"Democratize"

Written on 2025-05-19. 596 words, ~3 mins

Few words make me gnash my teeth more than “democratize.” It has always left a sour taste in my mouth like many other “mid-wit-isms” such as “climate-justice” or “gender-awareness”, but I could never quite put my finger on why. Democracy was supposed to be good right?

I have recently started to familiarize myself with the ideas of Hoppe, particularly his criticisms of democracy as a means of governance. In doing so I have come to realize the distinction between “democratization” and the similar, though quite distinct, “decentralization.” I have also realized why the latter is vastly superior.

Both of these processes seek to restore control “by the people” over certain services, but both go about doing this in quite different ways.

Those that support “decentralization” fundamentally recognize that the existence of a centralized entity, regardless of who is in control of that entity, poses a threat to the users of a service. The solution, therefore, is to develop alternative versions of these services that do not rely on such a centralized entity. Through this process, we get cryptocurrencies from digital currencies, and the Tor network/I2P from VPNs. In each case, the new, decentralized versions are objectively superior to the centralized ones in terms of the power bestowed upon the users of the software. Cryptocurrencies are more tamper-resistant and private than centralized digital currencies, and the Tor network is better at anonymizing users than even the best VPNs.

Sometimes, people will use the word “democratized” to mean the same thing as “decentralized” as I have described it above, but that usually isn’t the case. Normally, those that describe something as being “democratized” are using a flawed, collectivist notion of control “by the people,” which inevitably leads to majority rule at the expense of the users.

The fundamental, conceptual issue with democracy is that it rests on the false notion of “collective consent,” which is used to bestow legitimacy to the democratic process. “If we vote on an issue, then all parties involved implicitly consent to the outcome.” In other words, if Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave vote 3-1 to kill Dave, then that means Dave consents to being killed. This seems ridiculous (because it is), but this is unironically one of the justifications of the democratic process, since in its absence, the actions of a democratically-run entity must inevitably be in spite of the non-consent of its constituents.

The problem with all this when it comes to “democratizing” services, is that this sort of collective rule necessarily requires centralization, making the system no better than the system that came before it. Worse, this collective rule usually bestows some kind of elected representative with control over the service, since any service more complex than an ice cube can’t be governed via a pure democracy. This makes the system vulnerable to ideological abuse (a la the Freedesktop CoC board) at the hands of Marxists with less than good intentions. At least a privately-owned, centralized service likely won’t fall for this, since those in control are the creators of the service, who are likely not Marxists, since few Marxists are capable of creating anything worth using.

The take away of all this is: be wary of those who want to “democratize” things, since it usually isn’t the good thing that they are trying to claim it is. Also, if you are able, try to contribute to the development and widespread adoption of truly decentralized services. Run your own public Monero node, tell others about the benefits of the Tor network, and steer clear of centralized services, democratically run or not.