I am against democracy.
Before you close this tab or dismiss me as authoritarian, let me explain what I mean — and more importantly, what I think we should have instead.
Look around at the world in 2026. From Washington to Brussels, from New Delhi to Brasília, democratic governments preside over deepening inequality, climate catastrophe, and the erosion of the very freedoms they claim to protect. In the United States, midterm elections loom while trust in institutions crumbles. Across Europe, voters oscillate between centrist parties that offer managed decline and far-right movements that promise authoritarian solutions. In Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, citizens head to the polls hoping this time will be different, even as corruption scandals and police violence continue unabated. Bangladesh and Thailand prepare for elections alongside constitutional referendums, while their governments crack down on dissent.
This is democracy in practice: a system where we’re told our vote matters while billionaires and corporations write the laws, where we elect representatives who then ignore us for years, where the machinery of state violence expands regardless of which party wins. The ballot box has become a pressure release valve — a ritual that lets us feel we’ve participated while changing almost nothing about how power actually operates.
What I Actually Propose
I believe decisions should be made by the people they affect. I think we should gather in assemblies where everyone has an equal voice. When conflicts arise, we should talk them through, find common ground where possible, and when necessary, see what most people prefer. But here’s the crucial part: if you disagree with what the group decides, you shouldn’t be forced to comply. You can leave, form a new group, try your approach alongside ours, or we can find ways for different preferences to coexist. The goal is cooperation among equals, not rule by anyone — not even rule by the majority.
“Wait”, you might say, “that is democracy”.
But is it? Let’s look at what democracy actually means in practice.
What Democracy Really Is
Democracy, as it exists in the real world, is a system of government. It means electing representatives who then have the legal authority to make decisions for everyone within a territory. These decisions become laws — rules enforced through police, courts, prisons, and ultimately violence. When a democratic government passes legislation, you don’t get to opt out because you disagree. You comply, or you face consequences. The majority (or more often, the majority of those who voted, represented by politicians who may represent a plurality at best) gets to impose its will on everyone else through institutionalized force.
Think about it: Can you choose not to pay taxes because you disagree with how they’re spent? Can you ignore laws you find unjust without facing arrest? Can you leave your “democratic” country without a passport, without permission, without another state willing to accept you? No. Because democracy, as it actually functions, is still government. It’s still a small group of people — politicians, bureaucrats, police, judges — wielding power over everyone else. The fact that we get to vote for some of them every few years doesn’t change the fundamental relationship: they rule, we obey.
Even in ancient Athens, often held up as the pinnacle of direct democracy, the reality was domination. Male citizens gathered in assemblies and voted on laws — laws enforced on everyone, including the majority who couldn’t vote: women, slaves, foreigners, children. The assembly could vote to execute Socrates, to launch imperial wars, to do anything it wanted to those without power. That’s democracy in its purest form: majority rule backed by state violence.
Free Association
What I’m proposing instead is free association.
Free association means people voluntarily coming together to cooperate on shared goals. You join groups because you want to, because you share their aims and agree with how they operate. Within these groups, yes, you make collective decisions — sometimes through discussion until everyone agrees, sometimes by seeing what most people prefer when you need to pick one course of action. But the key difference is that these decisions only bind those who consent to them. You’re not trapped. You’re not forced. If a group makes choices you can’t live with, you leave. If you have a different vision, you start something new. The association exists to serve its members, not to rule over them.
This might sound chaotic or impractical, but think about how much of your life already works this way. When friends decide where to eat dinner, the group discusses options and usually defers to the majority preference — but if someone really can’t eat there, you find another solution or split up for the evening. No one calls the police to force the dissenter to comply. When free or open-source developers disagree about a project’s direction, they fork the code and try different approaches. When neighbors organize a community garden, people volunteer for tasks and work things out through conversation, not legislation.
How It Scales
Free association scales this up. Workers in a factory would manage their workplace through assemblies, making decisions collectively about production, schedules, and distribution. Communities would organize local life through neighborhood councils. These groups would federate — link up voluntarily with other groups — to coordinate larger-scale activities like healthcare systems, transportation networks, or environmental protection. Delegates would carry proposals between groups but wouldn’t have authority over anyone; they’d be instantly recallable if they didn’t represent their group faithfully.
What You Say vs. What You Mean
When you say you support democratic government, here’s what you’re actually saying: “I want a system where we vote for representatives who then have the legal authority to make rules for everyone, enforced through police and prisons, and even though I might disagree with many of these rules and have essentially no power to change them, this is acceptable because theoretically the government represents the will of the people”.
But I suspect that’s not really what you mean.
What you probably mean is something closer to this: “I want a society where everyone has an equal say in decisions that affect them, where we work things out together rather than being ruled by kings or dictators, where power is distributed rather than concentrated, where people’s voices matter and we look out for each other”.
If that’s what you mean, then we want the same thing. We just disagree about whether government — even democratic government — can deliver it.
The Real Choice
I don’t think it can. Government, by its nature, is a hierarchical institution where some people have the authority to make decisions for others and the power to enforce those decisions through violence. Adding voting doesn’t eliminate this fundamental relationship; it just rotates who sits at the top and gives the system a veneer of legitimacy.
Free association, on the other hand, is what happens when we take those democratic ideals seriously and follow them to their logical conclusion: not government by the people, but no government at all. Just people, cooperating as equals, making decisions together without anyone having power over anyone else.
So yes, I’m against democracy — if democracy means government, laws, and rule by the majority.
But if what you care about is people having real power over their own lives, making decisions collectively without domination, and organizing society from the bottom up rather than the top down?
Then we’re on the same side. We just need to be honest about what we’re actually fighting for.
We’re not fighting for a better government. We’re fighting to make government unnecessary.