I’ve got Hoppe, I’ve got Caplan. Its difficult to find articles that just quickly and efficiently smash democracy. I draw on your collective wisdom…
The argument against democracy is really a subset of the larger public choice theory. Efficiency is not the key factor in disputing democracy, it’s more about softening the ingrained resistance against even contemplating the possibility that there could be something wrong with democracy that’s the hard part. A gentle introduction to public choice theory is probably the best way to set most people on the road to recovery from their indoctrination into the holy dogma of democracy.
Clayton -
From here:
For example, I was talking with a friend of mine some time ago. He had been intensely interested in politics, but less so in political theory. When he asked me about libertarianism, I told him the following tale:
Imagine that you, Dick, Mark, and I go camping. While climbing a mountain to the campsite, you, Dick, and I decide to build a lean-to, so that we have a sheltered spot to rest in on the way down.
“Come help us, Mark,” we shout to him.
“No thanks, I’ll go on ahead and set up the camp site,” he replies.
“No you won’t, Mark.”
“What do you mean, no I won’t?” he asks us.
“What we mean is, you have to help us. We’re the majority. We’ve voted, and we’ve decided that everyone must contribute to our project. And, you see, we’re prepared to kill you if you don’t.”
“Kill me?”
“Yes, kill you, if we have to. Please, it’s not that we want to kill you. At first, if you resist, we’ll just rough you up a bit. But if you continue to be obstinate, eventually we will have to kill you. You’d be defying the will of the people.”
“Now,” I asked my friend, “how is this essentially different than the Social Democratic State, supposedly the epitome of just and fair governance?”
He pondered my story for a minute. Then he said, “Yeah, it really isn’t different, is it?” At that moment, he later told me, he became convinced of the essential soundness of libertarian political theory.
Most people already know that the action of our hypothetical campers is wrong. (And we’ll never convince the few who don’t with any system.) We don’t have to change their whole worldview. We just have to show them the fog that has kept them from seeing that when the government does such things it is acting unjustly, judged from within their current ethical system.
I always begin by asking why I should believe that an idea is good rather than trying to find any flaw. Prove rather than disprove at the initial. The only thing that anyone seems to come up with is that Winston Churchill quote.
AJ that was really great example. Thanks.
You’ll always get some boob who will argue that we don’t have free will or that by being in the group, one has consented to be killed for not following orders, or to do whatever one is told, even if one disagrees with it, and the only option for the dissident is to leave the group or territory.
That was somewhat the discussion articulated to me by some democratic conservatives on the Australian Libertarian Society blog, although I have seen it argued by members of the LP in America as well.
It is very hard to discuss topics like ethics or logic with people who at their core, have a fundamental belief in fantasy as reality.
I’ll be limited on space. From public choice theory I’m planning to mention voter rational ignorance, campaign focus on marginal voters, and co opt by special interests. Is there anything else I should take from public choice?
I’ll also be arguing that democracy still shares the fundamental flaws of monarchy. The political body is still the final arbiter of all conflicts, including conflicts involving itself. A constitution can never protect you from a majority if the majority have judicial and legislative powers.
I can’t run specific arguments against representative democracy just yet. But I’m aware of the caretaker vs owner perspective of Hoppe.
Any other ideas?
[edit] How do you guys feel about the arrow impossibility theorem? I find it relieving that the voting paradoxes i’ve been looking at use ordinal value scales 
The argument against democracy is really a subset of the larger public choice theory
To and extent, although there are plenty of pro democracy arguments in the PC literature.
HL Mencken.
Actually, Rothbard has some very good and efficient rebuttals against Democracy here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard160.html
The first part - The Nature of The State - already has some devastating arguments against it with a little bit of help from Spooner.
Neoclassical, HL Mencken’s wikipedia page lists true, but essentially speculate/psychological arguments against democracy. Did he write anything more… academic on the subject?
The only thing that anyone seems to come up with is that Winston Churchill quote.
Which he probably didn’t even say.
