alt Hacker News“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
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Pithy. But a made up quote by Tytler, he never said or wrote that.
Tyler expressed some skepticism of Democracies but nothing like this. The too on-the-nose nature of this often passed along bit of propaganda should also be the giveaway that it might be one of those rare things on the internet that someone may have been less than honest about the origins, and go look and see.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ― Voltaire 1767
Tytler's quote is trying to say too much. It might be acceptable as historical commentary, but it carries little weight to me; it seems overly confident about what the future might hold.*
Tytler died in 1813. We have learned much since then: much about human nature, institutions, experimentation, statistics, evidence, constructing good theories, and governance.** Sure, the quote is worth some reflection; it has grains of truth, but it should not be given undue weight.
* I am not saying "we can predict nothing"! Far from it. I am ok with predictions (even bold ones) to the extent they are deeply rooted in the best understandings and models we have available.
** I'm talking about what motivated people figure out through careful reasoning and evidence, not simply how the median person funnels information from their ears to their mouth. And I'm certainly not commending the effort and thought that the median person puts into stewarding their democracy (if they have one). While we (in the USA, for the time being?) have something like one.
The whole reason the US founding fathers are amazing is that they proved him concretely incorrect. US will celebrate 250 years of democracy this year.
You know, it's very funny. This is the most reproduced quote from Tytler, and yet you also have these chestnuts:
While man is being instigated by the love of power—a passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with the inferior animals—he will seek personal superiority in preference to every matter of a general concern.
The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch.The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last 20 years.
Not to mention how little voters had to do with the decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
> the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Except, of course, that this is historically wrong. Transitions from democracy to dictatorship are common, but I cannot think of one that happened because of "loose fiscal policy".