Lessons On Democracy from Lebanese Service Taxis

The right to vote has long been the sacred cow of democracy. Stepping into a voting booth is a right of passage for any adult living in a Western democracy and it is viewed as that one inalienable duty that preserves a person’s right to participate in the politics and the direction of their community and their country. To abstain from voting opens one to jeers of derision and mockery as though distancing oneself from something considered so important was to distance oneself from society, and to relinquish one’s right to participate in democracy is the most grievous sin a member of democratic society can commit. But the truth is, the reason an eligible person’s vote is so important to democracy is that it is the key indicator that democracy is functioning. Yet here we are. The US, long-held as the standard-bearer for what constitutes a functioning democracy, has a voting block that represents close to half the nation and is larger than voter turnout for each of the country’s two major political parties – it’s the people that don’t vote. There are around 200 countries in the world (recognized or otherwise) and almost all of them, with but a few exceptions, exercise this bare minimum of democracy within their borders. Say what you will about the legitimacy of one country’s democratic process, nonetheless, any step toward democratization is seen as a state’s progress away from tyranny and toward freedom. Still, it’s a system that leaves half the world unsatisfied and often taking to the streets to revolt and declare its government illegitimate and while I was in Lebanon I saw the people’s dissatisfaction with their government in full effect. At the same time, government protests were erupting around the world in places like Chile, Hong Kong, and Iraq. The protest march has become so common as to be cliché, all of them seemingly well-intentioned but benign in their effectiveness and leading to the question, why does nothing ever seem to get done? The arc of the moral universe, it is said, is long but it bends towards justice, but that is to perilously assume, that we live in a moral universe. Democracy, at its most fundamental level, is a system of government that is designed to protect the will of the masses against the interests of a powerful few, echoing the words etched on Hammurabi’s code: To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, so that the strong should not harm the weak; and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.

There is such a strong belief that democracy, in its democraticness, functions that there is a blindness to how well any single democracy actually functions. When it fails them, believers in democracy’s irrefutable effectiveness, quickly turn their ire to those who opted out of the process and turn a blind eye to the stranglehold that the powerful have over the system of democracy. In their idealistic hearts, they trust that a vote can save them not realizing that they are bringing a knife to a gunfight. The powerful have hundreds of years and endless data points helping them to understand and game the system and no matter how you vote, they get what they want. Many people believe that if just enough people actually got off their asses and voted that the world would finally see some spirited change for the better and we would all begin that march toward freedom and a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. But democracy begins to break down the bigger it gets, and real, effective, democracy has some of its most enlightened examples in small and often unexpected places.

A lot of my days are spent poring over fares and routes and timetables for wherever I might feel like going. As a mindful consumer I need to consider various factors like: How long will it take to get where I need to go and how much will it cost? What level of discomfort will I need to put myself through, can I tolerate said discomfort, and for how long? And, of course, what other options do I have? Thanks to some friends, I was given a crash course on how the service taxis in Lebanon worked and it was while I was headed to Byblos, on the one day where the revolution had calmed down enough that I was able to leave the city, that I became acquainted with what democracy looks like in the form of public transportation.

Coming from Canada and travelling through Europe it felt normal for me to go to a station, look at a time table, wait for a conveyance (plane, train, bus), board said conveyance, and pay the fare determined by the company that operated that conveyance. For example, trains ran between Strasbourg and Colmar stations every half an hour and cost about 14 euros for a 30-minute journey. Depending on the time of day there could be as few as 5 people on board the train or as many as 5000 competing for limited space – I experienced both. This method of predictable and standardized public transit is ubiquitous in the Western world, but it isn’t exactly democratic. Or, at least, it isn’t very efficient.

