it, but he also has an interesting idea of the downside of liberal democracy, because that whole thing that gets attributed to him that he's just liberal.

Triumphalist America's number one. That's really not his actual vibe. His, the title of his book is the end of history and the last man. And so it takes a little bit of background. The last man is referenced to Nisha and the idea of the last man is this idea of the bourgeois as a human type. So what is the bourgeois?

It doesn't just mean you're fancy and you buy expensive things. It's just a kind of set of values. You're a person with no grand delusions. You don't believe in any very high ideals or high ambitious. What's real to you, is profit a comfortable life, not too much danger. Um, so the bourgeois, you know, they'll, they'll work in eat and comfort.

They will have a nice work-life balance. They'll eat in restaurants. Um, they don't have what they don't have is these grand missions to make new worlds and change the world. Right. And lack of a sense of meaning. Yeah. I mean, well, they just think all those, and you hear this a lot in the nineties like this, uh, an earlier the end of these metanarratives like, Ooh, communism, it's too idealistic.

It'll never work. What we really need to do is settle on, not kill each other, not having mass atrocities and also some concrete material prosperity for the people, uh, which, which is fine, but Nicha, because he's a sort of. Young boy. Oh, gee incell with higher dreams. He also calls

you, you guys know who he is. Um, right. The, the, the last minute are men without chests, they have no pride. There's no creativity in it. Um, there's not really anything to admire. And so that detour is to say that Fukiyama also thinks this, right? He says, yup, that's it. The cold, the end of the cold war marks the triumph of liberal democracy and the end of our political evolution, the end of big H history.

But he's not, he's not super pumped about it. The end of his essay is saying it will be sad. It will be boring and so much so that some people might start, try to start history again, because liberal democracy is like just unfit for people who have real ambitions.

[01:04:49] Anthony Collias: Uh, you know, you know what the L that you, your description, the last man makes me think of there was that, um, have you ever seen.

I was describing that guy, the fat guys in the chairs. Right. You kind of forget even the point of why they exist. They just

[01:05:08] Jacob Wedderburn Day: young

[01:05:09] Anthony Collias: inspiring. Um,

[01:05:11] Jacob Wedderburn Day: it sounds also a lot, like you've kind of won the game of monopoly and you're like, okay, let's start again.

[01:05:18] Anthony Collias: This is like, the fun part was when I thought I might lose.

[01:05:21] Clif Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I think actually this is like a really common feeling even in, even in a existing democracies. So I have friends who, who say, you know, at least when they, when they lived in Korea in South Korea, they still felt like they were building something like they were still baking the cake. Whereas, uh, when they got back to America or something, it was just, all that was left was maybe to decorate it.

[01:05:47] Anthony Collias: Oh, they're going to say eating the cake though. No, I can see that. I mean, I, in to intuitively resonate with that, when I think again, this. Maybe more political, modern political contexts than, um, a fundamental issue with liberal democracy. But when I think about like, you know, say for example, the modern voting options, um, I don't think it's a coincidence that like the number of people voting is going down.

I don't think it's because people are dumb or anything like that. It's because the, the, the decisions become narrower and narrower and matter less and less. Right. Because I mean, at a grand ideological level, we're all pretty aligned. It's more like, I think this specific policy, I think this, or like I'm slightly more on this side of the ideology.

Yeah. It becomes

[01:06:30] Jacob Wedderburn Day: more sort of micro iterations or improvements. Right. Well,

[01:06:34] Clif Mark: I think, I think there's two sides. I think that yes, ideologically people are more aligned. So obviously when people start to hate each other and it's like fascism versus socialism versus a liberal democracy, you might get a bigger turnout.

Uh, you got a bigger, you know, whenever Trump's in an election, he's he makes people care so much that you get a bigger voter turnout. Uh, I think there's also the real fact that there is not, it's not that just that people agree it's that there's no, there's no choice and you can vote for things again and again, and nothing really happens.

So I mean, why waste the afternoon? Go for it. Go for a walk or something. Yeah.

[01:07:09] Anthony Collias: Yeah. I mean, it's, it is a classic argument, like look in the context of the UK, but labor vote conservatives. Like it's not going to make that much of a

[01:07:18] Clif Mark: difference. I think he likes to do that episode. Should I, should I vote? I think that's, I think that's a great theory.

A morality of everyday things.

[01:07:27] Anthony Collias: It is on the list is on the list. Excellent. Um, so I guess to wrap that up then, um, is it the best we can do? What's you're going to high level

[01:07:35] Clif Mark: answer is liberal democracy. The best we can do. I would, I would be a little weasel and try to evade the question by saying there's a lot of internal variety to what counts as liberal democracy.

So right now, yeah, I would soft pedal the liberal part. You know, I would go less America and more, you know, maybe the Nordic countries try to get a little more, um, democracy in there. Ideally if, if the people are inside and, uh, I think that you can combine, um, some form of human rights with, uh, a greater capacity for collective action that doesn't have the problems that, um, very liberal libertarianism has.

Uh, so yeah, look, I like, I like, I like sovereignty of the people. I like the people to have a say, I like individual rights, but, um, a lot of the governments that are low, the paradigm liberal democracies, I don't like, so that's my, that's my hedge. What about you guys?

