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> So how about we spend a few minutes trying to solve those problems rather than just throwing up our hands? If I were to solve it, I would just give people de

> So how about we spend a few minutes trying to solve those problems rather than just throwing up our hands? If I were to solve it, I would just give people democratic rights (pretty much everyone the same vote) to decide how economic resources are allocated. But lots (if not most) of people are against that idea.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Such solution has some obvious failure modes. For instance: - People optimize locally, working for what they think is their best interest, even if on aggregate they lose. This is basic coordination problem; the very reason we form societies is because global optimization, often requiring to fogoe individual short-term gain, leads to better outcomes. - The way people vote strongly depends on education they get; especially in our technological civilization, a lot of important issues (like energy) are beyond the understanding of majority of electorate. Democracy depends on educated populace. - People are not independent actors wrt. to voting; in the age of free media, your votes will not reflect the "will of the many", but the will of most charismatic people on TV. Note that "the most charismatic" usually does not mean "the smartest".
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  Your three points comes down to the old `people are too dumb to vote' stance that every democratic movement had to fight through history. And the `elite' optimizes locally as well, directly at the expense of the weakest.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I don't see the two statements being wrong, and definitely not mutually exclusive. With non-elected elite there's at least a chance that said elite has any actual qualifications instead of just being popular. To be clear - I'm not that big on authoritarianism. I just don't see the value proposition of democracy being actually realized. Given the points I mentioned previously, we are still ruled by elite, except that it is constrained to choose their options only based on popularity, and unable to make hard decisions in areas that matter[0]. About the only thing democracy delivers as promised is bloodless government transition. Even the actual work in democractic country's administration is done by unelected officials. At this point I've given up hoping that democratic governments will help solve climate change or energy problems. Private companies may be able to, but that's only because they're capable of behaving in inherently undemocratic ways, like releasing a new technology upon the world (nobody asked us to vote whether we want to have Facebook or not) or projecting the will of single individuals onto the society ("you will drive electric cars, whether you want it or not", said Musk, and proceed to burn as much money as it took to make electric cars compete with ICE ones[1]). [0] - even if such decision wouldn't immediately piss of half of the electorate by itself, your political opponents will make sure it will render you practically unelectable [1] - yes, there were electric cars before, but it took Tesla to basically force the market into accepting them as an option, and they did that on purpose
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Lets not paint all Democracy with the 'US Federal Election' brush! My local county Attorney is very qualified and dedicated.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Please clone your Attorney and send the copy to my city. We need more honest, qualified and dedicated people. Alas, the whole system is tuned to actively eliminate such people and replace them with ones that can pander to the public. That's what I'm complaining about.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I understand completely. But many public officials are there because they believe strongly in something. At the local level at least, in Iowa at least, there is a lot of good-will and honest intent.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        My sympathy to the system is probably inversely proportional to the scale at which it operates. I've also noticed that at local levels you tend to have greater amount of honest people who believe in something and are willing to push for the ideas based on merit. I think a big part of it is that they have a much bigger personal connection with the issues and the citizens. Such people have my utmost respect.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  The first two objections, while they are real, are true for any agent and any decision system. Currently we live in era where people on Earth are most connected and most educated in human history. We could sure do better, but there are countries with democratic tradition that worked extremely well for much less educated and connected population. The last objection I don't understand. The best way to know person preferences is just to ask them. If someone charismatic changes their preferences, so what? People change their preference based on other people all the time. As long as it is clearly their preference, we have to assume that it's in their interest. The point of democracy is that people express their interest. There may be smarter people doing smarter decisions, but why should they make the decisions in the interest of someone else? In any case, I think it's a good idea, often neglected, to structure society so that impact of any wrong decision at any level is minimized. Things like democratic decision-making, subsidiarity principle, reversibility of laws, non-discrimination, limited liability, social security, no capital punishment, time limited government contracts and free access to information all help.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    RE first two points, true, though one could make an argument similar to the popular saying - "in any given situation there best thing is to make the right decision, the second best is to make a wrong one, and the worst thing is not to make any decision at all". In current democracies, the very important issues are so important, that they become turned into political games. No significant changes are being made because there's always a side that will fight tooth and nail to oppose it for purely political reasons. We can't get anywhere, because no single person (or group) has enough power (or incentive) to just make a call and go through with it. As for the last objection - the typical voter's preference will be reflecting the political battles described above. > People change their preference based on other people all the time. As long as it is clearly their preference, we have to assume that it's in their interest. The problem is, it's not people changing their mind because they've heard someone reasonable saying something that makes sense. Politicians lie. Lie blatantly and lie on purpose. They hire the entire advertising machine, built out of professional liers and bullshiters, to convince people that their side of the debate is right by whatever means necessary. The average voter has to oppose people who are trained specialists in lying. I don't see how you could argue it's actually their preference. But back to the primary reason. I could accept that start of affairs as fair, as long as we're dealing with things that don't matter much. But at this moment in time, we have several important problems - like supergerms, climate change and depletion of fossil fuels - that are going to destroy humanity in few decades, or at least pull us back into the medieval age. This shit matters. We need to make some hard choices and do some decisive actions soon if we want to have any kind of civilization surviving to the end of this century. And the democratic process is by design incapable of making those hard choices. TL;DR: I don't want to "give power to the smarter" or a king or anything. I just want someone to actually do something about global warming and power issues before this stupid textbook-level coordination problem kills us all.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Such solution has some obvious failure modes. For instance: - People optimize locally, working for what they think is their best interest, even if on aggregate they lose. This is basic coordination problem; the very reason we form societies is because global optimization, often requiring to fogoe individual short-term gain, leads to better outcomes. - The way people vote strongly depends on education they get; especially in our technological civilization, a lot of important issues (like energy) are beyond the understanding of majority of electorate. Democracy depends on educated populace. - People are not independent actors wrt. to voting; in the age of free media, your votes will not reflect the "will of the many", but the will of most charismatic people on TV. Note that "the most charismatic" usually does not mean "the smartest".

