Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Expertise or Popularity?
Plato criticizes democracy throughout The Republic. In Chapter 8, for example, he compares the state to a ship. He argues that it is better to have a captain knowledgeable about navigation steer the ship rather than untrained crewmembers. The crewmembers may be able to persuade the owners to let them sail the ship, but without the proper expertise, the ship will not reach its destination. In other words, Plato argues that democracy rewards popularity over expertise, but it is expertise that is essential for good government. Is he right? Consider some examples from class. Can democracy deal with such long-term issues as global warming when most people would prefer to ignore them? Can it deal with economic recovery when most citizens don't understand economic theory? Or can you give a point in democracy's favor?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Democracies, by design, have a lot of trouble dealing with large, complex, and divisive problems. Democratic leaders need to remain popular with the electorate to retain power, yet popular decisions are often the opposite of the necessary solutions. However, through short-term success and education, democracies can combat the excesses of populism, even for far-off problems. Democracies can use the results of a policy that may initially have been unpopular to change the opinion to a positive one. For example, a policy that is trying to stimulate the economy after a recession may be viewed as unpopular. This policy could be one of increasing government spending in order to stimulate the economy, however, since most people do not understand economic theory, they simply see the government plan as spending money the government does not have. Because of the increased debt created by the plan, many would view the policy unpopularly. However, in order to get this initially unpopular plan through, the democratic leaders would have to expense a lot of political capital. Despite, the fears of the population, the plan would work because the increased economic growth would offset the deficit spending, and, because of the economic growth the plan generates, opinion would flip, with the plan being viewed more favorably. That opinion change could help to regenerate the massive loss of political capital, to help pass more bills, giving democratic leaders the ability to be unpopular initially, so long as they regain their popularity later. However, not every plan has short-term successes, and many have short-term failures. Specifically, climate change solutions generally cause fossil fuel workers to lose their jobs, yet the public would not see the positive effects of the plan for a long time. There is no way a democratic leader can justify the major popularity loss from those plans. In order to combat the unpopularity of those kinds of bills, democratic society needs to embrace education. Higher quality and widespread education would change people’s decision calculus about plans meant to combat long-term problems to take into account those long-term effects as a benefit equally comparable to the short-term losses. In climate change, for example, many of those against the climate change solutions lack a college education and any schooling they had was of poorer quality due to lack of funding. Giving better college would cause the public to view plans to combat climate change more favorably, which would allow democratic leaders the ability to pass such plans without fearing a loss of popularity and power. However, plans that would make college more affordable, or plans that would increase education funding would likely prove to be unpopular. To pass those plans, the democratic leaders need to construct those policies carefully in order to gain the short-term popularity gain needed to justify passing the plan. Democratic leaders can harness the function of popularity in a democracy by using both popularity boosts in the short-term and higher quality education to combat many problems from economic recovery to climate change.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePlato argues that the person leading needs to have the proper expertise to lead and in a democracy, someone elected would not have the proper expertise. I believe that this is not true and that a democracy gets the most qualified individual to become ruler. In a kingship, the person who becomes the ruler after the previous one is the son of the current ruler. That son has grown up in a protected and wealthy household, so the son doesn't know the issues facing the whole community and is usually not the most qualified person to rule in the whole community. In an aristocracy, the people deciding who the next ruler will be is the highest social class and they would just try to benefit themselves in some way, such as picking a ruler who will lower sales taxes, instead of one who will benefit the community as a whole. In both of these situations the person ruling would most likely not be the most qualified person to rule in the entire community. The only way to get the most qualified person as ruler is for everyone in the community to recognize his qualifications and therefore elect that person as their democratic ruler. In idea, democracy should bring the most qualified people as rulers, but in reality, I concede to Plato's point that democracy is not a great idea. In reality, just like Plato said anyone who is popular would be able to play on their popularity to get themselves elected, even if they are very unqualified for the role. If the democracy elects the most qualified person available, then that person would be the best suited to deal with issues like global warming, even if the popular opinion is to leave it alone, but if the popular and unqualified candidate is elected, then these issues would only get worse. In a democracy, ideally, the ruler would be the most qualified and do what was best for the community, even if the community disagrees with it, while other governments would have less qualified rulers.
