The Case for Autocracy
- The Policy Shop
- Jun 22, 2020
- 5 min read
Michelle Wu
Vox populi, vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
It’s a lovely sentiment. In fact, it’s what America was founded on — not religious fanaticism, not tyrannical monarchy, not generational elitism, but the voices of the everyday people who make up our great nation. We have democracy. We have freedom. We have equality. These are the values we live and die for. This is America.
None of that is particularly true. America’s promise of a government by and for the common man was disingenuous from the beginning. The Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly wealthy, the poorest of whom considered “comfortably middle class”, and being a Framer didn’t guarantee an entrance into high society so much as being in high society allowed for entrance into the room where it happened.
We might’ve hoped that our government would grow into its promises, but it hasn’t. While there are some members of Congress from working class backgrounds, the majority of our legislators are millionaires. The median net worth of our Congress is $511,000. Our government is not representative of Americans. Our government is special interests, big business, East and West Egg. Their instinct, human instinct, is self-preservation. The people-serving and roots-remembering aside, legislators ultimately have a constituency of one.
And so manifests public policy. Apathy towards the working class is evident, if not inevitable. In a study of over 2,000 policy changes from 1964 to 2006, Martin Gilens of Princeton University found that the elite, and to a lesser degree, interest groups, had almost total control over legislation. If economic elites all opposed an idea, it had little to no chance of passing. If they all supported it, the legislation had a 60% chance of passing. In contrast, it didn’t matter how many average citizens supported or opposed a piece of legislation, the chance of passing it was around 30% across the board. In fact, the approval of average, or mid-income, citizens seems to deter a policy rather than bolster it.
Here’s some charts of the phenomenon via Knight’s Move on Youtube:
As you can see, the widespread support of the affluent considerably increases the chance of passing legislation, while the widespread support of the average American affects the pass rate negatively, if at all. According to these data, the government doesn’t want the support of the average American. According to these data, they exploit it to get power and then ignore it, resent it. Our government is an oligarchy, run by the elite, for the elite.
The word oligarchy is harsh, and it’s just one step away on the sixth grade social studies scale from dictatorship. However, a 2014 analysis by George Washington University finds dictatorships are much more likely to respond to public opinion than republics. Elections in autocratic governments, regardless of turnover, often yield popular “common man” reforms such as increases in welfare and education spending. This is an area where perhaps more is not better: in American politics, in multi-party systems around the world, the structure of government makes for endless cop-outs. Sorry we couldn’t guarantee your child a quality education, those darn Republicans won’t let us bring it to the floor. Laid off because your company outsourced to Vietnam? Tough break, buddy, the Dems are ruining our country. It’s not our fault. Please re-elect us. Dictators don’t have that luxury, and revolution often erupts sooner or later.
It’s massively discouraging. America’s message of enforcing democracy around the world has always annoyed, if not infuriated, me, but this particular brand of hypocrisy, of handpicking winners in foreign elections, of lecturing the world on tyranny, of intervening around the world while Americans are still waiting for an intervention in the South Side, is unacceptable. The American values myth exists because Americans believe we’ve achieved those values ourselves already. No, values take accountability and constant fight. For a country birthed from anger at lack of representation in government, it would seem a revolution is imminent.
Today, in 2020, I believe the revolution is finally here. Today, more Americans are angry with their government than ever before in the history of polling, to the tune of over 80% on both the left and right. Politicians have responded by refusing to take SuperPAC dollars in campaigns and highlighting their humbler beginnings in stump speeches. The unrest of the people has inspired a small shift in the sausage factory. It’s not enough. Yes, the studies say the voice of the people doesn’t matter in public policy, but the only way towards change is turning up that voice until it’s too loud to ignore. Convincing ourselves that voting is ineffective and won’t matter in the end is exactly what the system wants. Voter turnout in 2016 was at its lowest since the turn of the century. Young people aged 18-29 were the least represented age group in both 2016 and 2018. With the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement and the thorough integration of social media into our lives, all we can do is hope that these numbers rise. In this age of constant, free information, there is no excuse for being uneducated or apathetic.
The thing is, I can’t completely blame the wealthy for all of America’s problems. Maybe you couldn’t really tell from this particular article, but I’m a conservative. I don’t think having money is wrong unless it was made dishonestly. I also believe society is naturally hierarchical, and there isn’t anything wrong with that either unless those in power exclude or oppress others. That’s what has happened in America and around the world. The solution is simple, really, and it goes back to what I believe is the most fundamental issue every election year for every American and where conservatives have gone so, so wrong. It’s education.
Knowledge is power. The wealthy can afford to raise smart, well-spoken, ambitious leaders who end up in positions in power, while many enterprising young students don’t get the same opportunities. Republicans love to soliloquize their rights to spend their hard-earned money on their families while implying other students should single-handedly break the poverty cycle with the powers of their perfectly good public education. How are children supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when the straps themselves are broken? The most direct way to put the working class in a position of power is to elevate it. Instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator to win elections, we should work to raise it. Hopefully, the many capable leaders hindered by the injustices of our system will be able to rise and stand up for the communities they come from.
If you think this is an issue, here is what you should vote on. Campaign finance reform has been a long-fought, rarely-won issue that gets shunted out of the limelight every election cycle. Find out how your legislators were elected and hold them accountable. The two-party system perpetuates big-money candidacies because the national committees themselves are big money. Research voting systems such as the ranked voting system that don’t reward only two ideologies. The Electoral College is antiquated by choice, not by law. Advocate for your state to change the winner-takes-all system in presidential elections. Vote for more education funding, whether by diverting money from other government programs or a dreaded tax hike. Support transparency in voting, call out gerrymandering, demand competency from precinct officers and your Secretaries of State so voices, no matter whose, are heard.
We don’t need small change, we need sweeping fundamental reform in our elections and government. There isn’t any more time for hand-wringing. We spend too much energy being angry at injustice, building momentum for one movement and then another. I hear every election cycle about how broken one side or another has made our country, the same message of “hope”, “unity”, “the resiliency of the American people”. What I wish I would hear, what we lack, is resiliency of the revolution, a persistent, permanent revolution for the true American dream.
- MW
Studies referenced:
Video inspiration:
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