When I went to Egypt in December of 2016 I was treated to a panoply of public transit options which offered varying levels of democracy. There was the state-run train that ran along the Nile and there were the inter-city buses run by various companies that had set fares and scheduled departure times to major destinations, much as you might expect to find in North America or Europe, but there were also microbuses that I learned about when I was trying to travel from Luxor to Quseir. When I arrived in Luxor and asked about how to get to Quseir at a tourist information centre I was told that I would need to speak with my tour operator. When I explained that I wasn’t part of any tour, the agent at the information office was flabbergasted. “Well, if you are not with a tour, how did you get to Egypt?” It was difficult to explain how I had simply bought a plane ticket and that the plane did most of the work because it seemed to be so outside his realm of understanding that someone would travel to Egypt without being part of a tour group. For a while, we were at an impasse, and I had to dig very deep to make him understand that in order for me to get to Quseir that I would have to do so like an Egyptian. The only advice he could give me was that if I travelled upriver to Qena, that I could get a bus from there. Because I still wasn’t acquainted with microbuses it meant waiting for the train and then, when I arrived in Qena, taking a taxi to the site of the alleged bus station. Seeking information, I asked around at what time buses that were headed to Quseir would leave. I was invited to sit down and have coffee, as is the custom, and after a lot of uncomfortable laughter, miscommunication, hand gestures, and hammering out basic concepts like what a bus was, where Quseir was located and where we were, in fact, sitting, it became clear that no buses ran from Qena to Quseir (or at least no buses they were prepared to put me on). When it seemed like there was a clear understanding of where I was trying to get to, the gentlemen who spent their days at the bus lot in Qena led me to a taxi and passed along instructions to the driver. We then travelled back downriver to Qift where I was deposited by the driver at a dusty open lot where there were a handful of 12 to 15-seater vans waiting. The taxi driver spoke for a moment with a man who was sitting at the edge of the lot and then pointed me to an empty bus and told me to get on board. I kept repeating, “this is the bus to Quseir?” and he just kept nodding. I would point to my wrist as a way to ask what time the bus would leave and he just kept nodding and pointing to the bus and then eventually he just left, leaving me to make the leap of faith that this bus would get me to Quseir. After a few minutes, a few more people hopped on the bus, and then a few minutes later a few more. After about a total of 30 minutes, there wasn’t an empty seat left and a man suddenly jumped into the driver seat and we were off. After being on the road a few minutes the driver spoke up alerting all on board of how much the ride cost. All of the passengers got together and counted up the money, making sure that everyone paid their fair share. Because I didn’t know what was going on and didn’t understand anything I watched what others handed over and kept nodding and asking if everything was okay. Everybody smiled and eventually from the notes I handed over I was even given change and my share for the bus came to about 8 bucks and was the same as everybody else. After a two and half hour journey, I was dropped off in Quseir safe and sound and left to wonder what had just happened – democracy happened.

With the general breakdown of the government in Lebanon in recent decades, things like infrastructure for public transit had taken a real hit and city buses no longer existed (or at the very least they weren’t trusted by the people to get them anywhere). What had popped up to fill the void were cars and small vans that people called service taxis. Unlike with buses, all the money that came through the door went straight to the driver. Unlike taxis, although many of them could take you where you wanted to go, it usually wasn’t exactly the spot you needed and it wasn’t for hire meaning if, along the way, someone else wanted to hop in, they could. The other thing was, in order to maximize their profit-making potential, lots of service taxis just stuck to travelling sections of the main routes through the city like along the main highway 51 that runs all the way from Tripoli in the north of the country to Tyr in the south. As far as cost was concerned, what I was told was that it was a flat 2000 lira no matter what, with the occasional exception of travelling very far during rush hour costing a little extra. Finding a service taxi is not hard. Go to a main road, stick out your hand, and someone will stop. In actuality, they will often honk at you before you even have time to hail them. You just have to state “service?”, to clarify that you are not expecting a private taxi which is significantly more expensive, and explain where you need to go. There’s no timetable, but waiting more than one minute is rare.