johnchristopher 11y ago
Your three points comes down to the old `people are too dumb to vote' stance that every democratic movement had to fight through history. And the `elite' optimizes locally as well, directly at the expense of the weakest.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I don't see the two statements being wrong, and definitely not mutually exclusive. With non-elected elite there's at least a chance that said elite has any actual qualifications instead of just being popular. To be clear - I'm not that big on authoritarianism. I just don't see the value proposition of democracy being actually realized. Given the points I mentioned previously, we are still ruled by elite, except that it is constrained to choose their options only based on popularity, and unable to make hard decisions in areas that matter[0]. About the only thing democracy delivers as promised is bloodless government transition. Even the actual work in democractic country's administration is done by unelected officials. At this point I've given up hoping that democratic governments will help solve climate change or energy problems. Private companies may be able to, but that's only because they're capable of behaving in inherently undemocratic ways, like releasing a new technology upon the world (nobody asked us to vote whether we want to have Facebook or not) or projecting the will of single individuals onto the society ("you will drive electric cars, whether you want it or not", said Musk, and proceed to burn as much money as it took to make electric cars compete with ICE ones[1]). [0] - even if such decision wouldn't immediately piss of half of the electorate by itself, your political opponents will make sure it will render you practically unelectable [1] - yes, there were electric cars before, but it took Tesla to basically force the market into accepting them as an option, and they did that on purpose
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Lets not paint all Democracy with the 'US Federal Election' brush! My local county Attorney is very qualified and dedicated.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Please clone your Attorney and send the copy to my city. We need more honest, qualified and dedicated people. Alas, the whole system is tuned to actively eliminate such people and replace them with ones that can pander to the public. That's what I'm complaining about.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I understand completely. But many public officials are there because they believe strongly in something. At the local level at least, in Iowa at least, there is a lot of good-will and honest intent.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        My sympathy to the system is probably inversely proportional to the scale at which it operates. I've also noticed that at local levels you tend to have greater amount of honest people who believe in something and are willing to push for the ideas based on merit. I think a big part of it is that they have a much bigger personal connection with the issues and the citizens. Such people have my utmost respect.
asgard1024 11y ago
The first two objections, while they are real, are true for any agent and any decision system. Currently we live in era where people on Earth are most connected and most educated in human history. We could sure do better, but there are countries with democratic tradition that worked extremely well for much less educated and connected population. The last objection I don't understand. The best way to know person preferences is just to ask them. If someone charismatic changes their preferences, so what? People change their preference based on other people all the time. As long as it is clearly their preference, we have to assume that it's in their interest. The point of democracy is that people express their interest. There may be smarter people doing smarter decisions, but why should they make the decisions in the interest of someone else? In any case, I think it's a good idea, often neglected, to structure society so that impact of any wrong decision at any level is minimized. Things like democratic decision-making, subsidiarity principle, reversibility of laws, non-discrimination, limited liability, social security, no capital punishment, time limited government contracts and free access to information all help.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  RE first two points, true, though one could make an argument similar to the popular saying - "in any given situation there best thing is to make the right decision, the second best is to make a wrong one, and the worst thing is not to make any decision at all". In current democracies, the very important issues are so important, that they become turned into political games. No significant changes are being made because there's always a side that will fight tooth and nail to oppose it for purely political reasons. We can't get anywhere, because no single person (or group) has enough power (or incentive) to just make a call and go through with it. As for the last objection - the typical voter's preference will be reflecting the political battles described above. > People change their preference based on other people all the time. As long as it is clearly their preference, we have to assume that it's in their interest. The problem is, it's not people changing their mind because they've heard someone reasonable saying something that makes sense. Politicians lie. Lie blatantly and lie on purpose. They hire the entire advertising machine, built out of professional liers and bullshiters, to convince people that their side of the debate is right by whatever means necessary. The average voter has to oppose people who are trained specialists in lying. I don't see how you could argue it's actually their preference. But back to the primary reason. I could accept that start of affairs as fair, as long as we're dealing with things that don't matter much. But at this moment in time, we have several important problems - like supergerms, climate change and depletion of fossil fuels - that are going to destroy humanity in few decades, or at least pull us back into the medieval age. This shit matters. We need to make some hard choices and do some decisive actions soon if we want to have any kind of civilization surviving to the end of this century. And the democratic process is by design incapable of making those hard choices. TL;DR: I don't want to "give power to the smarter" or a king or anything. I just want someone to actually do something about global warming and power issues before this stupid textbook-level coordination problem kills us all.