We Want to Be Millionaires
SILVER, DANIEL J.
We Want to Be Millionaires The relation of capitalism to democracy. BY DANIEL J. SILVER Capitalism and democracy are familiar bedfellows. During the heady days of communism's collapse back in...
...Mueller's minimalist conception of democracy is more controversial than his paean to capitalism...
...They are the systems most likely to last because they are undemanding on ordinary people...
...The image of neither capitalism nor democracy seems to fit the reality...
...So, too, Mueller reminds us of the retail revolution brought by John Wanamaker, who made a fortune with "one-price" merchandise—a price that didn't vary with haggling or changing demand—and the novel idea of letting customers return unsatisfactory goods...
...That's real democracy...
...in no other system are they free even to try...
...Mueller also urges us to value the not-inconsiderable "heroism" of entrepreneurs, half of whose start-up businesses fail...
...if we could adjust our theories to reality, we would all be better off...
...It's only a slavish devotion to a Norman Rockwell image of town-meeting harmony that leads us to disillusionment...
...After all, if democracy withers without citizens educated in virtue, as many of our Founders claimed, then it makes a difference how we live...
...Once democratic idealism has been given a cold bath, Mueller suggests, we are in a better position to appreciate democracy...
...For Mueller, apathy is not altogether bad, because without it the majority, aroused to its full militant vigilance, would crush minorities...
...Indeed, Mueller insists, ordinary people remain mystified by the workings of capitalism and democracy, and yet the systems function quite well all the same...
...And to get them to do so may require nothing more than a good job of marketing— helped out by the fact that democracy's best exemplars are successful states such as the United States and Britain...
...Many political theorists have argued that only special historical conditions of culture or economic development can serve as fertile soil for democracy...
...And it's true that the desire to make money is the essence of capitalism...
...Even government institutions, such as reliable legal rules, tend to follow the self-regulating development of the market...
...It's as though we've just discovered that a worthy charity is being run with mob money...
...Mueller calls this a system of "minority rule and majority acquiescence...
...business is said to corrupt representative government, capturing the people's democracy for capitalists' mercenary designs...
...At Mueller's—as at Ralph's—at least you won't get sold a bill of goods...
...He also believes that economists have finally figured out some basic truths—par-ticularly, the imperative value of free trade—that are increasingly being established as a consensus around the world...
...Still, the honesty in Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery about the limits of idealism offers its own kind of civics lesson...
...Mueller writes sharp, brisk, and witty prose that is unfailingly lucid...
...For nations to adopt democracy requires, in Mueller's view, only that the elites embrace it...
...He even finds a kind of virtue in stock speculators, who enlarge the overall economy in the quest for quick gains...
...For Mueller, democracy has little to do with virtue...
...And while, in his view, neither absolutely needs the other, on the whole they help each other along...
...Yet his irreverence about the role of morality might make us uneasy...
...As long as we are all free to pursue acquisitive goals without being subject to harassment and violence, we can be fairly said to live in a democracy...
...The political scientist John Mueller thinks our ambivalence about the relation of capitalism and democracy is based on illusions we have about both these institutions...
...Mueller's provocative book deserves a wide audience, if only because it shows that in the right hands political theory can be engaging...
...Tiny, highly disfavored groups can sometimes exert enough pressure to get what they want in a democracy...
...Capitalism's encouragement of the aspiration to ferret out profit does serve the common good, and Mueller is hopeful about the prospects of capitalism because it requires virtually no support from outside...
...The "special interest" of Daniel J. Silver is an attorney and writer in Washington, D.C...
...For many theorists, the apathy of the majority is a critical failing in a democracy...
...But the notion that focusing on short-term gain at the expense of all other values is the best way to do so is simply wrong...
...As Barnum discovered to his profit, the way to encourage people to part with their money is to convince them that you are treating them well—and the best way to convince them that you're treating them well is, in fact, to treat them well...
...The man known for his "humbugs" and who is supposed (falsely) to have said "there's a sucker born every minute," actually wrote a treatise on how to be a fair and honorable businessman...
...Capitalism's image of a grasping, avaricious drive that sweeps away common decency is far worse than its reality, while democracy's image of shared values and deliberative intelligence is far better than its ugly, messy reality...
...This is Mueller's theme: Both capitalism and democracy are pretty good— imperfect, not entirely satisfying, but most likely the best of their kind...
...Mueller demands instead that we look at the post-Communist nations that have tried the democratic way: boisterous, full of often rancorous debate, sometimes verging on chaos— but without guns in the streets...
...Mueller asks us to consider PT Barnum...
...Mueller argues that these "image mismatches" are themselves the cause of destructive cynicism...
...His title, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, alludes to the store in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, which has as its motto "If you can't get it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it...
...In fact, democracy successfully co-opts the rich, who could otherwise hire "thugs with guns" to enforce their dictates...
...Barnum and John Ringling established fair pricing and a safe experience that drew the public year after year...
...And there is one minority whose freedom is especially important to the success of the democratic enterprise: the rich...
...Mueller turns upside down the complaints of "hyperdemocrats" like Lenin, who argue that the bourgeois democracies, despite their egalitarian rhetoric, perpetuate the power of the wealthy...
...Greed...
...In every political system, there are elites with disproportionate influence, but in a democracy, even the elites are compelled to subject themselves to the noise of the crowd...
...is good," declared Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, a phrase intended to capture the amoral ethos of capitalism...
...Altruism has more to do with capitalism than many suspect, while greed and ambition have everything to do with democracy...
...Early circuses failed because opportunistic owners—looking only for a quick killing from the local rubes—bilked customers and let pickpockets and other riffraff roam the grounds...
...But nowadays, when the subject comes up, the relation is made to seem almost disreputable...
...Needless to say, in Mueller's version of democracy, egalitarian ideals get short shrift: Because power goes to the favored or loud, democracy means that we are all free to try to be unequal...
...During the heady days of communism's collapse back in 1989, it was common to hear that the free market provided an important, perhaps indispensable, setting for the growth of democratic institutions...
Vol. 5 • December 1999 • No. 13