Because not every service taxi is willing to run the whole route from where I was standing all the way to Byblos it meant, based on the instructions by all aboard the first service taxi I hopped aboard, a change for me at the Daoura roundabout. It was no problem and the whole trip from Beirut to Byblos, while making a few dozen stops along the way to pick up and drop off other passengers, took less than an hour. The entire 40-kilometre route is along a major highway that never approaches anything that might resemble the countryside. It is nothing but hotels, car dealerships, shops, overpasses, and traffic the entire way. Byblos, however, is the end of the line for service taxis that ply that route and by the time we were approaching where I needed to get off, there were only a few people left in the van. The last two locals motioned to get out not too far from where I thought I would get out myself, but when I went to follow them off the bus the driver waved at me and, knowing that I was headed to Byblos, told me in broken English to wait because I should get out further down the road. In my naivete, I trusted him and stayed on the bus. He drove another 100 meters down the road, a walk I could have easily made, and then when I handed over my 2000 lira he said, “no, no, 5000”. Here I found myself living briefly in a dictatorship. What could I do? My options were to refuse and deal with the consequences or just pay. Since 5000 lira amounts to about $5, I wasn’t about to risk any type of altercation and simply smiled, said thank you, and paid. I asked a woman at a tourist information centre in Byblos about what the cost for a service taxi between Beirut and Byblos was and she confirmed that it should only cost 2000 lira. When I told her about my experience she explained that the driver, as I expected, took advantage of the situation. When I needed to make the return journey, as the van sped into Beirut there were many people on board the bus needing to get to other parts of the city. I simply told the driver that I wanted to get off, handed over my 2000 lira, said thank you, and went about my day.

So, you’re probably asking yourself: what does any of this have to do with democracy? As I mentioned earlier, the design of democracy is to protect the will of the masses against the interests of a powerful few by giving every individual an equal say. Majority rule. Whatever the most people decide is what everybody gets, but it is a system that is so easily manipulated. A corrupt, profit-seeking, driver need only privilege a small handful of passengers who can then incentivize an even smaller group that would swing the majority toward corruption. No matter what it creates an at-risk population. A hypothetical scenario would be if the driver of the Egyptian microbus told all aboard to make the Canadian guy pay more than everyone else. Although this is extreme because the at-risk class (i.e – me) was so small that I’d quickly become wise to the trickery when I saw everyone else paying so little and me paying so much. As democracies grow, though, so does the opportunity to take advantage of it because the at-risk class grows and the line between them and the incentivized blurs and they no longer see themselves necessarily as at risk. This is why so many votes are so close and hover in small margins around fifty percent.

In the case of the dictatorships: in Europe, and North America, the state power of how people are going to go anywhere, how long it will take, and how much it will cost is so powerful that they have the ability to say when trains run and how much they cost often with little justification as to why. With some internal competition from privately-owned companies who may offer greater comfort, more direct services, or both, they find ways to fit in and be a part of that system. They need only keep their clientele happy enough so as not to let the system completely break down. It’s a big dictatorship with a big responsibility; Big power meeting a big population. But in its reliability and its predictability, it almost feels benevolent. In Lebanon, when faced with the dictatorship, the driver obviously weighed his odds and found a price he probably felt I was powerless to say no to. Demand too much and I might have stood up for myself and fought him on the price – a scenario he was likely keen to avoid. One versus one. Small dictatorship and a small at-risk class.

Effective democracies should not have such close margins. If they function properly they should have very skewed results that seek justice. In the case of the democracies: in Egypt, all aboard the microbus, except for me, were of an incentivized class. They knew the language, knew the rules, and had certain expectations. I, on the other hand, could barely make sense of what was going on and could easily have been taken advantage of. The pendulum of democracy swung when those incentivized assured my invitation into their class so that the relationship between the at-risk and the powerful could not be exploited. This is where the seed of a true justice-seeking democracy resides and where the will of those needing to get to Quseir could work together with the powerful few with the means and resources to get them there. Likewise, on the service taxis in Lebanon, assuming the presence of the incentivized class, the at-risk were protected and the tacit understandings that allowed the system to function in the first place could be maintained. Without that invitation, the at-risk are immediately at the mercy of the powerful few.