Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

by Eli Harman

REPRESENTATIVE democracy privileges elites by concentrating power in the special interests (through campaign contributions, lobbying, and a host of other mechanism intrinsically not solvable thanks to information costs, organizing costs, and the problem of concentrated benefits/dispersed costs.)

But because it is still Democracy, it also privileges the underclasses by awarding them pandering and handouts they have no way of earning or otherwise negotiating.

Left out are the middle, who get as close to nothing as possible, no protection, no representation, no pandering, no benefits, no concession, just looted, plundered, enslaved, displaced, disinherited, disenfranchised and hollowed out.

Consequently, democracy does not preserve the incentives for classes to cooperate. Rather, they will retaliate against provocations, indignities, burdens, injustices, and depredations, and conflict…