ReplyDeleteIn the Republic, Plato uses the metaphor of people overthrowing their ship captain to equate democracy to that sort of lawless sea-craft. He believes that democracy is essentially just a popularity contest between unqualified candidates, which in this example would be the rebellious sailors. He believes that the initial captain of the ship, with all of the expertise for sailing, is the equivalent to his idea of the philosopher king, perfectly equipped to man and rule the country. Plato believes that every candidate for rule in his ideal society should go through extensive training for rule so as to avoid situations like this one. However, Plato's ship metaphor is not entirely accurate when it comes to depicting how democracy actually plays out, leading to disparities between this fictional uprising and real democracy. The first disparity is that the ship example shows a very rash and hungry group of sailors, whereas democracy is far more organized than that. Elections take place every 4 years, allowing breathing room for each "captain" and halting a rash and quick transference of power between the most popular people at the time. The second difference is the scale to which these events occur. The ship example takes only into account how a group of riled up sailors might choose a leader; however, democracy takes place in countries of millions of people. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and these different opinions are bound to create balance because the values of everyone are so different. People will always choose who they think best represents their needs at the time, whereas Plato's sailors are only thinking about who seems strongest or is most popular, creating a vicious cycle of unqualified rule. Finally, in Plato's example, he talks about all of the potential sailor candidates as if they are completely inept and know nothing about captaining a ship, which maybe they do not. However, democracy today grooms people thinking about candidacy into that position, and generally does not allow those uneducated and unable to handle power into that position. Presidents have to go through years of university and usually maintain lower positions in the government in order to gain experience for their role as leader of the country. This stands in stark contrast to what Plato suggests would happen for democracy. However, even though Plato might have missed the mark in his critique of democracy, this does not mean that the system works perfectly. On occasion, Plato’s logic rings true. One case of this is the election of Donald Trump where many voted for their passions rather than what they really thought benefited them. However, even Donald Trump went to business school and while he was previously inexperienced in political matters, he is far from the least qualified candidate. There are also critiques of democracy that stray away from the points that Plato mentioned. It could be said that democracy fails to generate change with the different regimes that come in to basically undo what the previous leader did before. It can be argued that democracy does not promote change in the long term and that it is flawed in the matter that it sometimes fails to change major issues such as global warming. However, this short term change can still be an effective form of government, providing stable management of the country's day-to-day and allowing the safety of people living under that government. Also, while democracy may be a bit flawed in the way it currently plays out, it is a far cry from the kind of popularity contest that Plato suggested it might turn into. For the most part, democracy is a good government for finding a qualified leader chosen in the peoples' interest, and it allows for a stable and well-managed government. In this scenario, it seems that Plato is a sailor unable to recognize the true values and assets that the elected leaders of democracy contain.
