Against Equality

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter considers and reviews arguments skeptical of the claim that democracy instantiates equality, or skeptical that equality is good. Tocqueville argues that democratic egalitarianism leads to a pernicious culture of conformity, and that in democracies, citizens oppress each other by forcing politics into everything. Lenin argues that social change requires an intellectual vanguard and that the masses will not work toward their interests on their own. Contemporary public choice economics shows that representative democracy enables significant rent seeking and minority interest groups to exploit the majority. The demographic objection to democracy holds that democracies allow the majority to exploit or mistreat minorities even though these minority citizens have equal individual power. Finally, the chapter considers whether democratic nation-states contribute to worldwide inequality by preventing immigration and trapping the world’s worst-off people in badly governed countries. Perhaps democracies create equality inside their borders but then cause inequality overall.