Freedom and democracy are incompatible

Because freedom eats away at equality

St Peter’s Basilica: the apogee of autocracy. Pretty, isn’t it?

Freedom and democracy are incompatible. Democracy is whatever you want it to be. It can be the citizens of a Swiss canton meeting to decide the rules and penalties for depositing dog poo. And it can be a plebiscite confirming the Nazi party in power in 1930s Germany. Or it can be anything in between, as long as there is some element of “the people choosing”. But the word was invented in Ancient Greece by the philosopher Plato, and Plato didn’t approve of democracy because it comprises in its roots two concepts that, for as long as they coexist, will always militate against each other. They are oil and water.

The first precept of democracy is freedom, but it is not unrestrained freedom, it is freedom under the law. The law sets out what you cannot do and, for the rest, you can do what you want. The second precept of democracy, and it is this on which the first, freedom, is dependent, is equality. Everyone who exercises freedom under a democratic system must also be equal under it. The reason for that is that those who are less equal will be put down upon by those who are more equal and this occurs in the least insidious of ways.

Take the simple expedient of according a limited liability company the right to apply for bankruptcy. The normal rule under an egalitarian system is that all those who incur debt must work to pay their dues back to their lender. Yet a limited company can excuse itself that duty: its liability is limited. That upsets the balance of equality.

Or the immunity that can be enjoyed by high office holders: it is designed to prevent political backlashes when they exit office, but in fact can induce them to bend rules and favour certain parties above others whilst they are in office, because they are immune from prosecution for doing so.

And, overall and generally, vast infrastructure projects may be given preference over small, private interests, whether because of considerations of the greater good, or macroeconomic importance or, just possibly, kick-backs to decision-makers. Yet equality demands that the rights of infrastructure be given equal, not superior, consideration to the interests of small right-holders.

The imbalances that arise under a democratic system are a product of the very freedoms that that system enshrines. Freedom works to wreak inequality. Equality is the foundational precept of democracy. Therefore, freedom and democracy are incompatible.

The alternative would be autocracy, but autocracy is defined as being undesirable, because it is vastly dependent on the nature of the autocrat. There is one autocracy in this world that would appear to live peaceably and in harmony. But it is a white male-dominated autocracy, shrouded for the most part in secrecy and it enjoys one of the lowest birth rates in the whole world. But, being as it is, on the whole, benevolent in its outlook, it is a success story of autocracy: the Vatican State.