The announcement of an election is always a momentous occasion in a democracy. Please excuse us for taking this opportunity to add to the cacophony of commentary that the announcement has sparked to talk a little about democracy in Australia.
We are going to start with the premise that inequality is bad for a democracy. Because of the human propensity to compare ourselves with others, we notice when they are doing better than us, and it feels bad. When others are doing much, much better than us it feels worse. When others' good (large?) fortune compared to our own seems unfair — which might better be described as inequity — this feels intolerable. When many people feel that way towards a group of their fellow citizens, that's bad for democracy.
Our second premise is that success, especially economic success, in a contemporary western society is not entirely dependent on hard work. It also relies on making good choices, luck, other resources, and the way society organises its economic systems.
Ideally, a society will make it easy for people to make good choices, will be there when they have a run of bad luck, and will organise its economic systems in a way that doesn't disproportionally benefit or harm only some people.
Systemic inequality
Economic inequality is growing almost everywhere in the world, and the way we organise our economic systems is a large contributor to that. This is an important reason for people's decreasing satisfaction with democracy.
An important goal then, for democratic government and political parties that are vying to form government, is to reduce inequality. This likely means asking people who are doing very well to give up the prospect of their wealth growing as fast as it possibly can. Instead, our economic system would need to be organised so that growth benefits those who are not as well off more than it does when you simply try to squeeze out as much growth as possible. This would be a system where economic growth doesn't disproportionately go to a small group of people who don't actually need it as much as everyone else; and a system where maximum growth isn't the main goal.
There's a similarity here to the challenge with bail laws. There, you don't want to put dangerous people on the street while you wait for them to go to trial. But you also don't want the default position to be that you put anyone charged with a crime in prison before trial — effectively abandoning the presumption of innocence — without very good reason.
In economic equality terms, you don't want to hobble the economy by insisting that everyone have equal wealth regardless of their skills, aptitudes, energy and effort. But at the same time you don't want the economy treating some people as more deserving of the benefits of economic growth in a way that is again completely disproportionate to their skills, aptitudes, energy and effort. Someone who works no harder or smarter than others should not benefit wildly more than them simply because they have more, pre-existing economic resources, or are in some other way more fortunate.
In Australia, a classic example is the way the tax system now treats housing primarily as a vehicle for financial investment, rather than a resource that provides the stable foundation needed for people to go in to the world and succeed, personally, professionally, and socially — including economically. It was not always like this. A late 20th century change in the economic system allows people who have the resources to invest in housing beyond their own needs to benefit far more from property than people who only have the resources to buy a home for themselves.
To realign the economic system in this area we would need to ask investors to rely less on government tax policy to make money from their investments. And beyond the economics, we probably also need to ask landlords to give up some of their power over how people are allowed to live in the properties the landlords own, so that renters can have a home, even as we accept that some tenants sometimes damage property.
The challenge
Sometimes you have to do what's best even though it's going to hurt. This applies to governments too. Governments have to be the adults in the room and sometimes that requires putting policy substance before politics.
Governing is about making decisions and some of those decisions are going to be difficult. In a democracy, that's what comes with the power that's put in your hands by voters.
In some ways, making difficult decisions is easier for authoritarian governments — that's surely a large part of their appeal, especially if you're on the right side of their decisions.
But if you can get your democracy to work, you are going to get better results, especially for complicated problems. Especially for complicated social problems. And if the science is right, things are only getting more complicated.
Getting democracy to work will need those who would govern to spend a lot of effort on meaningful and effective engagement with those that they would govern, which in a democracy should be everyone. That's how you bring people along — you engage with their experiences, draw on their wisdom and work, honour their good will.
Admittedly, this is never easy. Sadly, it seems to be something that the political parties that we have to choose our government from at this election are almost entirely unable to do.
Still, there lies an opportunity. Solutions are available. This is a good reason for Common Endeavour.