ReplyDeletePlato argues that democracy is not a good form of government because it elects inexperienced leaders due to popularity. However, I believe that Plato is incorrect in his argument. Firstly, a democracy is not run by one person. It has many governing bodies which make decisions based on many people. This makes it more than a simple, unexperienced decision. However, Plato is right in the fact that in order to be elected into a democracy, the person has to be popular. But in order to be popular in the first place, the person has to be experienced. Someone running for president wouldn’t have gotten that far if he didn’t know what he was doing. In the end, the candidate who wins is the one who’s knowledge and experience aligns with that of the citizens. On the other hand, I believe that a democratic society can deal with long term issues such as global warming. Yet, a democracy focuses on the most important issues that benefit the nation as a whole. Therefore, if global warming became a super catastrophic issue that was pressing on everyone’s minds, then it would be solved. But until then, it remains something that is overlooked and not even believed by some. Another thing that requires attention to be solved in a democracy is economic recovery. Even though many citizens don’t know economic theory, they do not need to because they have an experienced government making the decisions for them. The only difficult part is getting enough public attention so that the government and leaders are forced to solve them. Democracy is not lacking in experience, it is lacking in public attention and methods in which the public can pressure the government into action.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 8 of Plato’s Republic, Plato expressed disdain for democracy, labeling it as ineffective with unequipped people having access to a large amount of power. He shows this with an example of a ship, representing a country, a captain representing the leader and crew representing the common folk. Plato expresses that this represents democracy, and that it would be better for a trained captain to rule than an untrained sailor to rule. This metaphor though of a ship to a country is overall unjust to democracies, not truly representing them correctly. Though in the large amount of people who are unfit to rule, there are still some people who would be fit to rule, showing that not every “common folk” is unfit to rule. In a ship there is a limited amount of people, usually not exceeding 250 people. In this small sample size, there may not be many if any people who are fit to rule, but in the case of a country where there are millions of people, there will be people who are fit to rule even if the percent of people who are fit to rule is 0.001%. This shows that not all of the sailors are unfit to rule as Plato believes. This is followed by the fact that in a democracy, the common folks purpose is to weave out all of the uneducated common folk who will not understand how to progress (as humans want people who are fit to get stuff done to help them), and select those who would be the most fit to rule, and it has been established who is fit to rule, and who isn’t, then it becomes about the popular agenda. As before the popular agenda is considered, it is taken into account who is fit to rule and who isn’t, it is a combination of some expertise as well as some popularity, opposed to the view of Plato, of being all popularity. Some expertise is essential in running a government, but it is healthy to have some other factors in determining who to represent a large group of people such as a country. On top of this, if the popular view or “destination” changes, there are checks and balances to remove the person or people in power if their view or policy becomes unfavorable, allowing for a “non-violent mutiny”, or exchange in power without having to fight for it, which is not possible when attempting to remove a non-democratic official from office. One main flaw that Plato did see in democracy is that the decisions which are made in a democracy are almost always decisions relating to the present and not often able to combat long term economic, and global problems. This is due to the human nature of the wanting for immediate gratification, resulting in policies attempting to alive immediate problems without taking the long-term effects into account, due to the majority of people wanting immediate solutions opposed to long drawn out policies that do not have immediate benefits. This is harmful with economics, as when there is economic hardship, the popular thing to do becomes to push money out into the economy to help spur it, but this results in the government gaining debt when they spend money on the economy. As a result of the desire for short term gains, democracy can become inefficient. Democracy can be seen as an embodiment of the general human nature, and is both pushed forward and held back because of the pros and cons of human nature.
ReplyDeleteIn the Republic by Plato, he argues that a person in a position of power must have the technical knowhow in order to become a proper leader. He also argues that elected leaders are not picked by their ability, but rather by their popularity, and ability to persuade people. From this, most people would have to agree with Plato. Throughout democratic history, popularity has been the ruling theme in most elections. Voters do think about who is the most qualified, but they think about who is more aligned with their beliefs. For example, global warming is a very pressing yet controversial topic where there is significant evidence supporting it, however some people still do not think that it exists. Therefore, the people that think that global warming is not real will look for a candidate who agrees with them, even though it will be detrimental for the environment. Then people who do believe it exists will look for a candidate who thinks it does. After this, it becomes a battle of numbers where whichever candidate has the most supporters will win and eventually make policies aligning with their beliefs, even if it is incorrect. Another issue with democracy would be lesser known topics are sidelined even if they are important. For example, a position such as state Treasurer, a less known topic, would be harder for the more qualified candidate to be elected. If we look at more republican states like Wyoming, there will be a trend of republican treasurers. This shows that even if the other candidates are well qualified voters will usually take sides with people who think like them.
ReplyDelete