>----" That is why I was disturbed when Al Gore challenged the legitimacy of the election in 2000. Similarly, I was disturbed by Mr. Trump and his supporters challenging the legitimacy of the election in 2020."
Yes, the peaceful transfer of power is the most important feature of democracy but this is a glaringly false equivalence.
In 2000 the election was within the margin for error of an entirely good faith count. Gore exercised his legal challenges and then accepted, as final and legitimate, the decision from a court dominated by the other party.
In 2020 Trump announced AHEAD OF TIME that he would only regard one election result as legitimate. Before the election he called for the top leadership of the opposition party to be jailed for treason.
He continued to reject the legitimacy of the result of a not very close election even AFTER all of his over five dozen legal challenges failed to show any real voter fraud. And many of these defeats in court came at the hands of Republican judges he had appointed. Recall that the appointment by Trump of so many Republican judges was frequently cited as his most glorious achievement and the reason it had been worth holding your nose and voting for him despite a remarkable number of glaring character flaws.
Then after all legal challenges had been exhausted, he encouraged an insurrection where dozens of police were injured and the Capital was stormed by a crowd calling for the hanging of Mike Pence complete with mock gallows constructed just outside the Capital.
After THAT failed he still claimed legitimate President and, to this day, claims that he will, and should be, "reinstated."
So can we please stop pretending that the challenges to these two elections were, in any way, "similar"?
Re: "The theory of libertarianism, which is not necessarily correct, is that when we talk about business rather than crime, competition is the best regulator. [... .] So if you get kicked off Twitter, go somewhere else. Eventually, this competition will result in a better outcome than if government decides who can or cannot be on Twitter."
I agree, but many seeds of deep mistrust are sown if "eventually" takes a long time, or if market power enables big tech to censor speech and to thwart entry by alternative platforms during major elections. Examples of empirical issues relevant to "eventually": How strong are network barriers to entry? Does big tech buy out potential rival firms? Does big tech practice "regulatory capture" by engaging in strategic censorship to please the deep state?
This is criticism, but I mean it as constructive criticism. I wish you wouldn't write things so emphatically as "The Libertarian view". I consider myself a libertarian, and they aren't my views.
Democracy, in the classical understanding, actually *IS* rule by the dominant political gang. Going back well over 2000 years, everyone from Plato on forward (and very explicitly the goal of Madison and Hamilton) strove to limit democracy precisely because it tended toward the institution of tyrannical control by factions.
I get that this misunderstanding probably won't be appreciated, but it's important. Just as the distinction between "capitalist" and "free market", terms that are used interchangeably most of the time, is crucial when it comes to understanding the difference between good economics and bad.
Talking about "democracy" today is like talking about "capitalism". We'd do better by reframing the discussion into the right terms. The right terms are those the Federalist writers and others generally described as republicanism. Democracy is fine, just like the development of capital is fine, but a just as as "free market" encompasses a lot of necessary conditions for a good economy that "capitalism" leaves out, "Republicanism" (or something similar) would embrace a lot of the important stuff we need in government that "Democracy" would leave out.
Principally, those are the things Arnold is concerned about. A republican government is one with separation of powers, limits on the role of government in general, and lots of institutional design to thwart the development of one-party rule. Democracy, strictly speaking, has none of that.
Thus, we can't expect democracy to cure a problem that's endemic to democracy itself. We have to figure out how to support and implement new republican institutions that limit (without eliminating) democracy.
"As long as this results in a peaceful transfer of power, democracy will work", until the scales are so rigged, that the party in power will *never* be forced to transfer anything.
It's now becoming ever clearer, that most of the Woke would much rather liquidate their foes by the tens of millions, than ever give up so much as a scintilla of Power.
Re: "To me, California shows what happens in a democracy where the transfer of power does not take place. In California, the dominant criminal gang is the Democratic Party, which seemingly never gets voted out of power. You can expect bad government in a one-party state, regardless of which party is on top."
Is Singapore a counter-example? Or, instead, the exception that proves the rule?:
Thankfully, federalism helps to ensure "political competition" as the most powerful vote is exercised with the foot.