[01:08:34] Anthony Collias: The question question around terminal terminology, actually, um, like some, you know, some people and you mentioned Nordic countries, I think Nordic countries like actively, we would use this, um, even in, in kind of describing their political position, you know, we'll, we'll throw the term social in their socialist in there as well as social, at least like a social democracy or something like that.

Um, I think that's fairly widely used

[01:08:59] Jacob Wedderburn Day: nowadays probably speaks more to the welfare part though, which I think is the part that I like about your answer, Clifford. The thing that I look for in improving the flavor of democracy that we have would be something that sort of more welfare based. I think the main sort of critiques that I'd make at the systems, we currently have fixed more on the capitalist side and just like improving the welfare of the least well in society.

And I think if, if we could do that better than I think, uh, then I think that's the way that I look to improve the existing system, but yeah, otherwise, yeah, it was it's uh it's all right.

[01:09:30] Anthony Collias: No, I actually roughly say like on the scale of things, uh, and maybe, you know, if I can tweak the knobs, uh, less liberalism, more democracy, more redistribution and welfare, uh, which is annoying.

We similar to you guys. Hey, you're

[01:09:46] Clif Mark: just saying that you're a social Democrat and that's great. So, you know,

[01:09:51] Anthony Collias: um, would, yeah, I think it is not like, you know, is probably going to be what most people listening to this is probably going to align with as well. I mean, I do want to say though that, like, I don't think it's necessarily always the best form of government for places.

Um, you know, we mentioned it before, but I don't think that you can just supplant these political systems on somewhere and it will just work and it's necessarily best. Like, I think actually, if you look at the evolution of, of most political systems, it's, you know, particularly like the Western countries it's decades of, of institutional buildup and you just can't drop that on somewhere.

It just doesn't happen that way. Also if

[01:10:31] Clif Mark: global circumstances change, it might not work anymore.

[01:10:35] Anthony Collias: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like say, say there is, you know, a case of like a world war three, Russia, Jina, uh, Western world tension. Like it might not be appropriate anymore. Um, Yeah, the annoying answer. It depends.

Right. But like, to the extent that I would actually be like, you know, hard enough on it to say that there are conceivable circumstances where it's worth abandoning, even for Western countries. I

[01:10:58] Jacob Wedderburn Day: mean, to bring an analogy from, from what we see in business, the kind of systems of governance or systems of like organizing that you need for smaller companies vary massively from the systems you need in bigger countries companies.

Sorry. Yeah. And I suppose the analogy is there in terms of like time and maturity of your own sort of state.

[01:11:15] Anthony Collias: Yep. And then I guess actually speaking about that as thinking about size and scale, I mean, we mentioned like, oh, I can't do well with issues like climate change and stuff know like how do we start to deal with the issues that are.

Supernational the ones that affect multiple countries and what happens, what happens. Okay. What happens when effectively, you know, we can basically say like, oh, this is the democratic decision, but basically the Western world is like, we need to fix this. Um, for the developing world is actually much more mixed case.

Cause it's like, look, a lot of our people are like unable to eat, so it's not really a priority to decarbonize. Um, you know, uh, but you know, effectively, we're going to have to, I say we like the Western world is going to have to police like too bad. This has to happen because there's a kind of communal global good that we need to be focusing on here.

So then there's a strange way in which like, well, that sounds

[01:12:00] Clif Mark: neither liberal nor democratic. So exactly.

[01:12:03] Anthony Collias: It actually sounds very, very Imperial. So like I kind of vibe quite hard with the, you know, colloquially these, we, like I said, I think it's the best thing, like liberal capitalist, ideally redistributive democracies.

But I don't think that they tend to be that liberal or democratic cause people say.

[01:12:22] Clif Mark: Well, yeah, look, I agree. And I think, uh, not, not only are you a social Democrat, but now you seem to be almost a Marxist. So congratulations.

Um, yeah, it may, it may mean that these are just capitalist states and, and Liberty and democracy are, uh, are the brains.

[01:12:45] Anthony Collias: Yeah.

[01:12:47] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Interesting. We probably need to

[01:12:48] Anthony Collias: start wrapping up there. I think the lizard people should reset the simulation.

[01:12:53] Jacob Wedderburn Day: Are there any other, any shout-outs so you want it to do at this point in the episode live for any like closing notes

[01:12:57] Anthony Collias: you do?

[01:12:58] Clif Mark: Um, yeah. Well, look, I will, I will shout out the theory of a everyday morality. Wait, is that the morality of everyday things? I have, I have a new, uh, a new patriotic. Anthony Collins. Yeah. So thanks man. Thanks man. And, uh, I just, uh, thank everyone. Thank everyone for listening. Um, this was a lot of fun, so yeah.

Thanks guys for, for reaching out. Uh, I think out generally, well,

[01:13:27] Anthony Collias: yeah, no, it's been a lot of fun. Am I technically your boss now? Who

[01:13:31] Clif Mark: might? Oh, yes. Yes. Uh, I don't know. You might, you might be like are, yeah. You know what? I don't want to, I don't want to joke anything about you that I accidentally joke about all my other subscribers.

[01:13:50] Anthony Collias: Okay on that note, it's been great chatting, man. .