People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

Great Debates
61

There is information asymmetry everywhere in life. When you buy food and drugs. When you flick on a television program. When you decide to rent a car. When you go on a date.

You take steps - consciously or subconsciously - to mitigate information asymmetry all the time without even realizing it. You look for cues from others. You ask advice from people you trust. You read reviews. You gather signals about the your trading partner’s reputation. You trust established brands. You advance forward in small steps, to build trust about the quality of the product or service being offered. There are lots of ways to do this.

I would argue that a method like I describe is probably exactly how you decided to buy the computer you are reading this message on, right now.

Many people don’t believe this, and insist that without the FDA protecting us we would all die in the streets. Presumably, because companies are plotting somewhere in corporate boardrooms to poison their customers and kill them. At least, that’s where the conversation usually degenerates towards, on threads like this.

A simple example that I like to describe, that applies to most people, is travel to foreign countries. Many of us have gone to Mexico, or to some other country in South America, Europe, Asia or Africa for a vacation.

The FDA does not have any authority there. So what did you do? Did you starve to death - fasting the whole time because the FDA was not there to inspect your food?

Of course not. You took what options were available to you (local groceries, restaurants, friends or colleagues, etc.) weighed the risks and rewards accordingly, and made a decision.

And lived to tell about it, too! Amazing! So do about 6 billion other people, every day.

If you like what the FDA provides, go for it. Follow their recommendations to the letter. Read their publications. Do whatever you want to do.

But why would you willingly sign over your rights to them, so they can now FORCE you to eat and ingest only what they allow? And leave you no choice in the matter, whatsoever. Why would you do such a thing?

62

All people are incapable of recognizing the best political candidates and policies. That’s because there isn’t a best. That’s the reason for the structure of our democratic republic. It’s meant to keep anyone from obtaining enough power to establish set rules that would stop the competition of ideas. Clean wins may be rare, but the idea is to avoid total losses.

63

You seem to be talking about something different than I am talking about. You are referring to a crash, D.C. and Wall Street. I was talking about the definition of a market failure. If you are of the opinion that a market cannot fail, you have made religion out of markets, which I am disinclined to do.

64

If the difference between eating a poor product and having a date with someone unpalatable is not significant to you, then I understand this position. Personally, I find the difference between the two significant.

It doesn’t have to go that far. They only need to not let their customers know they found a problem, instead hiring an independent contractor to go around and try to buy up unsold questionable lots.

You say it like the FDA was created out of whole cloth literally for no reason but to irritate small-government types.

65

This is why you should all submit to my benevalent oligarchy.

66

If the decision is that signficant and important to you, why would you delegate it to someone else?

You prefer to keep the power to make “small, insignificant” decisions for yourself, but prefer to delegate the more important stuff to others? Why?

Doesn’t that seem backwards to you?

What could possibly be more important that deciding what to ingest into your own body? I would argue, not a lot.

On that point we agree. I agree that it is indeed, significant.

So why would you allow someone else to tell you what to do? And what you can’t do?

67

What a tremendously ignorant thing to say. AFAIK, but that has not been the assumption of any major political thinker ever, let alone any major figure connected to the post-enlightenment rise of representative democracy.

If the scientists are saying this, they are incompetent buffoons. If it’s just the reporters’ take on it … well, it’s par for the course for a reporter.

68

The same reason I don’t fly my own planes, fight my own wars, run every business I interact with, perform surgery on myself, defend myself in court, and make the music I listen to. I am qualified to make my own decisions about myself, if I have the information. In some cases, the information itself too difficult to obtain from my position. And in some cases I cannot really understand the issues.

Not in the slightest.

I agree. But you have conflated three issues, in my opinion. One is the regulation of production and associated quality issues. Mostly, the “food” part. The other is the denial of production or sale for a particular purpose. Buy all the St John’s Wort you want, but don’t claim it does something you haven’t demonstrated. The final issue is one of safety in general, that is, will consuming this present a high risk of some kind. It seems the FDA is too quick to cancel things here, but merely being risky is not in itself disqualifying because indeed drugs with bad side-effects are allowed on the market.

I have absolutely no problem with their food regulation or their review of drug advertising. (I think the slack Congress gave dietary supplements was a load of shit though.) I have a problem with the war on drugs itself, which the FDA isn’t in charge of. I also have a problem that drugs aren’t allowed on to the market only because the risks are too high (merely knowing a risk exists doesn’t make it too high, it’s up to individuals and their doctors to decide whether a risk is appropriate or not, since they’re the ones who will have to bear the consequences).

I wouldn’t frame the FDA’s functions that way so I feel that this question is a mistake.

69

I’m getting a little confused. Apologies for my slowness in understanding this. I’m a little stupid, so you’ll have to forgive me.

You don’t fly your own planes, or run the businesses you interact with. Neither do I. But if you “don’t understand the issues” (your own words) you are just going to plow ahead…hopping on board unfamiliar machinery, ingesting strange things into your body, based on whether someone else tells you it’s OK to do so, or not? You’ll trust them as long as they are a ‘governmental body’? Am I understanding that correctly?

