How Plato's view on democracy can help inform us on its worth

What is Plato’s view of democracy and democratic culture? How might he help us reflect on the worth and practice of democracy?

Democracy, particularly in America is highly regarded for its separation of powers as it means of controlling tyranny. It widely believed that democracy is the good standard in governance due primarily to these checks and balances. It is through these checks and balances that tyranny can be prevented while the will of the people can be properly voiced. In this instance the United States has risen to power based on these principles of proper representation and ability to change laws to conform with changing society standards and norms. For these reasons, democracy as practiced by the Untied States is seen as the ideal form by which to govern a nation while also protecting the rights of its citizenry. Recently, these ideals have been challenged through the rise of China and the communist party. Here, many of the principles espoused by democracy are often neglected entirely for a more centralized and authoritarian government. Here state-controlled entities have much more power and are often not elected by the people at all. Interesting, this form of government has actually been very forceful in attempted to stop the rise of democracy by many fear tactics such as jail and in extreme cases debt. Those who critical the communist party are often put in jail or forced to endure some form of financial harm. We saw that this authority has no regard for wealth, prestige of accomplishments as the government even punished Jack Ma, the richest man in China for his anti-government comments. This form of government much like the democracy mentioned above has also resulting a meteoric rise of China as a global superpower. As the country’s growth continues it will revival and even surpass that of the United States.

Both of the above examples illustrate how democracy may not be the “gold standard” that many within the world assume it is. In fact, we have seen with China, that other form of government can be better as it relates to increasing the wealth and financial well-being of their constituents. As it relates to Plato, he too had a healthy disregard for democracy believe it to be unstable. He also believed that democracy is subject to the “tyranny of the majority” that appeals to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people in society.

Under Plato’s view, we have seen a tyranny of the majority over the last two presidential election cycles. One such as element has related to wealth inequality and many of the desires and prejudices related to ordinary citizens. Here, the United States has seen a very rapid and robust growth of citizens challenging the status quo as it relates to wealth within the country. Simply put, many in the nation believe that too much wealth is concentrated in the hands of two few individuals. In many instances, the statistics point to a very bleak picture of wealth that even a casual observe would find very skewed. Most recently, the citizenry has pointed to the fact that through the pandemic, billionaire wealth has actually increased by $1 trillion dollars in 39% in just one year. This occurred under a backdrop of many millions of people losing their jobs, being furloughed or in extreme cases dying throughout the pandemic. As believed by Plato, the tyranny of the majority is looking to reign in the wealth of billionaires to redistribute it in a more equal manner. The majority often favors taxes on the rich, taxes on corporations, and taxes on those with large amounts of wealth. The prevailing wisdom is that if wealth is more evenly distributed that ordinary American lives will be improved. What happens in reality is that typically flow back to those who own the business of the United States through either stock ownership or private ownership. What many in the majority do not realize is that the largest wealth increases were attributed to tech owners such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. Their increases were a result of increase revenue due to consumers using the products and services of their businesses more during the pandemic. By redistributed wealth, many consumers will simply purchase more products owned by the very billionaires they are attempted to tax. In addition, increase taxes are often passed down to consumers in the form of higher product prices. As a result, to reign in corporate greed are ironically, paid for by the very society that is attempting to mitigate income inequality through higher prices. Also, increasing taxes often makes other firms such as manufacturing and steel production uncompetitive with the rest of the world those forcing more layoffs, again harming the very people looking to make a well-intentioned change. Here, as Plato alluded to, the prejudices of the majority could potentially be self-destructive as it relates to the overall wellbeing of society. According to Plato, democracy suffers from the failures of the above systems in that it prioritizes wealth and property accumulation as the highest good.

In addition to the above example, Plato’s critique of democracy is that democracy does not place a premium on wisdom and knowledge seeking as an inherent good, much like timocracy and oligarchy. Interesting, this is exacerbated in a much more social media and short-term oriented society. In many instances, society often does not look to gain knowledge and understanding. Instead, particularly now, people rely on short term thinking that is heavily based on bias. We have seen this in many instances in recent years. As predicted by Plato, for the first time since the nations founding, the capital was seized by those who did not priority wisdom and understanding in the manner described by Plato. Here, nearly 2000 people marched and stormed that capital killing one man and injuring many more. These individuals were ironically, not protesting peacefully, but attempted to use force to take over the country and “save democracy.” The catalyst of this behavior was a strong belief that the election was rigged or stolen form President Donald Trump. Many of these individuals did not exercise Plato’s premium on wisdom and knowledge. If they did, many of them would have recognized the overwhelming evidence supporting a clean and clear election. Even if the disagreed with the findings and did believe the false narrative regarding election fraud, those with knowledge and wisdom would have not believed that storming the capital of the United States of America would change the votes of many millions of people. Still, even if an individual did believe the first two elements, surely, they believe that using violence would not illicit the response they were looking for. However, in each instance Plato’s concept of wisdom and knowledge resulting in a “tyranny of the majority” using prejudices and bias to behave in a manner unbecoming of them.

Using Plato’s concept, we have seen this in various other formats such as riots that destroyed business, communities, and homes due to killing of unarmed African Americans at the hands of the police. We have seen calls to defund the entire police force due to actions of a handful of terrible police officers. We have seen the rise of anti-Asian crimes and rhetoric within the United States due to virus that is impacted their communities in just the same manner as others. In each of the above cases, tyranny of the majority, inflamed by short term thinking and lack of information have caused unnecessary harm. Although not as extreme as the march on the capital, each is a result of many of the foundational principles and concepts of democracy that Plato believes will lead to its downfall.

As noted in many of the examples above many of the examples occur due to the “freedoms” allowed by democracy. Even worse, democracy embraces total freedom (which Plato calls “anarchy”) and unnecessary “appetites,” which crowd out the ruler’s responsibilities of virtuous governance, control the democratic soul. Here, Plato believes that democracy often appeal to many of the lesser qualities of man due to the fallibility of human nature. He often sites wealth as a primary catalyst for democracy being a poor form of government. Plato, describes mans, “secret lust for gold and silver ” as a principle that cannot prevent the lust for wealth from overpowering the system to turn towards a full-on oligarchy. As noted above the 2016 election of Donald Trump assisted the nations “descent into tyranny”. In fact, as Plato indicated Trump won almost exclusively appealing to prejudices of voters (Hispanics bring drugs into nation, China is bad), wealth (Make America Great Again), and fear (All blue-collar jobs will disappear, again due to China). Once elected however, a series of deregulations, tax cuts, and other policies were aimed exclusively at the wealthy or in Plato’s terms, the Oligopoly.