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The idea that decision making in a democracy is some definable optimization problem that "experts" can solve better than the average voter, or that the very pur
by auctoritas 4y ago
The idea that decision making in a democracy is some definable optimization problem that "experts" can solve better than the average voter, or that the very purpose of democratic decision making is to optimize anything in the first place is laughably naive.
Any non-trivial decision that must be made in a democracy is made amongst a set of choices with outcomes that are incomparable to one another in a single objective domain.
For instance: should we raise taxes? If the question were simply to optimize how much money we can raise, then yes, the question could be modeled as an optimization problem; the outcome of each possible choice will be some amount of tax revenue that can be ranked.
But rather, the question is should we be raising taxes or should we be lowering them. There are no outcomes to be compared here, but rather - generously - philosophies to be debated or - cynically - power struggles to be played out.
When there is no objective way to rank the outcomes of a set of decisions "expert" opinion is of little value.
- nickff 4y agoI think you’re vastly overestimating the average voter. I would recommend reading Caplan’s “The Myth of the Rational Voter”; it’s a rather bracing book.
- auctoritas 4y agoI'm not really making a claim that the average voter is "as good" as an expert when voting. Rather I'm saying it's often not possible to optimize anything in the context of voting, so the degree of someone's expertise in some domain is really not relevant to begin with.
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- nickff 4y agoThe voting base's systematic biases are a significant obstacle to good decision-making. But the book covers a lot more than just that one problem.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThe overview of the book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th... > Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. It feels like it's denying the two-way relation between voters and politicians, and in particular the influence of political actors on voter views. Or from the conclusion > recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack. At least we know what we're in for.
- User23 4y ago> I think you’re vastly overestimating the average voter. This is, of course, why the US constitution originally restricted the franchise rather quite a bit. Are you in favor of that then?
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