> Years ago, when I was a prof, I taught a class on democracy, and was doing James Mill's
> utilitarian defense of the same; once of his arguments is that democracy enables people to get > what they want, and so to be happier. This was at Ohio State, a fairly conservative
> school. So, I asked, what do people want? More money, education, health care, less work.
> etc. The students filled this in. And yet . . . So, what's the problem? Is there something wrong > with Mill's theory, or is this not a democracy, or what? The students were fairly nonplussed by > this result.
Putting aside specific policy questions, I doubt Mill thought that any actual democracy would enable people to get _all_ of what they want. Anyway, any failure on the part of our government to provide people with what they want can be attributed in large part to the often conflicting and suboptimal preferences of individual political agents (e.g. someone might wish they had health care but also want a flat tax, even though the desire for the latter conflicts with the former and is probably an irrational preference). How do we (i.e. anyone to the left of Dick Cheney) change such irrational preferences? Beats me.
-- Luke
> jks
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