Mencken never wrote anything too academic, with the possible exception of Treatise on the Gods. I would consider him a philosophic satirist, with biting insights that ring true and could be formalized and empirically studied, if one wanted to do so.
LvMI sells his book Notes on Democracy.
I think the best attack on democracy is the public choice literature on government failure, specifically. The costs of government outweigh the benefits to remedy market failure and other collective action problems.
We have two wars right now killing thousands, but it’s quite plain to see that public goods (e.g., lighthouses, famously) have a history of being provided without the need of a coercive agancy, especially one that is institutionally bound for octopean overreach. The incentive structure of government is instrinsically power-grabbing (cf. New Institutional economics).
Are there any papers on analyzing democracy as a “great leap forward”? I mean that in every other discipline, specialization leads to better outputs/functionality. But democracy is the idea that each individual should become a specialist himself, forgoing the benefits of division of labor. So even if democracy were workable in practice, its opportunity costs would be enormous.
Okay, just to be clear:
New Institutional economics attempts to improve standard neoclassical analysis by including various additional variables in order to better elucidate economic phenomena (legal norms, social norms, and general rules that underlie economic activity). It differs from institutional economics (thorstein veblen) because it does not entirely reject neoclassical analysis nor does it deny the existence of economic laws. Key players in the New Institutional school include Simon, Williamson, Ross, Coase, Bewley, ect. New Institutional economics is not about the power-grabbing nature of government.
I’ve been (casually) studying primate behavior lately and it struck me just how much your first paragraph sounds like the rules of primate groups… do what the alpha (and his allies) say or leave (on pain of getting hurt and possibly killed). By being born into a group, you are automatically expected to follow the rules of the group (as set by the alpha) or leave. This is not progressive, its regressive to ancestral behavior.
Clayton -
Here are some videos:
Pennington - Democracy and the Deliberative Conceit
Marco Bassani - It usually begins with John Locke. Reflections on Classical Liberalism and the State
when i talk/write about democracy I usually make the ‘coordination’-argument, not the moral one. The moral argument goes against government in every form, not specifically democracy. If you argue against democracy on moral grounds (which is perfectly legitimate), you often get the question/response; ‘so are you in favour of a dictatorship?’
If you don’t have much room: pick your battles! So I would advise to argue that ‘democracy’ is a bad way of making decisions.
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Democracy (politics) is categorical: it’s either obama or mccain who decides; whilst markets tend to be more ‘you get what you want and I get what I want’
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In democracy; you vote for people who have to make decisions in a certain process, in markets you buy the outcome of a productive process. Big difference and the second one is easier to check for quality.
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Rational ignorance (‘do you know everything? Well, in a market; you don’t really have to know!’) and rational irrationallity (imagine a lot of people having stupid ideas; democracy makes sure that we all suffer from it, while in a market, they mainly effect themselves)
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majority voting doesn’t assess relative importance (imagine 60% wanting x but 40% REALLY_REALLY wanting y and willing to compensate the other ones for it; democracy can’t deal with that, while markets can)
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obviously: interest groups (the bigger the price, the more lobbiest)
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democracy only selects the political leaders, not the bureaucracy, who often has discreationary powers
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When you ‘vote’ for a politician, you vote for everything he stands for (and checking for lies is difficult). Even if you don’t agree with him on certain issues, you can’t vote for others on other issues; it’s always a ‘collective’ of opinions. (Imagine you having to buy house x, car y, refrigerator z, and foodbundle abc or house t, car u, refrigerator v and foodbundel def; … wouldn’t you prefer choosing some yourself?)
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even if you think regulation is necessary; why do you think that the regulators will regulate good? or is ‘any’ kind of regulation good? If so; isn’t that a dangerous notion? Regulation can mean a lot of different things. Doesn’t it, for example, happen that the public cries for regulation but that the regulation is actually in the advantage of the firms who are being regulated? (capture theory)
stuf like that is what I do.
Democracy is the act of voting on which rights they want to destroy, and to whom.