The Universe: The ultimate free lunch (pdf)
Heinlein was like Aristotle: Very smart, very influential, and ultimately wrong about nearly everything. Including the ultimate fate of democracies: They don’t tear themselves apart through excess social welfare, they vote in autocrats of various sorts who gradually suppress rights and curtail freedoms until the state is no longer recognizably democratic.
Athenian Democracy was almost a Oligarchy as so few residents were Citizens with the voting franchise. And democracy was restored a short time later. Phillip II pretty much ended it, but there were a few sputterings afterwards.
Going a bit off topic, but I can’t help myself: Watching Carthage trying to run a war can be the height of hilarity at times.
Executing your commanders when they mess up is bad enough, but another thing is sacking commanders for being too good at their jobs. This, or some version of it, is what happened to the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus. He was hired by Carthage in the First Punic War to whip their armies into shape, a job he did very well indeed, being a Spartan and all. With Xanthippus in charge, Carthage defeated an invading Roman force at the Battle of Tunis, and captured the Roman consul Marcus Regulus.
Instead of being given a pay rise and a pat on the back, however, Xanthippus left Carthage shortly afterwards. One version of the story says that he was sacked by jealous Carthaginian politicians. Another version has it that he saw the writing on the wall, feared for his safety, and left on his own accord. There’s even a version where he was given a leaky ship which sank on his way home, but that sounds like a story that grew in the telling. Either way, exit Xanthippus, and the Carthaginian armies went back to being crap. Yes, Carthage went on to lose the war.
Even funnier is what happened after the war. Carthage now had a huge war indemnity they had to pay to Rome, and decided that they were too broke to pay their mercenaries. So, they gathered a bunch of their mercenary armies together in Africa, and informed them that they were all fired. Furthermore, all back pay and bonuses were cancelled. Good luck, have a nice day.
How the Carthaginians thought that this would end well is anyone’s guess, but, of course, it didn’t: Now there was suddenly an unemployed, very large and very pissed off army camped outside the city. Which is especially bad considering that the reason that those troops were hired in the first place was that Carthage didn’t have much of an in-house army of their own, preferring to outsource most of their army work. The mercenaries got some Libyans who were in the mood for revolting on their side, and decided to renegotiate the terms of their severance packages using the business ends of their swords, spears, slings and other cutlery. Whoop-dee-doo: Carthage was now at war with its own former army. Really, I am not making this up.
Carthage somehow managed to pay other mercenaries to fight the first mercenaries, and did eventually win (with their forces, coincidentally, commanded by Hamilcar Barca, father of the famous Hannibal). In the meantime, however, seeing that Carthage was somewhat busy, Rome took the opportunity to sneak over and annex Corsica and Sardinia.
At this, Carthage cried massive foul. Rome went: “Wanna go to war with us again?”. Carthage replied: “Um, no.” Rome responded: “Well, that was a quick surrender. Here, we’ll slap you with even more reparations.” All in all, fun times all around.
(Of course, the war indemnities and the Roman behavior turned out to be a bit of a Treaty of Versailles type of situation. But that’s another story.)
Aside from the fact that we do have several actual examples of states following that path, you’re nitpicking a one-off line in a fictional work.
Alas, though it is just a one-off bit of “folk wisdom,” it is recited by a lot of people as a valid law of historical determination. One man’s idle quote can be another man’s Holy Writ.
We have two major political parties based largely on their opposition to making wealth accessible to the needy.
which? Venezuela, not quite. Greece? Nope, but maybe close.
Venezuela has completely crippled their economy to the point that people cross international borders just to get food. Greece had to be bailed out by half of Europe just to keep going. Zimbabwe took a similar path, with similar policies to keep a democractically-elected government in charge no matter the consequences, leading to famine.
You can perhaps argue that this wasn’t “collapse” since the nation-state survived, but at that point you’re basically acknowledging the principle and just arguing the detail. You could argue that it wasn’t “real” democracy, which is shading very close to “Nae TRUE Scotman.” Or you can accept that, at worst, Heinlein was probably exaggerating for effect, which he could do if he wants. Right or wrong, he has a pretty arguable point; democratic voters often have bad incentives to remain ignorant and get benefits today no matter the bill tomorrow.
Ultimately, that’s not a problem with democracy - it’s a problem with humanity. The difference with democracy is that you can see this strain of thinking in action all to often.
Exactly what countries are you referring to here?
Go on, name them.
As Martin Hyde said *"Even with Venezuela it wasn’t really just voters giving themselves more and more largesse. A big part of Venezuela’s problems can trace to simple gross mismanagement. Chavez nationalized a lot of things, then fired everyone who knew how to run those things, then put political loyalists into power. Like take the State oil company, which generally should be a major generator of revenue. Chavez so fucked it up that it basically could not operate effectively. This is above and beyond the damage caused by the collapsing price of oil, the Venezuelan state oil company was in such bad shape that it was actually losing its ability to pump and refine oil, such that even as most other major petro states were ramping up production to make up for the fiscal shortfalls of falling oil prices, Venezuela couldn’t. It was suffering rolling blackouts (due to mismanagement of the system’s electric grid) that shut down oil production, massive inflation was making it all but impossible for PDVSA to buy new equipment or make investments required to maintain production, and then the general cash shortages in Venezuela have made it hard for PDVSA to produce oil it can easily market.
Many of Chavez’s business policies also essentially ran huge swathes of the economy out of business (and some out of the country) and nothing really materialized to replace them."
