Tyranny of the Masses or Majority has been a concern for a long time. Constitutional author James Madison in Federalist 10 wrote about the destabilizing effect of “the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority” on a government .
He wrote about the dangers of the majority class with no property getting control of the US Federal Government and then transferring wealth from the minority who are the property owners. (IE. the wealthy class).
On the whole, his essay focuses on efforts to mitigate factionalism generally. He was also concerned with minorities forcing the majority. This is why he believed that there had to be a good balance and division of power between the US Federal government and the State governments.
Federalism in the United States is the constitutional division of power between U.S. state governments and the federal government of the United States.
The Federalist Papers are a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution.
Federalist No. 10 is an essay written by James Madison. It specifically addresses the question of how to reconcile citizens with interests contrary to the rights of others.
Madison, Hamilton, and Jay wanted the federal government to have more power since under the plan at the time, The Articles of Confederation, States were essentially sovereign nations. The only unity among the States was a military alliance for the purpose of gaining independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
For these three men, federalism was the solution. Federalism was a way for the federal government to get more power so the US States would have more in common than just a military alliance.
Madison, in Federalist 10, wrote a lot about human nature and his worry about factions. He saw factions as being quite natural due to human nature.
He understood that people hold differing opinions, have differing amounts of wealth and own differing amount of property, so they will form alliances with people who are most similar to them and they will sometimes work against the public interest and infringe upon the rights of others.
Interestingly enough, he didn’t worry about just the tyranny of the majority but also the tyranny of the minority. The wisdom of this cannot be understated.
Part of his plan to combat factions was to suggest that a large Republic, both in territory and in people, would create more factions but ones that were smaller in size, creating a nice balance of interests where one would not win over another.
A little clip from a recent episode of the podcast. We discuss the book, 'The Tyranny of Experts'. In the the clip I discuss the left labeling Friedrich Hayek a right-winger just because he didn't hold all their beliefs. One word might have really enraged them.
Today, we discuss a book by American economist William Easterly called 'The Tyranny of Experts'.
The book focuses on describing the different visions of two giants in economic development, Friedrich Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal. The main question is, what makes some nations poor and other nations wealthy?
Easterly makes a compelling argument that focusing on free markets vs. state power often misses the big picture, as even if free markets do lead to wealth, free markets are not what ensure continued prosperity.
The Democratic National Convention is over, and thank god for that. Biden was officially endorsed as the Democratic party nominee for President, along with Kamala Harris for Vice President. Biden generally garnered good reviews from his speech from both sides of the political spectrum.
#Cuties and #CancelNetflix was trending recently on Twitter. Netflix made a major error in the way that they presented an upcoming French film via their cover and description. Cuties is slated to be released in September on Netflix.
Finally, maybe Goodyear Tires did not want the spotlight..but they certainly had the spotlight when an image leaked out from what appears to have been a diversity type training program. What did the image say?
In this episode, Elvis and Ermin make that argument that self-development is largely realizing that change starts and finishes with you, not any external force, including the government. And that there is only one way to find out how you should live your life: aggressive trial and error. You need to learn what you like and what you don't like by being active in the world and stumbling around.
Without this mindset, we aren't really developing our potential, and we are forever a 'slave' to our environment.
Hello,
You can continue to interact with us on Twitter..but we will only rarely do updates here. This is a great place to send people ONCE you have a community of people who consume your content but not an ideal place to build an audience. We get much more engagement on other platforms.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsInItsP1
For those of you new to our community.
Elvis and I are brothers...and we have a podcast called 'Politics In Its Place'. We record two episodes per week where we try to focus on the role of govt/politics in people's lives.
We were born in Bosnia (what was then Yugoslavia). A civil war broke out when I was about 7 years old and Elvis was 11. We had to flee with our mom. Our father was taken to a concentration camp but thankfully survived and is still alive today and doing well. We believe that socialism had a lot to do with the fall of Yugoslavia. We discuss fleeing Bosnia in Episode 3.
We were both leftists at some point in our life but gradually shifted right for a number of reasons. We often mention why in our episodes.
That is just a little introduction so you know who we are.
If you are able to support us..it is just $5/month. We would gladly appreciate it. We put about 10 hours a week into recording 2 episodes (on average about 38-40 minute episodes). We do not get paid for ...
