The book “Power and Progress : Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity” by the winners of the Nobel prize for economics in 2024 Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson is a fantastic book. Reading it is highly recommended. As they argue progress is not “automatic” but dependent on the choices “we” make. Here is of course a tricky thing, who are “we” that have the power to make the choices that will influence how the society we live in is going to develop?
I happened to write my masters thesis on the question of how “the people” has been defined in numerous definitions of democracy that exist. Then there are constitutions giving power to the people. The most cited, and always interesting is that of the United States of America as it is a powerhouse of the world. It begins as we all remember “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
“We the people” was a different concept in 1787 when the Constitution was created than today. As the discussion going on about the Equal Rights Amendment (28th Amendment) and its possible ratification shows. The amendment is quite short : “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
The question about the people is of course linked to who are governed, by whom and who can participate in electing the politicians that govern. Karl Popper held a view on democracy that was healthy. We should perhaps rephrase the problem he said. The new problem, as distinct from the old “Who should rule?”, can be formulated as follows: How is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?
With this definition there are two kind of governments. You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. Popper said he personally calls the type of government which can be removed without violence “democracy”, and the other “tyranny”.
Another question is then who “big” the government should be. I find Karl Poppers view on that topic wise as well. “Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.”
Georg Henrik Wrede 