>----" That is why I was disturbed when Al Gore challenged the legitimacy of the election in 2000. Similarly, I was disturbed by Mr. Trump and his supporters challenging the legitimacy of the election in 2020."
Yes, the peaceful transfer of power is the most important feature of democracy but this is a glaringly false equivalence.
In 2000 the election was within the margin for error of an entirely good faith count. Gore exercised his legal challenges and then accepted, as final and legitimate, the decision from a court dominated by the other party.
In 2020 Trump announced AHEAD OF TIME that he would only regard one election result as legitimate. Before the election he called for the top leadership of the opposition party to be jailed for treason.
He continued to reject the legitimacy of the result of a not very close election even AFTER all of his over five dozen legal challenges failed to show any real voter fraud. And many of these defeats in court came at the hands of Republican judges he had appointed. Recall that the appointment by Trump of so many Republican judges was frequently cited as his most glorious achievement and the reason it had been worth holding your nose and voting for him despite a remarkable number of glaring character flaws.
Then after all legal challenges had been exhausted, he encouraged an insurrection where dozens of police were injured and the Capital was stormed by a crowd calling for the hanging of Mike Pence complete with mock gallows constructed just outside the Capital.
After THAT failed he still claimed legitimate President and, to this day, claims that he will, and should be, "reinstated."
So can we please stop pretending that the challenges to these two elections were, in any way, "similar"?
Re: "The theory of libertarianism, which is not necessarily correct, is that when we talk about business rather than crime, competition is the best regulator. [... .] So if you get kicked off Twitter, go somewhere else. Eventually, this competition will result in a better outcome than if government decides who can or cannot be on Twitter."
I agree, but many seeds of deep mistrust are sown if "eventually" takes a long time, or if market power enables big tech to censor speech and to thwart entry by alternative platforms during major elections. Examples of empirical issues relevant to "eventually": How strong are network barriers to entry? Does big tech buy out potential rival firms? Does big tech practice "regulatory capture" by engaging in strategic censorship to please the deep state?
This is criticism, but I mean it as constructive criticism. I wish you wouldn't write things so emphatically as "The Libertarian view". I consider myself a libertarian, and they aren't my views.
Democracy, in the classical understanding, actually *IS* rule by the dominant political gang. Going back well over 2000 years, everyone from Plato on forward (and very explicitly the goal of Madison and Hamilton) strove to limit democracy precisely because it tended toward the institution of tyrannical control by factions.
I get that this misunderstanding probably won't be appreciated, but it's important. Just as the distinction between "capitalist" and "free market", terms that are used interchangeably most of the time, is crucial when it comes to understanding the difference between good economics and bad.
Talking about "democracy" today is like talking about "capitalism". We'd do better by reframing the discussion into the right terms. The right terms are those the Federalist writers and others generally described as republicanism. Democracy is fine, just like the development of capital is fine, but a just as as "free market" encompasses a lot of necessary conditions for a good economy that "capitalism" leaves out, "Republicanism" (or something similar) would embrace a lot of the important stuff we need in government that "Democracy" would leave out.
Principally, those are the things Arnold is concerned about. A republican government is one with separation of powers, limits on the role of government in general, and lots of institutional design to thwart the development of one-party rule. Democracy, strictly speaking, has none of that.
Thus, we can't expect democracy to cure a problem that's endemic to democracy itself. We have to figure out how to support and implement new republican institutions that limit (without eliminating) democracy.
"As long as this results in a peaceful transfer of power, democracy will work", until the scales are so rigged, that the party in power will *never* be forced to transfer anything.
It's now becoming ever clearer, that most of the Woke would much rather liquidate their foes by the tens of millions, than ever give up so much as a scintilla of Power.
>----"You can expect bad government in a one-party state, regardless of which party is on top."
This may be why the most popular governors in the country are Republican governors in highly Democratic northeast states.
Re: "To me, California shows what happens in a democracy where the transfer of power does not take place. In California, the dominant criminal gang is the Democratic Party, which seemingly never gets voted out of power. You can expect bad government in a one-party state, regardless of which party is on top."
Is Singapore a counter-example? Or, instead, the exception that proves the rule?:
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/01/democracy_in_si_1.html