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I 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.
by nickff 4y ago
I 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 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?