Yeah, it's called "democracy". Everyone gets a vote. Equal representation no matter if you make minimum wage or more than 350 bucks an hour.
That's not government by the people. That's government by the group that manages to convince a plurality of the people to support them.
At best, that's tyranny of the majority. But more often, it's power in the hands of a manipulative oligarchy.
Their vote is both their explicit consent and rejection, depending on who or what they cast it at. If you object to the government's decisions, build a public majority consensus against it. That's how democracy works.
It relies on persuasion of large numbers of people, something that has little or no relation to reasoned debate. The capacity of people to believe what they prefer to be true, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely or even possible, stands firmly in the way of your ideology.
Moreover, personal preferences are all ultimately baseless. There's no prescriptive force there. If I prefer to live my life in a way that the majority thinks is abhorrent, a democratic government will stop me. Why should they get all the power just because they agree? Are commonly held opinions more likely to be correct? Or do you just favour increasing the welfare of the majority, thereby necessarily alienating the idiosyncratic?
What incentive then do the idiosyncratic have not to blow up your society?
You need a government that serves each person equally, regardless of social position. Being among the majority is not of moral value. Do not treat it as such.
Weak governments only empower whose who are already empowered. They create enormous gaps in wealth, political influence and standards of living, regressing society to a state of feudalism where the rich govern the poor and the poor have no rights or influence to speak of.
I didn't say no government. Individual liberty and contracts and the like still need to be protected. We each need to be governed by the rule of law. But that rule of law needs to account for the fact that we act in a self-interested way.
You have two excellent examples just in the last 100 years, one in 1929, the Great Depression, and in 2009, the Great Recession. Both preceeded by weak, non-interfering governments, both causing tremendous economic and personal suffering to the people. It took the election of FDR and the formation of a stronger federal government to stymie the corruption of the wealthy elite and repair the damage caused by the Great Depression, which led to a 40 year period of booming growth the likes of which the US have never seen, either before or since. It was ended with the election of Ronald Reagan, who sat in the lap of Wall Street and the wealthy elite, slashing taxes for the rich and making up the difference by undermining the state's vital social programs and the US industry.
I disagree strongly with you about the causes of those two events. First of all, the housing bubble that burst in 2008 wouldn't have happened if Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae hadn't been there to buy all those loans - Freddie Mac even advertised (in print) as early as 2000 that the demands for mortgages had never been higher, so they were accommodating that demand by buying more loans.
Also, claiming that the depression was followed by "a 40 year period of booming growth" ignores both the 1941-1945 period (marked by harsh austerity measures including rationing, which is what I would argue ended the depression), the post-war period in which international trade exploded as the British were forced (largely by America charging historically unusual rates of interest for post-war loans) to divest themselves of the bulk of their Empire, and the stagflation of the 1970s. You make it sound as if 1940-1980 America was all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.
If you prefer a society that favors those who already have everything, that's fine, but don't pretend like a weak government is going to benefit anyone except the super rich.
America's a lousy example these days anyway, because the wealth distribution already so skewed (largely as a result of the close relationship between industry and government).
Have you ever read a piece of US legislation? The number of stupid exemptions for specific companies is lunacy. That lobbying provides a better ROI than advertising does (and it's not close) suggests not that the only free market that exists is between companies competing to gain some advantage should legislation.
If the government didn't have the power to grant those advantages, that would transfer power to individuals.
Individuals are the only unit that actually exists. They should be the only unit we are interested in serving.
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