Ideally, politics is about coming up with a set of understood compromises on issues trading off redistribution and efficiency, Eric Falkenstein says — but only ideally:
As most people have instincts on the long run effects of their favored policies but no definitive proof, people tend to be get very frustrated and emotional discussing these issues because we don’t like arguing about things we believe but can’t prove. I believe a smaller scale and scope of government would increase welfare, but alas my proof does not fit in a blog post (sort of like Fermat’s last theorem).
National politics is about convincing the demographic that votes for American Idol to agree with you. When I used to teach at Northwestern University I occasionally asked what students thought about popular topics like ’free trade’ or ‘market efficiency’. Their opinions were so poorly articulated and founded, I stopped doing that. It did not help to have people riff on subjects they really didn’t understand, the errors were so numerous and fundamental it simply was a waste of time. I realized then that gaining their support would either rely on authority — believe me because I have these credentials — or slick salesmanship. Both methods are not good at converging upon truth. In the end I tried to explain some fundamental ideas showing why, given certain assumptions, one could think something was optimal, so the best case scenario was not definitive anyway.
Pure democracy leads to more concentrated power:
As collectives get larger — the USA, Roman Republic, Galactic Senate — power gets more concentrated in the President or Emperor. I think this is because when a state is small, an aristocracy/oligarchy is concentrated enough to work, but it doesn’t scale. At a certain point the aristocracy is fragmented but the titular head retains his power, which is then amplified by his new relative strength, making the legislative branch a veto at best, a patronage machine at worst. The House and Senate remain more powerful than the President, but they seem to lose stature every decade.