Democracy does not exist.

Democracy cannot exist without the self-determination of the people who comprise it, and self-determination cannot exist in this age. Nowadays, nothing can be freely chosen. We live in a society where what we think comes neatly packaged and pre-thought: through the media, entertainment, populist politicians, and, most of all, by treating humans as commodities and corporations as our buyers.

Allow me to return to nomadic times, not to romanticise them but to remind us that humans lived independently of a megasystem, when democratic methods could be observed at a granular level. Imagine a band of homo sapiens, fifty people in size. Millions of citizens weren’t organised in multi-layered bureaucratic apparatuses, and no artificial regimens were imposed. The social organisation was egalitarian, with no inherited wealth, no lumbering institutional machinery, or coercive authority. It was kin-based, revolving around families and individually determined obligations.

What about leaders? This is where it gets interesting. Leadership was situational, provisional, and earned. Leaders naturally stepped into a role by proving their skills and knowledge. Different situations called for different leaders. A band member could lead conflict mediation, while another could lead migration decisions.

Nomadic tribes functioned at a level where communal decision-making was direct and immediate. They relied on unanimity or near-unanimity; they had long discussions and mastered the arts of storytelling, persuasion, negotiation, and, perhaps most astounding of all, collective judgment. A bad decision could kill people, and so could prolonged internal disputes.

Then there’s today.

Let’s start with an example. In 2008, subprime mortgage lending and securitisation of risky loans led to the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble and global financial crisis. Speculative excesses of American financial institutions on New York trading floors reverberated through Athens’ streets. Greece underreported its deficit, investors panicked, and borrowing costs skyrocketed. The country could no longer finance itself. The government was forced to accept recapitalisation loans with strict conditions, such as tax hikes, pension cuts, and spending reductions. By 2015, the unemployment rate was 25%, and Greek voters reached their limit. In a pivotal shift, the left-wing Syriza party was elected on a staunchly anti-austerity platform. 

The same year, a national referendum was held to determine whether Greece should accept the latest bailout conditions. The result was a clear democratic mandate rejecting austerity, with over 60% of the respondents voting ‘no’.

The market proved to be very resistant to democratic decisions. International markets imposed the terms: comply, or face financial isolation. In less than a month, the Greek government agreed to a bailout deal with austerity measures, the very same voters had refused. The cost of defying financial markets turned existential.

A new government tried to heed the popular demand. Fiscal reality intervened. The course reversed. The majority lost. The market held the power. No one elected the market as Prime Minister. 

It is not this sort of endpoint that veers into undemocratic territory; the impulse has been woven into nations’ fabrics from conception. This year marks the 250th anniversary of the United States and of the Constitution that enshrined it as the world’s golden standard of democracy. The very first elections in 1788 were held only for white, male, property-owning, Christian voters. In the Jacksonian era, white men without property gained the vote. Electoral discrimination based on race was prohibited in 1870, albeit nominally, and women’s suffrage came to a head in 1920. Now, everyone qualifying as a ‘legal’, ‘law-abiding’ citizen can cast a ballot. That should settle it. Fully democratic. Right?

Setting aside myth and legend, we sit with an uncomfortable truth. In a country of 350 million inhabitants, is it really democracy and the will of the people that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were the options at the ballot? Or was it the will of super PACs, market fluctuations, and party interests? Candidate viability is filtered long before voters enter the booth. 

The ‘citizen’ is reduced to a pawn of misinformation, gerrymandering, propaganda, and choosing the ‘lesser of two evils’. The ‘citizen’ stands on the sidelines, leaving the polling station with an ‘I voted’ sticker for their financed car and a sense of pride in their civic duty, unaware that the fate of the healthcare reform they entrusted a candidate with hinges less on their pick and more on what big pharma had pencilled into their agenda.

This op-ed stops short of finding a solution. But I believe that to find a solution, we must adequately diagnose the problem. Henceforth, the problem: democracy does not exist.