There’s considerable truth in this, I think, but consolidation of the actual ownership isn’t strictly necessary to allow an industry to exert concentrated (and disproportionate) influence on the political process, especially as regards a particular issue salient to the industry. That’s what PACs and trade associations are for.

For example, every gun owner is a separate person capable of separate opinions and there are (AFAIK) quite a few different gun manufacturers and dealers, but that doesn’t mean the NRA’s political power is fragmented and ineffective.

The second part of this should be emphasized. The book is verbose. Though the authors must shoulder most of the blame for this, some should be placed on the publishers, Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation, which failed to provide a good copyediting job.

I think one of the underlying rationalizations for egalitarianism as an element of democracy was a belief that democracy requires the maintenance of conflicts and the resulting competition of rival interests. The idea that employer and employee had comparable and symmetric rights is basic to a democratic governance of employer-employee relations, and was supported by the idea that unions or professional associations of employees were legitimate and powerful participants in the democratic process.

I think that democracy has often rested on a diversity of business interests, as well, and this was promoted by populist sentiments, back in the day, when populism was the ideology of many small farmers, merchants and artisans. “Monopoly capitalism” was a phrase that inspired well-justified fear.

It isn’t that long ago, when we had insurance companies, stock brokers, commercial banks, investment banks, savings & loans, and credit unions, in their hundreds and thousands, each an organized group of firms with diverse forms of ownership and corporate organization, and interests in conflict with the others. Now, we have five big banks. Just feel the efficiency!

It isn’t that long ago, that we had a diverse media, of broadcasters, newspapers, book publishers, magazine publishers, with various, often local ownership structures and interests, and rules, for example, that prevented television networks from owning television production companies, or municipal newspapers from owning local television broadcasters. Now, not so much.

The increasing political disability of democracy is the outcome of political choice to permit economic concentration of interests and capture of economic rents. The critique of politics by public choice economics wasn’t a diagnosis, it was a blueprint.

This sounds a bit like Sagan’s argument in _The Demon-Haunted World_ about the resemblance between democracy and science. But science, famously, is not a democracy. The facts are in charge, and thou shalt not defy them. (Dispute, yes. But only when armed with conflicting facts.)

Partly this is possible because of the norms of scientific culture, but partly, I think, it’s because scientists usually have less personal stake in the outcome of their research. That sounds odd, as if scientists don’t care what they’re doing, but compared to, say, an oil company’s stake in national energy policy, I think it’s true. Scientists maintain their professional standing by being seen to be doing science competently, but they would (usually) rather reach any honest answer, even an unfavorable one, than be caught lying. The specific answer they find isn’t going to put them out of business and it usually isn’t going to make them rich either.

Demonstrably, this is not true of the oil companies’ participation in democratic determination of energy policy. The types of issues entrusted to democracy have such high-stakes impact on people’s (and organizations’) personal interests that a large number of people would rather reach the result favorable to themselves than participate in a rigorous search for truth. (Some of them may believe their own wishful thinking, rather than consciously lying. I’m not sure how much of a defense this is.) The concept that someone’s incentives influence their conclusion is so unremarkable in democracy it’s completely taken for granted and even accepted.

So how can democratic accountability be relied on to make an institution work better when some substantial fraction of the people have a strong interest in making it stop working at all? (Wall Street regulation comes to mind, but also the EPA, and even education.)

Traditionally, I think, this circle is supposed to be squared by the belief that what a majority believes to be good for themselves *will* be good for the country, with some special protections for minorities. But I think this breaks down in the face of the effectiveness of professional liars. What actually is good for the majority may be good for the country, but a minority that can fool the majority can advance its interests at the expense of everyone else’s.

A trivial example: Cosma and I have similar lack of taste in genre fiction, so I find the book recommendations on his blog to be very helpful. Before reading a recommendation I may not know that I want to read the book; afterwards I do know. This is a change of goals, accomplished by education, but without a change of underlying preferences.

There are less trivial examples in medical decision-making. In deciding whether cancer chemotherapy is worthwhile, both preferences for states of health and probabilities need to be taken into account, and it’s fundamental to medical ethics that the patient’s preferences are the ones that matter. But in any situation where the decision is difficult, it matters not just that chemotherapy sucks, but exactly how badly it sucks, and the typical patient doesn’t really know in advance. That’s the point behind quality-of-life research that tries to assess and describe how much treatment sucks for other patients. This research may or may not be effective, but I don’t think anyone would suggest that it intrinsically reduces patient autonomy.

This argument doesn’t say that you get to force education on people who don’t want it, but it does say that if you help people acquire the tools and skills Cosma talks about, they might well change their goals, and these changes could well improve, rather than sacrifice, the accurate representation of their interests and values.

Now, as for what happens to dissent in the revolutionary or utopian state …

Surely they’ll wake us when we get there…if we get there…. ;-)

Because it’s a point my friends at Equality by lot make a lot (no pun intended) that to know what you want, you don’t necessarily have to have a 100% nourished literate brain free of lead poisoning. Ideally, you shouldn’t even have to be a good debater. Any concessions we make to such things, for the sake of efficiency or practicality or whatever, we’re sacrificing accurate representation of interests and values.