A la carte democracy advocacy

I got this from Ryan Faulk

One thing I find when arguing with pro-democracy ideologues is how they’re allowed to be a la carte, while I’m forced to defend every thing that comes about in a market.

Bailouts? Wars? Retarded “regulations”? The FCC “regulating” the internet? Taxation and inflation taking up 43% of GDP? Kids learning in a month online what they took a year to learn in the obsolete state schools?

See, don’t bother blaming those things on democracy. We just didn’t vote for the right things or have the right guys in office! It’s not democracy that has failed, oh perish the thought. Something as big and old and that we have known since childhood as being the manifestation of goodness as democracy can’t be to blame.

So I advocate a total market, and then some people will point out some mean things that happened. Now almost always it’s some myth, involved state intervention (like with the state giving the robber barons land grants - essentially monopolies - and then the resulting monopolies being blamed on the market), or ignores context - like working conditions in early industrialization not being humane by modern standards.

But all that notwithstanding, NEVER am I allowed to say, “Oh, well those were just the wrong businessmen. See, I’m for having nice angelic businessmen. The key is to get the right capitalists at the head of large firms.” No, I have to either defend the market as it stands or explain why X problem is not a result of a market.

Democracy pushers are allowed to make arguments from fantasy, and I’m supposed to argue not against the reality of democracy but against this hypothetical where whoever I’m debating against got their way in elections.

The problem is that most people don’t even know that they’re doing this. They don’t recognize that they’re advocating democracy anymore than a fish realizes it’s in water. And so each individual has their little a la carte proposal, and when I come in advocating a total market, they treat my idea like it’s just another democratic hypothetical, not as a paradigm alternative to democracy itself.