What's wrong with Democracy?

Government is a monopoly of legitimized violence. Theoretically, democracy opens potential membership in the government to all people, and all people share the same prospects to decide how its violence will be used, for whose benefit and at whose expense. But *actual* political power is a scarce good; it cannot be possessed equally and by everyone at the same time and in the same respect.

For this reason, tangible membership in government is restricted to “elected” officials (a very small percentage) and agents appointed/hired by these officials, who constitute the bulk of the state apparatus. And then there are the “outsiders” that move in and out of this thin membrane; donors, developers, special interest groups, task force groups, volunteers, low level government employees, unions, citizen action groups etc. In almost all cases, what these “outsiders” have in common is their membership to a particular group, a prerequisite for establishing political connections. Outside this, of course, are the vast majority of people, who have no direct influence over government, who are busy earning a living and have no inclinations or resources to seek active membership in one of these groups.

So I think the real question is not how the government should actually go about giving everyone a fair share and equal voice in government, because it was no designed for that purpose. If you don’t like the way your dog wags its tail, you get another dog. The real question, I think, is how government effectively privatizes the proceeds of violence while giving everyone else just enough of a stake in that violence to retain their passive resignation.