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The tests should be as objective and unbiased as possible. Yes one can never remove 100% of bias, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything at all. Remember,

The tests should be as objective and unbiased as possible. Yes one can never remove 100% of bias, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything at all. Remember, the whole point is to only have people qualified on a topic voting on said topic. So if you're voting on, say, the minimum wage, you should be familiar with the economic ramifications of it. You should be familiar with both the arguments and counter-arguments, and perhaps the general consensus of economists. If you're voting on trade policy, you should know the economic ramifications of a tariff. You should probably know the history of our positions on trade as well. If you're voting on some issue related to the national debt, you should know the difference between a country's debt and household debt. You should probably also know the role of the Fed as well and how it relates to this. The tests should be on a federal level because knowledge is universal. I'm really surprised that you and the other commenter implied that these tests would be on a state basis, and am curious as to what made you guys think that. > We already have a long history of stifling voting rights Poll taxes and religious tests are totally irrelevant. Literacy tests are sort of comparable to what I'm proposing, but I wouldn't advocate literacy tests because I don't care if you can't speak English if you know what you're talking about. Again, the main idea is that only people qualified on a specific issue should be voting on said issue. Or maybe I should propose it from this angle - we should institute direct democracy instead of our current republic system due to the reasons I outlined in my original post. Direct democracy however has some glaring flaws (mainly that most people are too stupid and emotional), and the solution I propose seeks to rectify the glaring problem with direct democracy.

chillacy 10y ago
> knowledge is universal But it isn't... take your example on economy. In the last hundred years people tried out all sorts of things with the guidance of experts, from market economies, planned ones like communism, globalism, and now economists are shifting their thinking on that too. The chances that we're right about all that today are pretty slim too. In 10, 20 years economic thought will have shifted elsewhere. That's a mere 2-4 election cycles. > If you're voting on trade policy, you should know the economic ramifications of a tariff. You should probably know the history of our positions on trade as well. Isn't that why we have a representative democracy? And even those who govern look to advisors for these things anyways. I don't need to be micromanaging the government. > So if you're voting on, say, the minimum wage, you should be familiar with the economic ramifications of it. Does anyone know the economic ramifications with adjusting minimum wage? Seriously. We just did this in Seattle and there were experts arguing that it would destroy all the businesses in the area. That didn't actually happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/... Turns out, people disagree about all sorts of things. Usually it helps to look at what people have to gain or lose. In the minimum wage case, business owners didn't want to raise their expenses. In your case, the more people you exclude from voting who disagree with you, the better chance your policy preferences come into play. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand the choices we make through our voting decisions, but knowledge tests as a means to reduce.. "idiot voters" is just another way to exclude people who disagree with you from voting.
- JDiculous 10y ago
  Our representative democracy is failing because the people in charge aren't the ones most qualified to answer all these questions - because jack of all trade politicians are tasked with deciding on all matters instead of experts in their respective fields. I'm simply arguing that we need to break out of the status quo, and throwing out suggestions on how to fix this. Direct democracy is one way to bring the power back to the people. A competency test to accompany it is a stricter one to alleviate the pitfalls of direct democracy. Even if we never adopt a competency test, I'd still argue that direct democracy would be a massive improvement to what we have now - if only because it'd bring the focus of the debate on the policy issues rather than on the scandals of politicians. It would totally obsolete are ridiculous two-party system. Like I said, the test would seek to be as objective as possible. Questions would not be of the subjective format: "Does increasing the minimum wage improve the economy?" Actually I don't even think there would be any questions specific to minimum wage. Better questions would pertain to indisputable fact-based questions (eg. what's going on in the middle east in regards to foreign policy questions about that topic). Or again we could just default to basic logic tests. These are all just implementation details though and secondary to the main point - which is to improve our policy-making.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    > what's going on in the middle east in regards to foreign policy questions about that topic Also not a great example of something we understand. I think realistically you would not be able to test on something so practical since most of these things are so poorly understood. Logic tests may be the safest thing you could test, though at that point you would just be cutting everyone off below a certain SAT score. If I were in charge of coming up with a test, it wouldn't be a logic test, but some sort of test against hubris: to see how much they can admit that they don't know or can't know. In my opinion politicians play the "I know everything vote for me" game and load up on untested theories, leading to poor results (interventionist foreign policy leading to terrorism, stock market crashes, maybe even deep ocean drilling, etc). But I also recognize that while I believe that excluding overconfident people (the ones who don't know what they don't know) from office would lead to better outcomes, I also suspect that this could turn out terribly.

chillacy 10y ago

> knowledge is universal But it isn't... take your example on economy. In the last hundred years people tried out all sorts of things with the guidance of experts, from market economies, planned ones like communism, globalism, and now economists are shifting their thinking on that too. The chances that we're right about all that today are pretty slim too. In 10, 20 years economic thought will have shifted elsewhere. That's a mere 2-4 election cycles. > If you're voting on trade policy, you should know the economic ramifications of a tariff. You should probably know the history of our positions on trade as well. Isn't that why we have a representative democracy? And even those who govern look to advisors for these things anyways. I don't need to be micromanaging the government. > So if you're voting on, say, the minimum wage, you should be familiar with the economic ramifications of it. Does anyone know the economic ramifications with adjusting minimum wage? Seriously. We just did this in Seattle and there were experts arguing that it would destroy all the businesses in the area. That didn't actually happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/... Turns out, people disagree about all sorts of things. Usually it helps to look at what people have to gain or lose. In the minimum wage case, business owners didn't want to raise their expenses. In your case, the more people you exclude from voting who disagree with you, the better chance your policy preferences come into play. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand the choices we make through our voting decisions, but knowledge tests as a means to reduce.. "idiot voters" is just another way to exclude people who disagree with you from voting.

JDiculous 10y ago
Our representative democracy is failing because the people in charge aren't the ones most qualified to answer all these questions - because jack of all trade politicians are tasked with deciding on all matters instead of experts in their respective fields. I'm simply arguing that we need to break out of the status quo, and throwing out suggestions on how to fix this. Direct democracy is one way to bring the power back to the people. A competency test to accompany it is a stricter one to alleviate the pitfalls of direct democracy. Even if we never adopt a competency test, I'd still argue that direct democracy would be a massive improvement to what we have now - if only because it'd bring the focus of the debate on the policy issues rather than on the scandals of politicians. It would totally obsolete are ridiculous two-party system. Like I said, the test would seek to be as objective as possible. Questions would not be of the subjective format: "Does increasing the minimum wage improve the economy?" Actually I don't even think there would be any questions specific to minimum wage. Better questions would pertain to indisputable fact-based questions (eg. what's going on in the middle east in regards to foreign policy questions about that topic). Or again we could just default to basic logic tests. These are all just implementation details though and secondary to the main point - which is to improve our policy-making.
- chillacy 10y ago
  > what's going on in the middle east in regards to foreign policy questions about that topic Also not a great example of something we understand. I think realistically you would not be able to test on something so practical since most of these things are so poorly understood. Logic tests may be the safest thing you could test, though at that point you would just be cutting everyone off below a certain SAT score. If I were in charge of coming up with a test, it wouldn't be a logic test, but some sort of test against hubris: to see how much they can admit that they don't know or can't know. In my opinion politicians play the "I know everything vote for me" game and load up on untested theories, leading to poor results (interventionist foreign policy leading to terrorism, stock market crashes, maybe even deep ocean drilling, etc). But I also recognize that while I believe that excluding overconfident people (the ones who don't know what they don't know) from office would lead to better outcomes, I also suspect that this could turn out terribly.