As TheSeaOtter pointed out:…“the Greek government spent years lying to everyone about how much they had been borrowing. Even if it had led to the downfall of Greek democracy (which, as you point out, seems in no real danger of happening), you wouldn’t really be able to pin it on The People.”
wiki:
*Since 2000, Zimbabwe has seized and forcibly redistributed most of the country’s white owned commercial farms. The new occupants, which included black only citizens and several prominent members of the ruling ZANU-PF administration, were usually inept, inexperienced, or uninterested in farming – thereby failing to retain the labour-intensive, highly efficient management of previous landowners.[14] Short term gains were achieved by selling the land or equipment. The contemporary lack of agricultural expertise has triggered severe export losses and negatively affected market confidence. Idle land is now being utilised by local peasants practising meagre subsistence farming. ]…Zimbabwe has also sustained the 30th occurrence of recorded hyperinflation in world history.[16]
Government spending is 97.8% of GDP. State enterprises are strongly subsidized, taxes and tariffs are high. State regulation is costly to companies, starting or closing a business is slow and costly.[17] Labor market is highly regulated, hiring a worker is cumbersome and firing a worker is difficult. By 2008 unemployment had risen to 94%.[18]*
Caused by corruption, poor political decisions, and other factors, but “voting themselves benefits” is not one of them. As far as it being a “democracy” it’s not even close :Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, when his ZANU-PF party won the elections following the end of white minority rule; he has been the president of Zimbabwe since 1987. Under Mugabe’s authoritarian regime, the state security apparatus has dominated the country and been responsible for widespread human rights violations.[12] Mugabe has maintained the revolutionary socialist rhetoric from the Cold War era, blaming Zimbabwe’s economic woes on conspiring Western capitalist countries
I don’t see ho that’s a particularly effective counterargument. In all three cases, politically motivated popular movements took power democratically and held it through successive elections by destroying productive resources and handing the proceeds out to gain or keep support. If you’re arguing that the details are different… well, yes, but that doesn’t really changed the basics of what happened or why. If you concede this, then you concede that Heinlein had a point, and this is a danger that democracies need to address.
Your point, and Martini’s, obfuscates the issue by pretending that things wouldn’t have been problematic had the authorities been more competent. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. Things didn’t go wrong because those in charge were just bad at their jobs; they went wrong because enough people got bought off, and were happy to get bought off.
Edit: let me make this clear. You didn’t need to quote that because I fully understand what you are saying. I emphatically don’t agree with it. You seem to think the government in all these cases was just stupid. I think they were clever, corrupt, and self-interested, which is not a healthy combination when combined with a short-sighted public.
This sounds like the plot line for an Ayn Rand novel.
“True democracy” meaning a system where only male hereditary citizens who owned land and had done military training could participate, and women citizens, slaves, resident foreigners, and male citizens who owed debts to the state had no right to vote?
From the wiki article on Athenian Democracy:
When they say “true democracy” they mean “direct” as opposed to a Republic like we have now. If an Athenian were to look at our system, with its lifelong judiciary, Congressional representatives, electoral college, and four year executive, they would be completely appalled. These ideas were anathema to them, so in that way you can say they were closer to purely democratic. Limited suffrage, on the other hand, is a mark against them by modern standards.
No, not always* stupid. * But hardly *democratic *either, even if they started that way.
If, after surveying thousands of governments among hundreds of countries over seven decades, the best evidence you can find comprises two or three examples which, after stretching definitions, mooting circumstances, and rounding consequences, might possibly loosely arguably fit the definition, then you have a textbook example of a failed prediction.
I think (modern) Greece is a clear-cut example: a democratic nation that voted itself social largesse it could not sustain and suffered an economic collapse.
That her neighbors bailed her out does not “undo” this sequence of events.
In general though, I don’t think bankruptcy destroys democracies: autocrats and a weak-willed public do.
For a salient example of my final point above, look at Erdogan in Turkey. He is destroying their democracy and the fickle citizenry are buying it. They will suffer greatly as their country devolves into sheer authoritarianism.
Argentina, 24 March 1976?
Like others, where I disagree with (allegedly) Heinlein is about the hint of inevitability that it carries with it – and of course the opportunistic political usage of it.
I do find a rare point of agreement with **Stringbean **on this part:
Being broke is a condition that can be eventually overcome without having to lose the democratic/constitutional nature of the state… *unless *the public comes to feel they can’t or won’t take the pain and will vote in someone who says I’ll fix this easy, rules or no rules.
You don’t even have to have the autocrats at the beginning – they can lie in wait until things deteriorate to the point the masses will listen. One of the big issues in Latin America for example has been that to a great extent people were sold a tale that democratization would per se improve their lives. That was a mistake. In some countries where that failed to happen, that eroded the trust in constitutional government, making the demagogues attractive: *“You, you know you are the majority; yet because of Rule of Law the establishment politicians can’t just do right by you. Vote for us and we will CHANGE the Rule of Law for the Rule of JUSTICE! (wild applause)” * And you don’t even need a real majority for that, just for those who’d rather defend Rule of Law to be disunited and demoralized.
Venezuela was a tragic case because they had formal democracy in good working order and a steady source of income since the 1950s, but after a while the lower classes started saying to themselves, “hey, why aren’t any of those oil billions trickling down to ME? why do I only get crumbs?”. Had the establishment parties actually done something about that rather than become poster boys for corruption and crony capitalism, Chavez would not have got traction. (The irony of course is that now even *crumbs *are only available in the black market…)