How about the governments of Mexico, or Greece, or Chile? Would you trust those governmental bodies to make good decisions for you, if the need arises? Would you trust them to inspect your food, or the airplane parts on the planes you fly?

As for your “conflating” comment, I’m sorry but I don’t understand.

The FDA regulated production of the J&J products in the article you cited. Looks like some products with ‘fine particles’ slipped through, although it isn’t clear from the cite whether that caused any real harm or not. Was that a failure of the FDA? Or of J&J? Both? The supposedly warm blanket of the FDA’s assurance seems to have failed in this case, did it not? People are out there right now buying products that have an “FDA” stamp of approval on them. It didn’t work for those J&J products, did it? How do you know it’s not working right now?

Your last two sentences are a little confusing. First, you seem to imply that an individual’s decision is up to them and “their doctor”. I would argue that you’re pretty close…it’s actually up to them, but they are free to take their doctor’s advice, I suppose, if they want to.

Then you say that you wouldn’t frame the FDA’s functions that way. That’s exactly how I would frame them. How are you thinking about the issue?

70

I don’t know why you would suppose anything I said was based on this reasoning in particular.

It’s simple. The FDA is charged with several functions. Some of them I support. Some of them I do not think is particularly appropriate. You are lumping all its functions together as if they all were trampling on your ability to choose. But they’re not.

Only in the most perverse definition of failure imaginable. Our government is reactionary because it doesn’t want to trample rights. When it then allows something to happen because it wasn’t trampling people’s rights, you don’t get to turn around and say, “Well, that just goes to show how ineffective it was.” A guy walks down the street, pulls out a gun and shoots me. Looks like the cops weren’t doing their job? —No, it looks to me like someone has an unreasonable expectation of what can be done to regulate in a free country.

Because I have not defined “work” in such a way as to ensure that nothing “works.”

If it is not clear by now then it could not be clarified further. I specifically said there are aspects I liked and aspects I wasn’t happy with. I named such functions. Probably there is more to the FDA than I know about, some of which would also upset me. I guess my civics class didn’t “work”.

71

Why should we when that is not the topic of the thread? The topic of the thread is as stated: that science has proven that people are not smart enough for democracy.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is well known by everyone on this board, I’d suspect, and I’m sure we’ve had discussions on it before. That’s not what this thread is about.

72

What I am saying is where somebody suggested the 2008 financial crash was a market failure they were wrong because of the gross distortions of the market by the federal government.

A truly free market, if one existed, might fail, but by far most failures can be traced directly to the heavy hand of the government.

73

I’m really getting lost. First I think you are debating me, then you make points that agree with mine…so I don’t know what we’re debating.

If there are some things that you agree with, and some that you don’t agree with…that seems to perfectly support my position. Make the FDA voluntary. You are free to choose to follow, or not follow, it’s recommendations based on your confidence in its ability to satisfy your needs.

In fact, allow competition from other agencies to certify food safety. Those agencies may be faster, cheaper and may match your personal risk profile more accurately than the FDA.

The FDA’s approach is mandatory and is not subject to negotiation by you, me nor is subject to any competitive agency.

Great. Sounds like you agree with me. Welcome to the libertarians!

74

I was under the impression that you were advocating for a true democracy, and was planning to state that a true democracy would require so many votes I didn’t think it would work in a country this large, but later in the thread, you seemed to be saying other things.

When you say the decisions are yours to make, you don’t mean because you have voted on them, you mean because nobody asks, and you don’t inquire, right?

I don’t know about this…

I would like to say that I am only concerned about me and mine, leave me alone and you can do what you want, and I don’t give a shit about the moneyed elites, but if they want my property and they can convince someone to hire them to build on it and take it away, then I understand, and I don’t know what I want anymore.

75

No, I certainly advocate a constitutional republic, with representatives elected by democratic means.

I also advocate an extremely small set of issues that are the just and legal province of those representatives.

76

Funny but most of them do agree on about 90% of the same stuff, they just differ on what the electorate wants to hear. They also like to bag the opposition as it may get them into gubberment in the next election cycle.

77

If all the FDA did was stop drugs from being OTC, that’d be a massive strike against it. But this is not its function. If all the FDA did was stand in the way of drugs coming to market, it should be abolished. But this is not its only function. I don’t want it to be voluntary. But that doesn’t mean I think it shouldn’t be relaxed.

It’s not that I think companies cannot generally regulate themselves. It’s that, so far, they’ve not shown that market forces constitute sufficient punishment or deterrent. If the FDA’s “threat of a gun,” as you put it, is an insufficient motivator, as you’ve suggested in the J&J case, it is not at all clear to me why three watchdogs with no teeth at all would fare any better whatsoever. Nor yet why I should wish to have resources dedicated to three watchdogs, even if each were as lean as can be.

This is not intrinsically a problem, to me.

I left that leaning a long time ago.