Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.-Winston Churchill
OK, so assuming you've read part one of this article, you will hopefully be more or less on my side as to the whole idea that democracy, political thought and capitalism work in fundamentally the same manner. That is, they change and adapt over time, not necessarily getting better, just more complex and better-suited to the current environment. There are some flaws in this, specifically in terms of collusion between political parties or companies, and I will address those, but that's more in the third part of this article. This article instead focuses on why I think this is a good thing, and we why "like" the ideas of democracy and the free market as much as we do.
The fundamental way in which I feel all three systems are similar (for those too lazy to read the first article), is that small changes, taken in aggregate, can affect the course of progress. Buyers, voters and external influences each only affect the entire ecosystem in minute ways, the overall effect is major, and can sculpt the future of a species, a company or a political party.
This, then, represents the first way that all three systems are a good thing. Each voice matters. Every vote, every sale (or lack thereof) every life, death and procreation, matters. In a situation where we feel irrelevant or meaningless, or that we have no sway over anything, we do. We are the drivers of change. And this is huge. Compare it to a command economy where the decisions are made wholly by the party in charge of the country, and you can see the appeal of a democratic system. Even though the people might make terrible choices and vote in a terrible leader (and his even-worse son), at least it was their choice. It give the average person ownership in a way that no other system does as well. We get the leaders we want, and the leaders we deserve.
SImilarly, in a commercial setting, people often misunderstand the concept of value. They'll look at a product and say "that product totally isn't worth it", and they might be right... for them. But if a company does overprice a product, the consumers will "vote" with their wallets, not buy it and the company will either lower the prices or pull the product. One of the most fundamental misunderstandings about the market is that the price of a product bears any relation to the cost of producing it. Other than giving a minimum cost that the company will charge for that product, it's simply wrong to think of the retail price of something as a cost price plus markup. The retail price is set by what the company think customers are willing to pay. We get the prices we deserve.
An interesting off-shot to this is corporate governance. Another misunderstanding in the marketplace is that companies are required to do everything they can to make profit for their shareholders. They're not; they're required to do exactly what their shareholders really want. If every Microsoft shareholder turned up tomorrow and voted for Microsoft to become a non-profit company that donated its time and resources to making open-source software given away free to the third-world, that's exactly what Microsoft would have to do. Shareholders are voters, too, and in a very direct way. The only problem with that is that if you want enough votes to make even the slightest blip on the company's radar, you need to be insanely wealthy. It's a voting system with a very high barrier to entry.
The second reason that these systems can be a good thing is the idea of proportional representation. Now, obviously, most major systems of government don't use proportional representation, but the theory is sound, and is often even reflected in the systems of government we do use. The idea is that if a certain value is held by a certain percentage of the populace, that value will be represented by the government to the same level. For example, if 30% of the population wants looser gun control, in theory 30% of the elected officials should support that position. As I've said, this isn't true in practice; however, in many cases, it can be reflected, especially in multi-party systems. Even within the American two-party system, different senators or congresspeople within one party can have differing views, and these often end up presenting a good cross-section of the public opinion.
In evolution, this is represented by how useful a trait is, and the level at which is becomes mutually advantageous. There are some traits that would not be useful for every member of a species to have. For example, Robin Baker's book Sperm Wars discusses the comparative evolutionary advantages and disadvantages to bisexuality. Because it gives one a more-varied sexual experience, it can make a bisexual individual more competent sexually, and thus more attractive. However, it can also increase the risk of STDs, and if everyone were to be bisexual the increased experience advantage would dissipate. As such, there is a natural balance where some members of the species are bisexual, giving them an advantage, but the remainder gleam different advantages by being heterosexual (in a glaring omission, the book doesn't discuss homosexuality). There are other traits that follow this pattern well. In commerce, of course, the link is even more obvious: the more accurately a product represents the public's desire, the more it will be bought. If 20% of people absolutely want an FM radio on their MP3 player, those 20% will never be iPod owners.
The final benefit to these systems is closely related to the last point: the niche market. The Galapagos Islands is the ultimate niche markets, those tiny, far-of islands that so enthralled Darwin. In that remote location, a plethora of species existed which lived nowhere else in the world. Each had been tuned by evolution specifically to that environment, and likely would perish if it had to compete with species in the rest of the planet, just as external species would quite possibly have been out-competed in the Galapagos. Those species had found their niches and dominated therein. Again, this has parallels elsewhere. Single-issue political parties can garner enough support to influence the debate, or a small group of concerned citizens or special interest groups can make their voices heard on the national level or a local one, filling their niche with the political recognition it might never get elsewhere. Products of course, often have niche appeal. Apple's sales pale in comparison to those of Dell or HP, much less the entirety of the Windows PC ecosystem; but they have aggressively targeted specific niches like the home, student and creative markets and have done very well (for example, they dominate the graphic and video design industries). As a result, their success in these niches have allowed them to prosper, albeit in a more-limited way than Microsoft.
The other "good" thing about all these systems is their seemingly intrinsic appeal to us. Don't get me wrong, getting to democracy and a free market has not been an easy path. At times, it's been a veritable slog. But I think we find the concept of democracy to be intrinsically appealing. I think that's why it's taken such a firm hold over our consciousness, and why we hope to see it spread. Usually, in cases where democracy has failed to take root, it's the actions of a few individuals with a lot of power that has prevented it, not the will of the citizenry. The question is, why do we feel that appeal? Well, all the reasons I listed above demonstrate the advantages of democracy, but I think there's another aspect to it. You see, we often evolve to like things that are good for us. We find the taste of most harmful or poisonous foods to be disgusting, because those of us who like the taste of poisonous mushrooms tend to die off before we can pass on our genes. The reason we like the taste of fatty and sugary foods (much ot the chagrin of our waistlines) is because our cavemen ancestors needed those ingredients to survive treks across the ice-age planet which could often last for weeks before the next food source could be found. So we intrinsically "like" things that are overall "good" for us.
Thus, I think the appeal of democracy, and of the free market, stems from its similarity to evolution. I think that we feel an affinity for those processes because they so closely mimic the natural course of our own evolution. One of the big boons of evolutionary theory is that it's very easy to understand (residents of Kansas aside). You don't need fancy computers, you don't need complex equations. The basic principle of evolution just makes sense: advantageous traits get passed on, disadvantageous ones cause the individuals with those traits to die early and are thus not passed on. So I think we recognise, on a subconscious level, that the other systems bear striking similarity to evolution, and it is that which gives them their greatest appeal, even though we might not identify it as the reason. Nature has voted us into prominence, and we have modeled our most successful financial and political systems after its own mechanisms. Kind of a poetic tip of the hat, if you will.
Ironic sidebar:
A funny thing occurred to me while I was writing this. I paralleled democracy and a free market system to evolution, because the naturally advantageous traits tend to bubble to the top through a series of seemingly meaningless individual "votes". But look at the archetypal rival to a free market democracy: a communist/socialist command economy. In this situation, an elite group of party members runs the whole thing from on high. They decide who gets what, how much, and the denizens of that society are expected to follow an implicit moral code that they will work for the betterment of society, regardless of the lack of personal remunerative benefits (i.e. if they work harder, they still get paid the same). You know what that sounds like to me? Religion. God imparting his views and controlling the world from on high, with an implicit code of behaviours, monitored and enforced by the threat of damnation if the code is broken. How ironic that the system of governance that has most fervently sought to ban religion is the one it most closely resembles?
"Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people."-Proudhon
