Zac, please don't eviscerate me. I know you did Speech & Debate in HS.

In response to Zac’s post:

Zac references Sen’s argument regarding famine in autocracies versus democracies. Zac includes this relevant passage:

“Authoritarian rulers, who are themselves rarely affected by famines (or other such economic calamities), tend to lack the incentive to take timely preventive measures. Democratic governments, in contrast, have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentives to undertake measures to avert famines…”


Then, Zac argues against this account by pointing out that the democratic politicians, like the authoritarian rulers, don’t have to deal with the catastrophes that affect the common people. I agree with Zac that, if there were a famine in the United States, members of Congress would remain well-fed. However, I don’t think that’s what matters. Authoritarian rulers “tend to lack the incentive” to prevent famines because unhappy populations can’t vote them out of power. Democratic rulers, even if they won’t themselves starve during times of famine, will be incentivized to prevent famines because unhappy populations can vote them out of power (assuming a fair and functional democratic system with regular elections). It isn’t the fact that the democratic rulers have to face the common people’s issues that makes them more likely to avoid catastrophes–it’s the fact that they can be held accountable for the catastrophes faced by the common people come election season.


It seems like Zac might be saying that because our democratically elected representatives are elites they are not vulnerable to the incentives to prevent catastrophes the common people would have to face. Zac could be interpreted as saying that the representatives are so wealthy that, like authoritarian rulers, they are detached from the problems faced by the common people. However, because what matters under my understanding is that the democratic representatives are electorally accountable–not that they themselves share in the common people’s problems–Zac would have to prove that the representatives’ wealth actually makes them unaccountable to the people. To argue this, Zac would have to prove that perhaps the political elite in our democracy have so much money that their influence on politics makes it impossible to hold them accountable in elections. I’m not saying that’s not true… it might be true given the state of dark money in US politics right now. I’m just saying Zac hasn’t made that argument yet.


Comments

  1. Zac DavisApril 14, 2022 at 9:21 AM

    I'm honored to have a responding blog post! I'll put some thoughts here:
    "(assuming a fair and functional democratic system with regular elections)"
    I think this is a big assumption, especially when it assumes away the systems of economic inequality required by capitalism which inevitably create political inequalities which seems to make it theoretically impossible in a capitalist society.
    "Democratic rulers, even if they won’t themselves starve during times of famine, will be incentivized to prevent famines because unhappy populations can vote them out of power"
    This is definitely the best defense of Sen's argument here, I think there are two problems though A. they can't the people don't have the control in elections, billionaires do B. political systems are designed such that there are limited major parties which voters much choose between meaning they can't really check political parties, for at least the past 20 years in US elections people have been voting for the "lesser evil," meaning both parties can collectively hold out on things many Americans care about, i.e. 70% being pro-expanding healthcare and some other really popular policies which would require taxing billionaires (aka party donors) more.
    Probably most acutely this was felt in Biden's pivot after the democratic primaries where he reneged many of the concessions he made to middle of the road democratic voters to attract them away from progressives like Sanders, and pivoted into more conservative policies, but 90% of Democrats were still forced to repeat the motto "Vote Blue No Matter Who" since there was no remaining pressure from a progressive candidate. Similarly alt right conservatives have no counter pressure to Republicans becoming more progressive so long as they are less progressive then Democrats, luckily for Republicans, both Republicans and Democrats tend to move more conservative.

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