It is not often admitted, but the fact remains that the people can never be crowned with success. represented politically. However, public opinion influence political, sometimes even strongly. In all political systems, the ruling minority must take into account, to varying degrees, the public mood as expressed in town hall meetings, polls, elections, demonstrations and, now, in social media.

The most stable and most popular government is therefore not necessarily the most “democratic”, but the one which best takes into account public opinion and adapts its policy to it if necessary. The unpopularity and political instability of most Western governments today is partly explained by the fact that public opinion is increasingly ignored by the ruling minority, while elections turn into rituals. superficially “publicized”.

The Chinese political system is not pro-freedom, but it is stable and popular precisely because: according to According to a stalwart Chinese scholar, the Chinese Communist Party attempts to “take the public’s pulse in governance and reflect the public’s will.” In the West, there is significant frustration stemming from the fact that priority is still given to the political agenda of countries that are now cosmopolitan and financial. oligarchy.

Even if public opinion relies largely on common sense, it unfortunately suffers from the prevailing ignorance in political and economic matters. Stereotypes and confusion regarding the free market are common. As a result, the majority has long been influenced by modern socialist ideas of state interventionism and forced socialization.

There is a common misunderstanding about causality social and economic problems. An example of this is free trade, which the majority generally practices. can’t stand in the West, even if trade barriers act like a tax on the population and only benefit certain politically linked sectors or companies. The majority is harmed when the state raises tariffs to protect particular interests, but when it is aware of this fact, it does not oppose it because it confuses its own interests with those of the ruling minority.

“How can people be restricted? »

It is therefore not surprising that a large part of the Western economic elite, especially apolitical business leaders, is more pro-free market and free trade than the rest of society. These people generally recognize that free market capitalism benefits not only themselves but also society as a whole.

Indeed, a study of fifty years of minutes of closed meetings of the Mont Pélerin Society shows that its members often expressed concerns that “democratic legislatures tend to disrupt the free market” by voting through social grants and welfare. So they asked: “How can the people be restrained? “, since “democratic politics tends to lead to interventions in the economy, thus distorting or even destroying the market mechanism.”

The issue of restrictions on democracy has arisen because people tend to vote in a way that is contrary to their rights. own long-term interests, leading to economic stagnation and social decline with which they would ultimately be deeply unhappy. This is obviously a very relevant point for Western societies today.

What these gentlemen of the Mont Pélerin Society arrived at, by deduction, is the idea expressed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Democracy: the God that failed: that democracy introduces into society a tragedy of the commons. The majority do it often I don’t want public spending must be reduced despite clear signs of bureaucratic overload and inefficiency. He tends to vote for further expansion of the welfare state, leading to higher taxes and redistribution which in turn stifle the economy. This persists because the majority’s tax burden is seen as less than the presumed value of the subsidies and social services they receive. Mass immigration obviously exacerbates this process, since the typical poor immigrant in the West has everything to gain and nothing to lose from such an electoral strategy.

Growth of the state

The advent of the “democratic” era is therefore closely linked to the spectacular growth of the State since around the beginning of the 20th century. Democracy contributes to this bureaucratic growth as majorities vote for policies that require or justify a larger state. This cancerous statism in society can be measured by figures that spiral out of control over time: tax revenues, public debt, public spending and civil servants.

Yet, to the dismay of the majority, increased public spending does not automatically translate into more and better public services. On the contrary, according to Baumol effectthe relative cost of services tends to increase, particularly in non-market services of public administrations, all things being equal. And, according to Public choice theorycivil servants’ incentives for good and fair management in the public interest are weak, leading to waste and inefficiency at best and corruption at worst.

Unfortunately, these points are not well known to the electoral majority. As a result, many people underestimate their actual financial contribution to the state compared to what they receive from it. There is a naive unconsciousness regarding regressive taxes such as VAT and inflation. In 1845, Frédéric Bastiat already seized these points when he considered taxation as theft: “to steal from the public, you have to deceive them. To deceive him is to persuade him that someone is stealing from him for his own benefit, and to encourage him to accept, in exchange for his goods, fictitious or often worse services.

Vote to trade freedom for security

Western societies have gradually voted to abandon freedom in favor of so-called state-provided security. Many were convinced that Herbert Marcuse was right at the beginning, when he note that “the loss of economic and political freedoms which constituted the real achievements of the previous two centuries may seem a slight damage in a State capable of making administered life safe and comfortable”. Yet while this may seem true briefly, life in a modern democracy cannot be “safe and comfortable” in the long term due to “process of decivilization» described above.

Thus, the freedom to vote ironically contributes to the loss of economic freedom in the “democratic” West. This process goes against the dominant view that democracy and freedom are equated. Thus, this process is the opposite of the so-called “inherent contradictions” of capitalism according to Marx: it is state interventionism which leads to economic and social tensions and which pushes society towards crisis and perhaps even towards crisis. ‘collapse.

This outcome becomes inevitable when more and more people in society are prevented from progressing economically, when they can no longer make ends meet and when they face increasing insecurity, declining social services and crumbling infrastructure. Either the harmful effects of state interventionism – tragically reinforced by the democratic process – become evident to the majority, or the downward spiral of wealth destruction and social decline will continue. Hopefully ideas of freedom will become attractive again and the benefits of real capitalism will be understood, if the failure of democracy is finally revealed.