Within the just-published subject of Regulation (Winter 2024-2025), I think about H.L. Mencken’s aphorism:
“Democracy is the idea that the frequent folks know what they need, and need to get it good and onerous.”
My quick piece factors out one downside in taking the aphorism actually:
The frequent individual does know what he needs: to enhance his situation in life in line with his personal preferences. And he succeeds so effectively 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 individual is given the ability to resolve 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 pressure.
After some explanations that my readers is likely to be interested by, 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 assume 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 received what he needed good and onerous
