Diversity of Government

I am not sure if I have written on this topic before, but if not, I have been negligent, as this is critical to democracy.  I was reminded to write about this by this article about vaccine refugees.  I have written about vaccination before, so I am not going to go into much depth on the subject here.  That article merely provides a good example of why diversity of government is so important.


To summarize the article, a handful of states have made it illegal for public schools to accept unvaccinated children without a medical exemption.  Many states still allow personal and/or religious exemptions, allowing parents to choose not to vaccinate for any reason, without excluding their children from public school.  A handful of parents in states that only honor medical exemptions have chosen to move to states with a higher degree of "medical freedom".  Alternatives are homeschooling or paying for a private school that does not require vaccinations.  In the context of this post, my personal position on all of this is irrelevant, so I am not going to share it here.  (Again, I have written about vaccination in the past.  If you want my opinion, it is available in other articles I have written.)


One of the biggest problems with democracy is that it can force up to 49.9% of the people to live under laws they do not agree with.  By default, democracy is the best form of government for ensuring that the largest number of people are content with the laws they live under, but democracy can only guarantee satisfaction with the law for half a person more than 50% of the population (for an odd numbered population; one person more for an even numbered population).  That means under a democratic government, almost half of the population can be living under laws they find unacceptable.  It gets worse though.  When you have hundreds or thousands of laws, it is trivial to get to a point where the majority of the population is opposed to almost half of the laws.  Consider, with two laws, 51% might approve of each, but the 49% that disapproves of one might all approve of the other.  That gives only a 2% overlap of people who approve of both, with 98% dissatisfied.  And that overlap can theoretically get as low as a single person, depending on the overarching form of government.  (In a democratic republic or a democratic constitutional monarchy, one person is less likely to make a difference than in a purer form of democracy, but that does not make the situation better.)  When you have three laws, you can end up in a position where 51% approves of each law, but 49% disapproves of two laws and the other 51% disapprove of one law.  That averages out to each individual disapproving of 1.49 laws, or 100% of the population disapproving of 49.7% of laws on average.  It is easy to end up in a situation where the majority is not opposed to any individual law, but the majority of individuals are opposed to almost half of the laws and are generally dissatisfied with the whole situation.  This can make a democratic nation an undesirable place to live for the vast majority of the population.  And that's in a pure democracy, where voters are not aggregated under elected representatives where 51% of the popular vote has the same value as 100% of the popular vote (which is the basis of gerrymandering to minimize the voting power of a particular group).  In representative systems like republics and constitutional monarchies, it is possible for laws to get passed that less than 50% of the people find acceptable (even when representatives do their jobs right).

When people complain about laws too much, the knee jerk reaction tends be words along the lines of, "You can always move somewhere else."  This is viewed as petty and rude, but not only is it often correct, it can sometimes be the most ethically responsible solution.  This is where diversity of government comes in.  While moving somewhere else is sometimes the right solution, it isn't always, nor is it always a solution at all.  Perhaps a family would like to live in a city where liquor laws are fairly strict, because they have a family history of alcoholism and would like to limit their children's exposure to alcohol.  Maybe another person teaches electric guitar as a side gig and wants to live in a city without noise ordinances that would prevent evening appointments.  What if national law governs liquor and forbids local regulation of liquor?  That family now has no city in the country that will be safe for their children.  What if there is a national noise ordinance that applies to all residences within some proximity of other residences?  Now the guitar teacher cannot teach guitar in addition to working a day job.  What if there are 100,000 people living in the country who want a city with stricter liquor laws than national law provides?  Sorry, they are out of luck.  They cannot even found their own city, where they can live under the laws they want.  What if there are 100,000 people who, for various reasons, want to live somewhere without noise ordinances?  Again, that is not an option.  These are not the only examples.  What about gambling?  How about recreational drug use?  Perhaps more controversial things, like abortion.  Maybe how much taxation goes into public education, or maybe even whether or not public education is mandatory in the first place.  Of course, mandatory vaccination is certainly near the top of the list.  And this is not just a problem with national laws.  What if a group of activists convinced every city government in the country that unregulated access to alcohol is a fundamental right, or maybe they convince every city government that unwanted noise infringes on their rights, and now there is not a single city anywhere that can accommodate these people.  Sorry, out of luck, because there is not somewhere else you can move to anymore.

