Democracy and the Good Life: Part 2

The Democratic Marketplace

“To the somber warfare of creeds and sects there succeeded the squalid but far less irrational or uncontrollable strife of parties” Winston Churchill on the aftermath of the English Civil War

[Read Part 1 for a defense of the value of Democracy for the Good Life]

If free markets are the arena and engine of capitalism, democracy also involves a free (though sometimes carefully designed) marketplace in which votes determine who gets the power to govern.

It is tempting to consider the dollar as the fundamental currency of the economic market and the vote as the basic unit of the democratic marketplace. Put in these terms, the democratic marketplace is inherently more equitable. Some people have many more dollars than others — but everyone has exactly one vote. This misses the mark on both sides of the equation. Both dollars and votes are measures of power in the marketplace. However, votes and dollars work differently and represent different kinds of things. In the economic realm, dollars are a medium of exchange and a store of value. They can be used to measure success or economic power but their use in that context is secondary and ambiguous. The function of dollars is not to measure success.