Ask HN: Is American Democracy Collapsing?

There was once a country that tried an experiment of a limited democracy that respected the rights of minorities, and constrained the rights of majorities, by ratifying a constitution that limited the powers of government to certain enumerated purposes. For a while, and on certain topics, this restrained people from exercising their will, democratically, on some minorities, some of the time.

But of course as you would expect, these constitutional limitations eroded, and democracy took its place, and the rights of minorities receded.

Still, it was a sweet dream.

> People often bring up this analogy as a criticism of democracy, but I have to ask "How would the outcome differ if the 3 members of that society abandoned voting?".

This is a great question, and the answer is two-fold. First, there is geography, so the sheep-state would not join in the same country as the wolf-state, they would be two separate countries each making their own laws. This is why the US has a Senate that is always blocking things that bigger states want and people are constantly rediscovering that the Senators doing the blocking represent states with smaller populations. In general, when you have long standing disagreement on policies that is geography-based, a common result is devolution to some degree, either outright secession or some kind of Federalism (e.g. a Senate) in which laws don't get passed without the consent of the minority states.

A second point is that if the identity of the wolves/sheep is not geographically based but is widespread, then intelligent people will realize that "I am wolf on issue X, but will be a sheep on issue Y or will be as sheep next election" and so they oppose the creation of decision making structures that allow a majority vote to ram through legislation that is opposed by a strong minority. In other words, people who are smart and think about the issue of governance deeply understand that a pure democracy is a very unstable form of government and they don't try to propagandize "democracy" as some desirable end-state. You want representation, but you need to raise the bar so that laws with 50%+1 of voters support does not give you 100% of what you want, as then you have a discontinuity which results in violent swings from getting 100% to getting 0% just based on a small percent of people shifting around. This is how we got "bleeding Kansas" -- e.g. pro and anti-slavery forces go into Kansas and murder voters because the state was so evenly split that a few voters would make the difference in the policy, and so people start killing off or chasing voters out of the state.

A stable system would be one in which 51% of votes gives you 51% of what you want, and not 100%. In that system, killing off a small number of voters results in only a small policy gain, and so such a system is more stable and ultimately, more democratic (because it more truly reflects the will of the public) than one based on "democracy". But how do you get such a system? Well, if you require a large supermajority, then you need to compromise. You horsetrade to get the supermajority and you end up with only part of what you want, not everything. For example, the Biden administration has roughly 50% of the house and senate, and was voted on by roughly half the voters, so they got roughly half of what they wanted in their spending bill. They got the infrastructure bill passed but not the social spending bill, which was more controversial. They only got roughly half because they have roughly half the votes. And they had to horsetrade with the minority.

But that's really all we have -- the intelligence and foresight of people who understand how dangerous democracy is together with the ability of minorities to secede. Because the U.S. founding was an example of such a secession, our founders understood that and worked hard to ensure that a mere majority can't pass a law unless it also has broadbased geographical support and support in small states as well as large states. This forces compromise, and always results in half-a-loaf measures and governance by consensus rather than 50%+1 domination.