note, the article merely concerns itself with so-called “representative democracy,” but the results would probably be the same for real democracy. Not that it should matter for us in the EU, since we appear to have done away with even that weak imitation of the real thing. We got a new president last night btw. hurrah! You could of course say that the purpose of democracy never was efficient rule, but legitimate rule. But it would be nice if it could also be made to work properly too. Is it back to intelligence test for voters? Or is an enlightened ruler really the best form of government. If there just was a trusted way to ensure the ruler would be enlightened…
Actually, the Council of Europe got a new president, who is merely a presiding officer for that institution. There is no President of the EU. He’s not even particularly powerful.
Insisting on electing such a post would be like insisting on directly electing the Speakership of the House of Commons.
Regarding your article, very interesting I think, though, that it still comes down to representative democracy still be the least evil choice out there.
It does annoy me, though, when people insist on every institution being elected without paying attention to its purpose. I am a big fan of democracy, but people need to recognize election is only one part of it. A crucial part, but not the only part.
The world is a pretty complex place, what with international politics, economics and problems like global warming. Sometimes it baffles me that people who couldn’t point to Iraq on a map are allowed to vote, it’s scary. Some people vote for no other reason than that their candidate opposes abortion, not even considering the impact of all others decisions that person might make. Most people could simply never have even a vague understanding of what is going on, because they lack the underlying skills/knowledge.
It has happened two times that acquaintances of mine have voted and then regretted their decision after I extensively explained the implications of their vote.
There’s a scene in The West Wing where Bartlett exasperatedly asks how we can possibly ask people to vote when he himself barely understands the issues he is dealing with. I guess democracy just really is the worst system except for all the others.
ETA I do support a rigorous test before being allowed to vote. You’d be tested by a quick session of questions before you can enter the booth. You must demonstrate minimal understanding of all issues before you can vote.
“Those who aren’t experts on tax reform can’t judge how good a tax reform proposal is” (paraphrased) isn’t exactly breaking news, and it’s got only a lateral relationship with intelligence; much of it is training. My job involves modifying (the idea is improving) industrial processes: a lawyer could judge professionally whether the new process is legal and personally other aspects, but most people wouldn’t hire a lawyer to evaluate my program designs or analyze whether the new process seems more efficient than the old one. That doesn’t mean lawyers are dumb, it means “process improvement” isn’t in their ballpark.
Political parties should have zero input. Scientists should evaluate the answers of scientific questions and econimic experts those of an ecnomic nature.
Nah, I totally see some big pit falls with the idea. It’s just that the current situation seems too outrageous. I really doubt an IQ of 100 is enough to have even a glimmer of understanding of what we face in order to competently vote.
Maybe you could try to determine the questions by having a lottery for professors of top universities? So a lottery to determine which universities will decide. Maybe pick two per subject so that you get two professors for each question. It would take them all of five minutes emailing to determine the question. And at least that way politicians would not be able to influence it. How about it?
More generally, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect:
Interestingly, there seems to be a cultural aspect to this. Westerners (and particularly Americans) tend to find it harder to estimate their own abilities than East Asians do:
Westerners tend to be more willing to quit trying in something that they don’t seem to be good at initially. East Asians are more willing to keep at it. More specifically, the individualistic nature of Western society means that they tend to think that success at something is more a matter of inherent ability than hard work, so they give up on things that they aren’t good at initially. East Asians tend to think that success is more about hard work than inherent ability, so they tend to keep at things they aren’t initially good at. Furthermore, Westerners don’t work harder at things they aren’t initially good at even if they keep trying to do them. They tend more to not see their blind spots.
But the idea is that a lawyer would hopefully be able to recognise that you are the best person to do the process improvement. He doesn’t actually have to know exactly how to do it to have a basic understanding and evaluate who would be best suited to do the job.
Democracy doesn’t need to pick the best leaders or best policies available. It only needs to, on average, do better at picking the leaders and policies than the alternatives to democracy. That’s what it needs to “flourish”*. It does so and that’s why it’s spread so much in the last century.
*Can we get a less connotative term?
