Isn’t there a bit of a false equivalence tucked up in the logic here? Two sides could be equally scared of one another and both feel like underdogs, but that says nothing about who is correct to think that way. Sometimes people just are the underdog. People unable to use democracy to enact change versus elites that consider them dangerous is a good example. The masses in that case are definitely the underdog, as they threaten the status quo of every major power centre (often state, corporations, politicians, and elite institutions all at once). In many European countries, certainly, it is unclear that the masses can do very much to policy at all right now. They feel like underdogs because they are. I am sure the elites also feel that they are underdogs… they’re just wrong.
There’s always the third option: everyone thinks the other side is more in control than they are, no one is actually in control in anything like a satisfactory way. Each individual feels part of a system that narrows their choices so much they have basically no agency at all. The system churns on all the same, while everyone seemingly hates it (or at least would like something better).
In a stereotypical old-west gunfight, one fighter is more experienced and has a strong reputation; the other fighter is the underdog and considered likely to lose. But who’s the underdog of a grenade fight inside a bank vault? Both sides are overwhelmingly likely to lose.
At least one side of many political battles believe they’re in a grenade fight, where there’s little or nothing they can do to prevent the other side from destroying a lot of value. and could reasonably feel like an underdog even if they have a full bandolier of grenades and the other side has only one or two.
This feels like a good example of the exact point being made by the essay.
The rise to power of populist politicians and the historic presence of violent revolutions could be a strong counterpoint to your assertion. Yes, sometimes it feels like democracies are the underdog when stacked up against powerful lobbyists, but ultimately there’s a big power imbalance here that the elites are absolutely correct to fear: lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not. When the mob, or a mob empowered leader, decides to bypass democratic institutions in the exercise of power, this asymmetry matters.
Whether or not the revolting populace actual get what they want out of rebelling (historically this would be unexpected) it’s a difficult case to make that they don’t have some significant advantages in the games elites actually care about.
I would disagree fairly strongly: “lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not”
They are, I think. If they are angry that democracy is ignoring them then their pitchforks will likely not manage to enact some complicated change to legislation needed to fix the problem, as you point out. If we care about power to actually make a change about the things people want to happen, this is vested almost entirely within the hands of the elite and not within pitchforks. Pitchforks could maybe scare elites into doing it, but more likely it just generates chaos. Because pitchforks are not the tool for the job. The tools for the job are held by the elites and they refuse to use them accordingly.
I’m living through this day by day here in Britain. People protest all over the country every day and the government, despite knowing which positions have majority support, just do the opposite continuously and use every mechanism available to delay or obfuscate meaningful change.
Isn’t there a bit of a false equivalence tucked up in the logic here? Two sides could be equally scared of one another and both feel like underdogs, but that says nothing about who is correct to think that way. Sometimes people just are the underdog. People unable to use democracy to enact change versus elites that consider them dangerous is a good example. The masses in that case are definitely the underdog, as they threaten the status quo of every major power centre (often state, corporations, politicians, and elite institutions all at once). In many European countries, certainly, it is unclear that the masses can do very much to policy at all right now. They feel like underdogs because they are. I am sure the elites also feel that they are underdogs… they’re just wrong.
There’s always the third option: everyone thinks the other side is more in control than they are, no one is actually in control in anything like a satisfactory way. Each individual feels part of a system that narrows their choices so much they have basically no agency at all. The system churns on all the same, while everyone seemingly hates it (or at least would like something better).
In a stereotypical old-west gunfight, one fighter is more experienced and has a strong reputation; the other fighter is the underdog and considered likely to lose. But who’s the underdog of a grenade fight inside a bank vault? Both sides are overwhelmingly likely to lose.
At least one side of many political battles believe they’re in a grenade fight, where there’s little or nothing they can do to prevent the other side from destroying a lot of value. and could reasonably feel like an underdog even if they have a full bandolier of grenades and the other side has only one or two.
This feels like a good example of the exact point being made by the essay.
The rise to power of populist politicians and the historic presence of violent revolutions could be a strong counterpoint to your assertion. Yes, sometimes it feels like democracies are the underdog when stacked up against powerful lobbyists, but ultimately there’s a big power imbalance here that the elites are absolutely correct to fear: lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not. When the mob, or a mob empowered leader, decides to bypass democratic institutions in the exercise of power, this asymmetry matters.
Whether or not the revolting populace actual get what they want out of rebelling (historically this would be unexpected) it’s a difficult case to make that they don’t have some significant advantages in the games elites actually care about.
I would disagree fairly strongly: “lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not”
They are, I think. If they are angry that democracy is ignoring them then their pitchforks will likely not manage to enact some complicated change to legislation needed to fix the problem, as you point out. If we care about power to actually make a change about the things people want to happen, this is vested almost entirely within the hands of the elite and not within pitchforks. Pitchforks could maybe scare elites into doing it, but more likely it just generates chaos. Because pitchforks are not the tool for the job. The tools for the job are held by the elites and they refuse to use them accordingly.
I’m living through this day by day here in Britain. People protest all over the country every day and the government, despite knowing which positions have majority support, just do the opposite continuously and use every mechanism available to delay or obfuscate meaningful change.