Progress pill
Sophisms of unfreedom

The democratic fallacy: guardianship of guardians

Freedom as a Social Project

The democratic fallacy: guardianship of guardians

  • The paradox of the guardianship of guardians
  • Why economic choice is simpler than political choice
  • Tocqueville and democratic despotism
  • The necessity of limiting democracy

The paradox of the guardianship of guardians

The fallacy of the guardianship of guardians is one of the most remarkable contradictions of contemporary political systems. We live within structures that multiply regulations, hindrances, and public direction, substituting for individual acts that would naturally flow from free perception, free judgement, and personal will.
What exactly is the premise of this public tutelage? It is a precise and rarely stated assumption: that citizens are fundamentally incapable of governing themselves, and require preventive supervision to avoid potentially harmful acts. Rather than repress genuine infringements of the rights of others, the system prefers to anticipate and supervise, on the assumption that individuals left to their own devices will make choices that are inappropriate, uninformed, or contradictory to their own interests.
Bastiat exposed the absurdity of this position with characteristic wit. In Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (1850), he observes:
It is astonishing that men who would never dream of telling their neighbour what to eat for dinner feel no hesitation whatsoever in telling an entire nation what industries it should cultivate, what wages it should accept, what prices it should charge, and what contracts it should enter. The same modesty that restrains them in private life entirely deserts them when they enter the realm of legislation.
In other words, the interventionist mind applies to the collective a confidence in central direction that it would never apply to individual affairs, precisely where individual knowledge is richest and most reliable.
Indeed, this same system of unfreedom operates under a democratic form that postulates exactly the opposite of its own paternalist premise. The democratic mechanism asserts that all citizens, equally, are perfectly capable of making informed political choices between different options. They can compare programmes, evaluate political personalities, judge the foreseeable effects of proposed measures, and assess the merits of envisaged reforms. The contradiction is glaring: the same individuals deemed incapable of deciding for themselves in their daily lives are simultaneously deemed capable of deciding for the community as a whole.

Why economic choice is simpler than political choice

This contradiction is all the more striking given that choice on the daily economic market is infinitely simpler than political choice. But does the comparison favour the interventionist? Not at all.
In our consumption decisions, we compare satisfactions on a daily basis; the decision-making process is direct, and the results are immediately apparent. We observe the consequences of our choices, and we adjust our behaviour in the light of experience. The knowledge required remains within our reach, since we consume goods that we can evaluate directly. The feedback mechanism is continuous and personal.
The political market presents radically different characteristics. Decisions are spaced out over time, and their consequences are collective and therefore difficult to examine for any individual. A political measure may affect people who are entirely invisible to the voter, making it impossible to grasp the full implications of one's choice. Elections are moments of collective fever, when decisions bear on entire programmes that are complex and difficult to assess in their totality. On the economic market, if I am dissatisfied with a purchase, I can change my supplier immediately. On the political market, I must wait years and accept the consequences of choices I may never have wanted. If there is an inability to choose wisely, it is precisely in the political sphere that this inability should manifest itself most strongly.
Leroy-Beaulieu makes this point with precision in L'État moderne et ses fonctions (1890):
The legislator who pretends to know better than the consumer what the consumer needs is in the position of a doctor who has never examined his patient but prescribes medicine on the basis of the statistical average of all the patients in the country. The consumer knows his own needs, tastes, and circumstances with an intimacy that no central authority can ever approach. The market is not a mechanism of exploitation; it is a mechanism of knowledge.

Tocqueville and democratic despotism

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the Norman aristocrat turned political sociologist whose American voyage produced one of the masterpieces of modern political thought, famously identified, particularly in the second part of De la démocratie en Amérique (1840), what he called "democratic despotism": the tendency for freedoms to be curtailed by the democratic mass itself, when the state becomes the director of society.
Tocqueville's analysis is remarkable for its prescience. Writing in the 1830s, he already observed the seeds of a soft despotism in the most successful democracy of his time:
I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.
In other words, Tocqueville foresaw that democracy's greatest danger was not violent revolution but gentle suffocation: the slow replacement of individual initiative by collective administration, until citizens lost the very capacity for self-governance that democracy presupposes.
Indeed, Tocqueville was long misunderstood precisely because of his nuanced position. He recognised the inevitability of democratic rule while remaining clear-sighted about its dangers, in particular its spendthrift and despotic tendencies, which he was already observing in the United States of his time. Constant, for his part, had warned that the ancient conception of freedom as collective self-governance could become an instrument of tyranny when applied to modern mass societies:
The danger of ancient liberty was that men, attentive solely to the means of securing their political participation, might think too little of the rights and pleasures of private existence. The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we might too readily relinquish our right to share in political power.
His analysis retains a particular resonance today for all democratic societies facing the same challenges.

The necessity of limiting democracy

Faced with these dangers, liberal thought, notably that of Benjamin Constant, developed the idea that democracy must be bounded by constitutional rules and by enlightened public opinion. Democracy is a means, not an end. This means is certainly good and necessary, but it remains dangerous if left unchecked.
What, then, is the proper role of democratic government? It is to guarantee the rights of all, not to govern the lives of each. Bastiat stated this with admirable brevity in La Loi (1850):
The law is the collective organisation of the individual right to lawful defence. Each of us has a natural right from God to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. The law is simply the organisation of this pre-existing natural right. Law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some to give to others; the law can be an instrument of charity only as it compels some to be charitable. But in both cases, it is the law that oppresses some for the benefit of others.
In other words, the law that exceeds its proper function of protecting rights does not become a neutral force of collective improvement: it becomes an instrument of oppression wielded by some citizens against others.
Indeed, interventionist and socialist systems push the tutelage to the maximum, granting the guardians the most extensive power while drastically reducing individual freedom. Recognising the obvious contradiction between the supposed inability to choose for oneself and the asserted ability to choose collectively for others is the first step toward a truly liberal society, founded on respect for individual autonomy.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
According to the text, why are choices on the economic market more reliable guides to individual competence than choices in the political market?