I think the whole thing aims at the wrong target. Democracy isn’t supposed to find the best solution to any given problem, but rather is a process in order to come to a collective judgement about certain issues. Somebody mentioned abortion: simply put, there’s no objective fact of the matter of what’s ‘better’ regarding the pro- or contra-stances, simply because the criteria used to evaluate ‘better’ are not objective (or may not be, at least – I don’t want to turn this into an abortion debate, so substitute another issue if abortion is one of your hot buttons). The point of democracy is to reach a collective decision on this issue, not to find out which option is the right one – to make a judgement, not to uncover a fact. Democracy is about the justness of that decision-making process, not about its capacity to reach some objectively right conclusion, or some absolutely best strategy – and that’s I think the only way to go, because in most cases, such a conclusion or strategy won’t exist. Through democracy, we may not reach some pre-determined location where all is well, some utopia created through an optimization of social factors or whatever else, but we, collectively, chart our own course – indeed, since there is ultimately no pre-determined place of optimality for a society to aspire to, this process is constitutive: we create the places we want to go, by deciding upon them. So criticizing democracy by noting its failure to reach certain spots deemed ‘better’ than others is completely missing the point.
That said, even there, I don’t think democracy is necessarily the best way to go forward – it leads to problems of lobbyism and careerist politics, and runs into troubles such as Arrow’s theorem, which essentially states that there’s no voting system that faithfully converts individual preferences to community-wide preferences. So I think there’s an argument to be made that the democratic system needs amendment – perhaps through some form of sortition. Indeed, there’s an interesting study by an Italian group of scientists that supports the idea that some measure of randomness improves overall welfare.
Actually, what it needs to do is be better at *getting rid of bad leaders *than the alternatives. The same yahoos will end up on top everywhere; Democracy is the only effective method of keeping them in line.
For what it’s worth, there’s (arguably) a mathematical foundation for democracy, Condorcet’s Jury Theorem.
Of course, it’s conditional on each individual voter having a greater than 50% chance of making the “correct” decision. Conversely, if each individual voter has a less than 50% chance of making the “correct” decision, then the greater the population, the more likely they’ll fuck up.
The libertarian-leaning folks (myself included) would also point out this is exactly why you need to minimize the decision-making authority provided to governmental officials.
The less power they have, the more power you have as an individual.
So you don’t have to worry about whether they will make good decisions or not, or whether or not the voting populace will come to a “correct” conclusion.
So long as the people are not stupid in a systematic way, their incorrect judgements don’t really matter as they ought to cancel themselves out. I don’t see from the OP that this very important fact has been considered.
It’s true that democracy has a tempering effect on very bad policies and bad leaders. If it gets too bad, the policy will likely get discontinued and the leader won’t get reelected. Democracy is also accompanied with a free press which helps uncover the grossest abuses and inefficiencies. As you point out, the ability to get the wrong people out helps a lot.
The ability to get the right people in (or at least largely keep the wrong people from getting in) also helps. If the way people get into power is hook and crook, you get people in power who largely use hook and crook and are (justly) paranoid about hook and crook being used against them.
Spank:
Good point. I remember hearing that on quiz shows like Who wants to be a millionaire, the crowd had a very good record. People who are wrong tend to be wrong in all directions. People who are right concentrate one particular option.
Blink also makes the point that experts and a large number of ordinary people often have the same opinions, even if ordinary people can’t accurately explain why they have that opinion.
Would he, when faced with twenty candidates? Elections are about choosing between a bunch of people who often look very, very similar on paper. I have no problem with recognizing that reality, what’s absurd is talking about it like it was news.
I’ve always assumed that the best benefit of a democracy isn’t that people will elect the best leaders, it is that people will have a way to throw out the worst leaders. A truly draconian or evil leader will have trouble keeping 51% of the vote come election time (assuming the elections are still fair, and assuming an independent media) putting a brake on politicians destructive impulses. But considering that in the US at least politics is largely run by money despite the fact that 80%+ of the public are opposed to this fact, maybe that doesn’t work as well as it should (meaning a sizable majority of american voters think money has too much power in politics, but nothing gets done about it election after election).
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita wrote about King leopold II of Belgium who also ruled over the Congo. Because voters had the power to restrain him in Belgium, de Mesquita claimed it was in his best interest to be a humane leader. Since the people of the Congo had no method of resisting evil leadership, the leadership in the Congo was evil. In autocracies the leadership only has to keep a few thousand military, political and business leaders happy and everyone else can go to hell. In a democracy the leadership has to keep 51% of the voters happy.
Frankly, I don’t see from the OP that many of aspects of the universe we actually live in have been considered. At least as presented in the article, it sounds like utterly meaningless intellectual wanking.
Democracy is not supposed to be some sort of exam to see how many people can pick the “correct” leader. It’s a way of letting people pick the leader they want.
I think, though, that it still comes down to representative democracy still be the least evil choice out there.