Yeah, I understand—but I still have a couple of things to say, especially from Hoppe’s perspective:
I agree: democracy inevitably leads to high-time preference, moral decay, and state expansion, because it incentivizes short-term gains for political players who don’t own the capital base. They’re renters of power, not stewards.
In Hoppe’s view, democracy is soft communism—institutionalized looting dressed up as participation.
Now, if we go further back—to The Republic—Plato calls democracy one step before tyranny. Why? Because in a democracy, freedom becomes excess. Everyone demands equality in all things—even between ruler and ruled, wise and ignorant.
The result? Chaos.
And that’s how democracies collapse.
So while new tech might optimize how we vote, it still doesn’t change what we’re voting for—or who ends up holding the leash.
If think the flaws of democratic systems that you point at could be corrected with better system design. For instance, the political class are indeed “renters of power” but the question is why is this allowed in the first place? It’s hard to deconstruct it because it would be up to the political class to do so while it’s in their personal interest not to do so. It’s a design flaw not an issue with the democratic philosophy.
There is a lot of innovative democratic approaches that could be tested. I think the representative democracy approach is mostly flawed because too easily corruptible/blackmailed.
Maybe we should have legislators for specific domain of expertise that would be open to those with qualified credentials that would be overseen by a general chamber composed of regular citizens wanted to be involved in the democratic process.
All participants could be randomly selected rather than elected to ensure fair representation of all opinions and prevent a corrupted media system from influencing the outcome. There wouldn’t even be a need for campaigning. No more political elections needed.
Instead of participating in electing representatives, citizens would have the power to directly revoke selected officials to mitigate blatant abuse of power.
These are just some ideas to show that the criticism of the democratic governance mostly target flaws in the design rather than the philosophy.
Well, I can see your point. But I always go back to basics—first principles. I’ve studied enough to understand the purpose behind things, not just the structures.
Studying common law, saving in Bitcoin, and studying Austrian economics are guiding me by simple principles and virtues. They support my willingness to contribute to an open-market civilization. I don’t have the need to wait or wish for government systems to evolve. My purpose is to stay in alignment—not to ask for permission.
That said, I still believe that understanding the kind of government we have should be a priority—for both kids and adults. If people don’t know what we were meant to be, they’ll never notice how far we’ve drifted.
So sure—test ideas, experiment with governance models. But for me, it’s about embodying my freedom, not designing better cages.
Absolutely and I don’t see both approaches as incompatible even if they can be in conflict. There will always be free markets and there will always be a structure of governance. I like the idea of having no government or rather governance but, it won’t happen because the void will always be filled by some sort of governance hence, it’s important that we have the best governance possible but not everybody is interested in taking part in the process and that’s totally fine.
Great point and lovely conversation thank you
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