Within the just-published problem of Regulation (Winter 2024-2025), I contemplate H.L. Mencken’s aphorism:
“Democracy is the idea that the frequent folks know what they need, and should get it good and onerous.”
My quick piece factors out one drawback in taking the aphorism actually:
The frequent particular person does know what he desires: to enhance his situation in life based on his personal preferences. And he succeeds so nicely in his non-public life that, as soon as he was left individually free, he and his fellows generated an Industrial Revolution and what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Nice Enrichment.” …
It’s when the frequent particular person is given the ability to determine what his fellow people ought to need that issues can go very flawed. … When the frequent folks elect a powerful chief or would-be grasp, Mencken’s aphorism appears to take all its power.
After some explanations that my readers may be serious about, I conclude by reformulating Mencken’s aphorism with extra precision however albeit a bit much less pithiness:
Non-liberal democracy (as we all know it) is the idea that almost all of voters suppose they know what they need and that everyone deserves to get it good and onerous.
I finish the article with the hope that the present political scenario in the US might “function a bitter lesson for a greater future.”
He obtained what he needed good and onerous
