Power Without Commitment

Democracy fails when influence detaches from consequence

There is a democratic problem we rarely name directly, even though it sits beneath many of our loudest political fights.

Self-government only works when those who shape public decisions are bound to live with the consequences alongside everyone else. Influence is tolerable because it is shared with risk. Authority is legitimate because it carries obligation. This is not a partisan idea or a modern invention. It is the basic logic that makes republican government possible at all.

When that logic breaks, when a small group can shape the rules while holding itself apart from their effects, democracy begins to hollow out from the inside.

A society cannot function when the people most insulated from its consequences retain the greatest power over its rules.

Influence Follows Exposure

In everyday civic life, accountability is unavoidable. Most people raise families in the communities whose schools their taxes fund. They work under the labor laws their representatives pass. They depend on infrastructure, public safety, and institutions they did not design but must live within.

This shared exposure is what keeps democratic disagreement grounded. When policies fail, everyone pays a price. That reality disciplines political behavior and forces arguments to remain tethered to lived experience rather than abstraction.

Influence earns its legitimacy from that shared vulnerability.

When influence becomes detached from exposure, politics begins to tilt. Power no longer reflects commitment. Responsibility becomes optional.

Mobility Is Not the Threat

It is important to draw the right distinction. Movement itself is not the problem. People relocate for work, for family, for opportunity. That has always been true, and it often strengthens both individuals and societies.

What corrodes the social contract is asymmetry.

When ordinary people move, they do so within systems they cannot redesign. When the very wealthy move, they often do so after shaping those systems and while retaining significant influence over them. Their departure is not just personal. It becomes leverage.

When a narrow class can credibly threaten to leave whenever collective obligations increase, while still shaping tax law, labor policy, regulation, and public narrative, participation gives way to extraction.

At that point, democratic debate is no longer conducted on equal terms.

Franklin and the Logic of Shared Risk

The American founders understood this problem in stark terms. As the Continental Congress debated independence, Benjamin Franklin is said to have warned his fellow delegates, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The remark was not humor, though it was delivered with Franklin’s characteristic wit. It was a recognition that self-government requires collective exposure to danger. No delegate could demand influence over the future while quietly reserving an exit from its risks. Commitment was the condition of authority.

The legitimacy of the revolutionary cause did not come from unanimity of opinion. It came from mutual vulnerability. Everyone who signed was bound together by consequence.

That principle did not end with independence. It became embedded in how the founders thought about taxation, representation, and public obligation.

Hamilton and the Burdens of Self-Government

If Franklin gave voice to the moral logic of shared fate, Alexander Hamilton articulated its institutional necessity.

Hamilton argued that a functioning republic must possess the power to tax broadly and reliably. Not because taxation was desirable in itself, but because shared burdens were essential to shared government. A system that relied on narrow contributions or voluntary compliance, he warned, would collapse into instability and privilege.

Taxation, in this view, was not simply about revenue. It was about binding citizens together through common obligation. Representation justified taxation precisely because decision-makers would be accountable to those who bore its costs.

Remove that connection, and the system fails. Those who do not share in the burden gain disproportionate freedom. Those who cannot exit are left carrying responsibilities shaped by others.

The Modern Fracture

This founding logic stands in sharp contrast to modern political arrangements in which immense wealth can insulate individuals from nearly every collective consequence while amplifying their influence over collective decisions.

Debates over wealth taxes make this fracture visible. The central question is not whether some wealthy individuals would relocate in response to higher taxes. Some would. Some always have. Mobility alone does not determine legitimacy.

The real question is whether a society should continue to grant outsized political leverage to people who have already made clear that they do not intend to remain bound by the outcomes of shared decisions.

When policymaking becomes constrained by the fear of departure rather than guided by public judgment, democracy narrows. Entire categories of reform are treated as unrealistic before voters ever weigh them. The threat does not need to be spoken. Its presence is understood.

At that point, politics becomes a negotiation conducted under implied pressure rather than a process of collective self-rule.

Accountability Is Not Punishment

Efforts to limit the political influence of the wealthy are often described as punitive or motivated by resentment. That framing misunderstands the issue. This is not about punishment. It is about alignment.

A healthy democracy aligns power with accountability. Those who remain subject to a place’s laws, taxes, and institutions should have the strongest voice in shaping them. Influence should follow commitment, not the ability to withdraw it.

If someone chooses not to be bound by a shared future, it is reasonable to limit their authority over that future. Doing so does not weaken democracy. It restores its coherence.

Franklin’s warning still holds, even if the danger is no longer gallows but civic decay. Self-government requires that we hang together through shared obligation, shared accountability, and shared consequence. A system that allows some to rule while holding themselves apart will not endure. Not because it is unjust alone, but because it is unsustainable.

Power belongs to those who are accountable.

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About Andrew

Andrew is an elected commissioner in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, public finance and policy expert, volunteer firefighter, and community advocate committed to building safer, more resilient, and better-connected neighborhoods. Through public service and hands-on experience, Andrew works every day to make a positive impact in communities across the United States.

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