Democracy deficits exacerbated by social media megaphones

This post from Ed Driscoll sparks a thought. From TWEETS FROM THE UNDERGROUND by Ed Driscoll.

TWEETS FROM THE UNDERGROUND: To get a sense of how social media shapes — and sometimes upends society, note the progression of this story involving superstar actor Will Smith. Yesterday, at Ricochet, Bethany Mandel noted that “The Woke Always Eat Their Own,” linking to an item that was promoted to the top of Twitter by their management concerning SJWs grousing about Smith being cast to play Serena and Venus Williams’ father in an upcoming biopic, because “some people [were] questioning the decision for Smith to play a darker-skinned man.” As Mandel adds:

When you click on the story, the objections appear to just be from a handful accounts, and none of them notable. That hasn’t stopped Twitter from elevating their complaints to the mainstream, granting them undeserved legitimacy.

The purpose is for clicks, for engagement, for conversation on Twitter about the topic. It’s their business model, and you can’t fault them for trying to initiate a conversation. The problem is, Twitter (and its ultra-liberal Silicon Valley engineers) are willing to let the enemy of the good be the enemy of the perfect; stoking race wars within the black community in order to do it.

There's more at the post describing how the story breaks from the margin to the mainstream in no time flat.

In both my business life and in roles as a community volunteer, I have made the observation and presented on an engagement paradox described in the image below.

Click to enlarge.

On any given subject or issue that needs to be decided and acted upon by a group or community, there is a theoretical ideal represented on the left. Everyone would engage, discuss, argue, advance evidence, and reach engagement. Theoretically.

Of course in reality, that is rarely the case.

Usually, because at any moment in time people have an immense array of shifting goals and priorities, varying assessments of probabilities; and widely varying assumptions, the particular topic is only going to be of interest and attract engagement from some portion of the community. That is what is represented on the right.

The categories are more important than the percentages but the percentages are somewhat indicative.

On a topic ranging from marginal (affects few people or many people in minor ways) to consequential (affects everyone in a significant way), at the beginning, only a small number of people are truly engaged, perhaps 10%. And of those 10%, some portion, not uncommonly, half are strongly supportive and half are strongly opposed.

Perhaps another 20% are interested or willing to be interested.

And perhaps for 70%, they are not interested or are unaware or think this will go nowhere anyway. They don't need to waste their time on it.

The views and interests of any one of these categories is usually unrepresentative of any of the other categories.

For example, in a neighborhood issue, the young professionals with no children engage in different things than the newly retired, than the long retired, than the families with children. They bring different concerns, issues, energy and focus. A recently retired may take up the cause of encouraging people to switch from gas mowers to electric mowers. The older retirees on tight retirement income oppose this because of the cost. The young singles with no children are only involved to the extent that they identify as environmentalists. Families with children are too busy and time constrained to waste time on a marginal issue.

Then there are contextual issues. In my city, the city government is always encouraging neighbors to have a Master Plan (for Traffic, for Parks, for Crime, for Zoning, etc.). It takes months and money to produce these. And then the City either does not use them or actively ignores them when they conflict with what the City wants.

Residents become jaded because they see no return on their invested time.

Simultaneously, many of the most consequential decisions (where to put in a new mass transit line, subsidies for redevelopment) are made quickly, in back rooms, with no civic engagement.

Consequently, even if it is an important issue, in many cases people don't engage because they consider it will be a waste of time.

The important thing is that things can occur not because the 70% want it to occur but because some combination of circumstances has allowed a 5% fringe to seize the momentum regardless of whether the proposed idea will make a difference or whether the majority of the populace wants it.

The only solution to this is for their to be a civic culture which adheres to the concept that anything important MUST have the consent of the majority. And silence is not consent.

Otherwise the field is ceded to the "victory at all costs" fringe.

In the past thirty years we have, nationally, shifted from consent of the governed to the statist victory at all costs model. Perhaps it is due to a resurgence of socialism, postmodernism, social justice theory jacobins, statists. Those are relevant trends.

However, I suspect that some of this is happening because Congress, the peoples voice, has through negligence and without due consideration, chosen to let it happen.

Delegation to unaccountable administrative agencies which, while in the Executive branch, often function independently.

Deference to the Executive branch.

Over-reliance on courts to resolve the issues Congress shies away from.

Addiction to deficit spending in order to avoid hard trade-off decisions.

All of this has happened. I think most people agree. But the extent of the consequence is where they might argue.

I could make the argument that addiction to deficit spending has freed us to focus on non-consequential issues. For two years, we have had roiling national discussions about transgenderism. Not because there is any important principle at stake, not because there is much we can reliably do about it, and not because it affects many people in any material way.

So why is it so much in the headlines? Well, money can be spent virtue signaling concern and care. If we had to agree that sex reassignment surgeries were beneficial and that therefore we had to cut X millions from one health program to make those funds available, it would be a non-issue. We wouldn't do it. If we had to raise taxes to cover the cost, we wouldn't do it. But put the cost onto future taxpayers, nobody loses, everybody wins.

And I am using sex change operations as an example. Could be adding a dome to the high school football field, or converting old rail lines to a bike path or doubling the police force in order to address quality of life crimes, or upgrading town hall to make it appear nicer. As long as the cost can be pushed into the future and hard decisions not made today, that is what politicians will do. And there goes our economic well-being (see Illinois for an extreme example).

We have a yawning democracy deficit - not in terms of the act of voting. Rather, the democracy deficit occurs because the people we vote for no longer can or will function as agents of their constituents. They defer to the executive branch, they defer to agencies, they make consequential decisions without consideration because the costs will be borne by the future, they avoid hard public policy choices hoping the courts will decide for them.

In such an environment, the fringe has more opportunity to represent themselves as the mainstream as Driscoll identifies. Noise and attention masks the numbers. By appearing to represent large numbers, they can work the courts, work the agencies, lobby the executive, obtain taxpayer funding all without constraint and all without the consent of the governed. Congress has jury-rigged a system of work-arounds so that they are neither responsible or accountable and there are few constraints to prevent system manipulation.

The 70% are being exploited and gamed and they are tired of the Mandarin Class failing. Hence the rising tide of populism. The fix is conceptually easy; return to civic engagement, respect, and constitutional order. It is conceptually easy but it requires a courage and gumption not present in the Mandarin or Political class.