Minority Rule- Why we can't have nice things.

Created by Google Gemini

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

Will Durant

    Democracy is defined as government by the people and rule of the majority. Getting a majority to agree on anything can be a tall order, but it's the best system that's ever been attempted. So why does today's government fail to listen to the majority so often?

    Opinion polls are the only way we have to measure the "will of the people", and they can be wrong or misleading, but the results seem clear- something is wrong with how America is functioning. Powerful minorities are putting their fingers on the scale and stifling dissent and progress.

    Poll after poll has shown that over 60% of Americans support:

•     Campaign finance reform

•     Term limits for congress and the Supreme Court

•     More government regulation of artificial intelligence and social media

•     Government taking a bigger role in healthcare

•     More regulation and action to combat climate change

•     Abortion up to the end of the first trimester

•     Legal Immigration

•     Ending gerrymandering of congressional districts

•     More taxes on the wealthiest Americans and fewer loopholes

•     More restrictions on guns (90% support background checks on all gun purchases)

    60% seems like a healthy majority to me, and in many cases approval for the above tops 70% or 80%. Somehow, most of the above items are non-starters in Washington, DC. Can't even be proposed. Why is that?

    Obviously majority rule is trickier than it seems, and a well-financed minority can easily stop policies that it dislikes, even in the face of wide public acceptance. The system has been rigged for minorities to prevail with things like the Electoral College, the filibuster, gerrymandering, the politicized Supreme Court, and Senate rules that give the same representation to states with vastly different populations like California and Wyoming. Citizens of Washington, DC have no voice at all.

    Two presidents in this century won without a majority of votes, and they appointed four consequential Supreme Court judges. The filibuster requirement of 60 votes prevents both parties from making needed reforms, while reconciliation rules let bare minorities determine taxes and spending to their liking. The rules for passing a constitutional amendment are so complex that there's zero chance anything could pass in this century as long as partisan divisions stay as they are.

     People defend anti-democratic rules because they say smaller states deserve a bigger voice that's not drowned out by the majority. These same powerful people think nothing of robbing other less-favored minorities of their voting power. The SAVE act, mid-decade gerrymandering, Big Beautiful Bill, squashed voting rights bill, and threats to the mid-term elections are all attempts to prevent various minorities from asserting their power.

    Democracy is the best of many flawed systems because it utilizes the wisdom of the crowd, including those from all over. It promotes fairness, (giving people a sense of pride and ownership in their society) and diversity. (giving leaders feedback from a variety of sources with which to meld the best policies.) The famous jelly bean experiment showed that as a group, people are much more accurate in estimating the number of jelly beans in a jar than individuals or small subsets.

    The bottom line is that even though the majority of Americans favor democratic reforms, nothing ever happens. There are two key reasons for this. First, elites are experts in distractions, and the issues that come up each election rarely have anything to do with true reforms or changes. And second, Americans have been conditioned to believe that the system is too powerful to change and there's nothing that can be done.

    Author Todd Rose wrote a great book about this called Collective Illusions. In it, he uses neuroscience to show how people discount their own opinions, and believe that the majority goes along with what's already in place. We've been conditioned to accept a rigged system as inevitable, when it could easily be toppled if the majority acted as one.

    I found it therapeutic to participate in the No Kings protests earlier this year. Seeing fellow citizens standing in the heat or rain, holding signs and chanting, made me feel much less alone that I've felt the last few years. The current dysfunctional system wants us to feel alone and powerless, thus easier to influence and control.

    Sooner or later the majority must wake up and stand up, and start working on the to do list I've laid out above that they all claim to support. The collective illusion may seem inevitable, but it's not getting us anywhere. The next protest is on November 3rd at the ballot boxes- see you all there.

Please consider subscribing for more ideas, and feel free to share with others.

If you want to be REALLY nice, you can buy me a pizza here.