The question of long-term versus short-term thinking by politicians is related to issues that Madison and Hamilton discuss in The Federalist. They feared mass democracy because the general public tends to think short-term, so they believed that mob rule would likely result from mass democracy.
Long-term thinking favors free markets; short-term thinking favors coercion and government management. Since America was made more democratic during the Progressive era, short-term rather than long-term thinking has tended to prevail. When the US was more in the nature of a republic than a democracy, laissez-faire policies that, in the long-term, generated 0.5% to 2.0% annual real wage increases resulted. When the country adopted Progressivism in the late 19th century and adopted the 17th Amendment in 1913, real wages were growing. Sixty years after the passage of the 17th Amendment, which made election of Senators more democratic by ending their election by the state legislatures, real wages stopped growing.
The reason real wages stopped growing in 1973 was the passage of popular, but ham-handed, regulation in the 1960s. President Nixon's termination of the gold standard in 1971 did not meet public disapproval, and it led to the ability of sophisticated financial elites to divert wealth to themselves. As well, government beneficiaries, defense contractors, and other privileged interests have benefited, but the public is mostly unaware that the gains it was earning under free market capitalism ground to a halt after the Great Society regulatory expansion of the 1960s.
More democracy meant shorter-term thinking, just as Madison feared. Republics work better than democracies.
If we look at the 22 countries that have mandatory voting, they are mostly low-GDP or very small countries. The high-GDP countries that have mandatory voting are small,so the effects of complex lobbying and media manipulation processes, as occurred during the 2008-9 bailout and routinely occur vis-a-vis monetary policy, are also small. In a small country it is hard to favor policies that favor yourself at others' expense; the country is so small that harm will come to everyone.
As you can see in the chart below, which I copped off PBS, there is mandatory voting in countries with insane and corrupt legal and monetary policies like Argentina, the Congo, Greece, and Mexico. The relatively well-run countries with mandatory voting are small. These include Singapore, Australia,and Luxembourg.
Increasing the number of voters will not change much. It may reduce the time horizon of elected officials. The cost of voting may reduce marginal voters' time investment in learning about issues. In small countries costs of voting for misguided policies are quickly borne by everyone, but in large countries some groups can impose costs onto others. Thus, voters can be convinced to vote for policies like the minimum wage that harm a small number of people but make themselves feel good. Policies that squash innovation are among these.
Even in a small country like Greece, which only has a population of 11 million, the public wasn't able to foresee that pension underfunding and excessive government wages would soon result in bankruptcy.
Most of the other countries on the list of countries with mandatory voting have not been able to develop because of the sclerotic, big-government bloat that most people believe benefits them. They believe so because they are unable to think long-term. If anything, forcing more widespread voter participation, which will make the voter base more manipulable because it will force those with the least interest in voting to vote, will appeal to elite interests that stand to benefit from loose monetary policy and government favoritism.
| Country | Age of Eligibility for Mandatory Voting | |
|---|---|---|
| Argentina | 18 | |
| Australia | 18 | |
| Belgium | 18 | |
| Bolivia | 18 | |
| Brazil | 18 | |
| Congo, Democratic Republic of the | 18 | |
| Costa Rica | 18 | |
| Dominican Republic | 18 | |
| Ecuador | 18 | |
| Egypt | 18 | |
| Greece | 18 | |
| Honduras | 18 | |
| Lebanon | 21 | |
| Luxembourg | 18 | |
| Mexico | 18 | |
| Nauru | 20 | |
| Panama | 18 | |
| Paraguay | 18 | |
| Peru | 18 | |
| Singapore | 21 | |
| Thailand | 18 | |
| Uruguay | 18 |
Source: CIA World Factbook via PBS
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