People in power don't solve problems because there is no such thing as the "public good," which is to say that what's in the good of the public depends on the ruling coalition at the time. It swings wildly every 2-4 years.
Also, there is no way to aggregate "the public" into a collective opinion.
Even if there was a way to know what the public good is, they public now, via polling as we know, supports contradictory things like low taxes and high levels of benefits! The "public" also doesn't have an opinion on most topics facing politicians, and if they do, it's often uninformed. The public decides things on a very gut level. It is often wrong.
Lastly, democracy is not majority rule. While supporters say that's what it is, in practice it's actually not. Optimal Pareto distributions are never achieved because politicians only pay attention to organized specialized constituencies (the ones that lobby with time and money). Therefore, since politicians cannot know what the public en masse wants, and since the public en masse rarely if ever makes their demands known because organization like that is virtually impossible, they only pay attention to special constituencies that lobby as only small groups are able to be so organized. Even if the lobbying group says they represent a majority of public opinion, which may or not be true, only the small group is organized and does the lobbying.
People in power don't solve problems because there is no such thing as the "public good," which is to say that what's in the good of the public depends on the ruling coalition at the time. It swings wildly every 2-4 years.
Also, there is no way to aggregate "the public" into a collective opinion.
Even if there was a way to know what the public good is, they public now, via polling as we know, supports contradictory things like low taxes and high levels of benefits! The "public" also doesn't have an opinion on most topics facing politicians, and if they do, it's often uninformed. The public decides things on a very gut level. It is often wrong.
Lastly, democracy is not majority rule. While supporters say that's what it is, in practice it's actually not. Optimal Pareto distributions are never achieved because politicians only pay attention to organized specialized constituencies (the ones that lobby with time and money). Therefore, since politicians cannot know what the public en masse wants, and since the public en masse rarely if ever makes their demands known because organization like that is virtually impossible, they only pay attention to special constituencies that lobby as only small groups are able to be so organized. Even if the lobbying group says they represent a majority of public opinion, which may or not be true, only the small group is organized and does the lobbying.