This does not happen a lot in the U.S., because we have fairly high diversity of government.  This diversity is created by sharing of sovereignty between Federal and state governments.  The Constitution limits the powers of the Federal government to things that affect the nation as a whole and to regulation of interaction between states.  And while the Federal government has far overstepped these bounds, we still have a system where diversity of government is fairly high.  If you do not like the laws in your state, odds are good there is another state that would be more acceptable to you.  If you prescribe to the progressive theory that all children should be forced to attend public school, for the social benefit of other children, there are states where homeschooling and most private schooling is illegal.  If you want to homeschool, there are states that protect the right to homeschool.  As the article mentioned above demonstrates, if you want to live somewhere you know all of the kids in school will be vaccinated, there are states where you can get that, and if you do not want to be forced to vaccinate your kids as a condition of attending public school, there are states that give you that option.  The advantage of diversity in government is that like minded people can congregate under laws that are acceptable to them.  It is not perfect, and there will probably never be a place where even one person finds 100% of the laws acceptable, but a fair amount of diversity in government can at least provide the option for the vast majority of people to live under a set of laws where the majority of those laws are acceptable to them.

The problem with this system is that people tend to get stubbornly attached to their current location.  When that happens, and they don't like the laws they are living under, instead of finding a place to go that has more suitable laws, they tend to try to oppress those around them, believing that their ideal laws somehow trump the will of the majority.  Sometimes they even convince themselves that everyone everywhere should be forced to live according to their personal beliefs and opinions.  And this tends to lead to political polarization, as people with minority opinions talk louder to try to fool lawmakers into believing they have a majority and the majority, being convinced they are a minority, start doing the same thing.  And it gets even worse when people start projecting their own opinions on other people they share features with.  For example, twice as many women (50%) believe abortions should only be legal under special circumstances (woman's life in danger, rape, incest) than believe they should be entirely legal (24%) or entirely illegal (24%), and yet many feminists are convinced that the broad legalization of abortion is a good thing for the majority of women.  A full 74% of women disagree agree with that.  Not only is this projection completely wrong, democracy is not even about what is good for people.  It is about what people want, because no individual or small group has any right to decide what is best for everyone else.  (Ironically, fewer men (18%) believe abortion should be entirely illegal than women.)  Allowing governments to be diverse, by only attempting to change laws at the lowest level, is a critical factor in maintaining government diversity.  You might want to live under a particular set of laws, but that does not mean others do, even if they are the same gender, race, sexual orientation, or whatever as you are.  To maintain democratic rule in a way that is acceptable to everyone, each person must respect the desires of others, even of they do not seem to make sense.  This means respectfully staying out of local politics that do not affect your region.  Roe v. Wade is toxic to democracy, because it undermines the democratic power of men and women across our entire nation.  Because of that legislation by judicial fiat, the democratic right to live under the laws a group a people collectively prefer has been substantially reduced.  74% of women in America have lost the right to have any say on abortion law, because of Roe v. Wade.  Roe v. Wade significantly reduced diversity of government in one sphere, and that has caused a lot of people harm.

Diversity of government requires two things.  The first is respect for the opinions and desires of others, even when you do not agree with them.  The second is a willingness to live where the laws are acceptable to you, if you have the reasonable ability to live there.  Attempting to go "over the heads" of local government to force a political position undermines diversity of government, and that undermines democracy.  And attempting to force local government to agree with your view, where you could move somewhere else, with more like minded people, also undermines democracy and diversity.  This is especially true when you are attempting to get a local government to conform to what everyone else is doing, because it can cause a particular type of diversity to go extinct, eliminating the choice of anyone else to live under the laws they want.

Another good example of this is the city I live in, which actually has fairly strict liquor laws.  A student at the local university once wrote a persuasive essay on why the city should change its liquor laws to fall in line with cities across the U.S..  The problem with this position is that this student could live in any of those other cities, but people who live in this city do not have anywhere else to go to live under strict liquor laws, because there are extremely few cities in the U.S. with strict liquor laws.  Convincing this city to change its laws would reduce diversity in government, and in fact, reviewing this student's paper is where I first realized the importance of diversity of government.  I prefer living in a city with strict liquor laws, but I am not campaigning to convince other cities to adopt the same laws, and I am not trying to convince the Federal government to override them in favor of my position.  I respect the right of the people living in those cities to choose the laws they are going to live under.  I disagree with California's law eliminating all but medical exemptions for vaccines, but again, I respect the right of the people of California to live under that law, if they so choose.  I am not going to try to force my political position on you any more than I would try to force my religion on you, but I expect and deserve the same respect.

It is not showing me your respect, when you try to force laws on my region against the will of the people that live there.  If you want to show me respect, and if you want what is best for me, let me deal with it.  Let me vote for the laws I want in my region, instead of trying to force on me the laws you think I want or that would be best for me, by appealing to a higher government.  And this applies to everyone.  If you want to show respect for women, instead of trying to make abortion 100% legal and easily accessible in the U.S. mind your own business, and let the people of each state make their own choice about this.  If some of them do not like it, they can move to where the majority agrees with tham, and if some of the women there do not agree with the laws there, let them move where more people agree with them.  That is what respect is about.  It is not about imposing your position and your beliefs on everyone else or projecting your desires on everyone else.  For our country to get along well, and for democracy to even work at this scale, diversity of government is critical, and attempting to undermine it will only serve to increase toxic political polarization and partisanship.