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

116 points by pwg 15y ago

noonespecial 15y ago
Democracy isn't about putting the best people in power. Its about being able to get rid of the worst ones.
- btilly 15y ago
  Indeed this is what the article concludes. The last paragraph says, Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
  - jonnathanson 15y ago
    A republic is all about establishing a reasonably strong mean, back to which a succession of various administrations tends to revert. Other forms of government allow for much higher variance. You might get a brilliant and benevolent monarch, for instance, but his son might turn out to be incompetent or tyrannical. In which case, sucks to be you. Hopefully the 30-year dice roll turns out better with the next heir.
- afterburner 15y ago
  I would go on to say that, IMO, the most important feature of a democracy is the periodic and orderly transfer of power every X years. Or, to put it another way, the ability to easily get rid of a leader.
  - scarmig 15y ago
    Hmmm. The PRC seems to have this down. I'm not sure if that's a point against you or a point in the PRC's favor.
    - gaius 15y ago
      The PRC is democratic. They filter for eligibility to vote based on your membership standing in The Party.
    - afterburner 15y ago
      Does the general population get most of the say in terms of a) who is a candidate and b) the general election? Because I certainly think universal suffrage is extremely important, as well as open elections, and I don't mean to imply that I somehow support the kind of result you get in the PRC. Obviously a real democracy doesn't only have one party, for instance. I hardly made an exhaustive list of all the parameters of the kind of democracy I like, so try to exercise some judgment...
- praxeologist 15y ago
  That sounds nice, but put into practice is, at best, marginally effective. Democracy is actually quite good on a small scale without the element of compulsion, like your chess club or picking the most able-bodied man to lead the local volunteer fire co. People are both more familiar with the people being voted for and can see a payoff for voting. There's more chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polls in the US than of your individual vote mattering though. Democracy such as in US politics, in comparison, creates a perverse incentive structure where it is more often the most suave liars rising to the top. The millions spent on Super PACs or stroking the media is chump change compared such things as awarding gov't contracts or the power of politicians and unelected bureaucrats to shape industry-changing regulation. Can we vote out the worst ones? I guess, as long as we are talking about a more legitimate democracy than Russia or Venezuela. Still, even in the US people are going to elect pretty much the same thing every time they switch. There's very little difference between a Romney (or clones) and Obama. What needs "voted out" is democracy as a whole. I realize that this cuts to the core of most Americans' religious worship of democracy, but hopefully people can at least consider the options—I suggest libertarian anarchy—and educate themselves about some serious criticisms of the system we have. I suspect I am going to get more downvotes than coherent objections, but oh well. See Hans Herman Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed or Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter
  - TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
    Marx and Engels are a good place to start if you look for a comprehensive debate against capitalism. Of course, I would expect Adam Smith and his disertation to say something akin to "we've not seen 'real capitalism'".
pnathan 15y ago
One thing that I am reminded of in the current zeitgeist with respect to capitalism and democracy is the 1930s and its condemnation of democracy as outdated and how fascism was the progressive way forward.
- rmc 15y ago
  Interesting. Got a link?
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Unfortunately not; the most recent book I read on the period was Gathering Storm, by W. S. Churchill (not the most unbiased observer, but very engaging reading).
- synor 15y ago
  Also, that time gave rise to the Technocracy Movement, which proposed an allegedly new way to run society other than by dictatorship or democracy.
  - swalsh 15y ago
    From this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movemen... The idea of currency based on energy units is quite intriguing. It makes me wonder how our world would change.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  It might actually be, but we won't find out any time soon. Nazi Germany put such a stain on fascism, it will be quite a while before it is taken seriously.
gaius 15y ago
The elephant in the corner of the room of course is that the ancient Athenians quite deliberately didn't have a universal franchise. Property-owning tax-paying full citizens who fulfilled their military obligations voted, because they were the ones that would pay for, implement and generally be responsible for whatever was voted for.
- tlholaday 15y ago
  And the property they owned included slaves, whose votes the owners did not want to count.
- rmc 15y ago
  This was the dominant form of voting in most democracies until about 100 years ago. E.g. in the UK, only men who owned property could vote (can't let the common man vote!). This didn't always produce a good democracy.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." This is the one crucial defence of a restricted franchise - if the only people voting are the ones paying, they are much more resistant to this kind of corruption.
    - swalsh 15y ago
      His book is free on Amazon Prime by the way! http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1330972523&sr=8-3 http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7...
  - javert 15y ago
    This didn't always produce a good democracy. Really? I think the British Empire was a high point in world history (for both the British and their colonies). So I don't see how your point is supported. That said, I think a constitutional republic is the right solution, not democracy.
deleted 15y ago
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d4nt 15y ago
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Churchill, 1947 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#column_206 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...
- Sthorpe 15y ago
  I honestly think this is the best piece of rhetoric to keep our old system in place. The system is awful, but its the best we got. I'd prefer if we brought back our philosophers and started to have large debates on the writing of new law. We are to afraid to change our old old system. Depressing.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    The bigger problem is that the only folks who can improve the system(the people in charge), have an active self-interest not to do that since they are likely to lose power and influence with the changes. That's why the US Congress has an approval rating worse than herpes [1] and still most people will keep their jobs thanks to lack of reform, redistricting and gerrymandering by the only people who can fix it. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-failure/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-fa...
    - toyg 15y ago
      One of the best Italian artists of all time, Giorgio Gaber, said once that "Democracy is Participation", or "taking part". Check the number of active voters in the US at most levels: it's depressingly low. Low participation means less democracy, it's as simple as that. Most people thought it would have been impossible for a black man to be President of the United States of America, but for once "the people" thought differently, you got the highest turnout ever for a presidential race, and lo and behold, change happened (at least for that particular thing). Try to imagine how things would change if you could add another 10 or 20% to that 63% who elected a black President. Now repeat that at any level: Congress, State, City, even school board. All of a sudden you have a decisive element that can change majorities and express real power. The problem, of course, is that "taking part takes time". Politics is a very slow game, and most people have a life outside of politics, so they drop out (me included). Even voting every few years is a problem, if you can't afford to take a day off; most European countries recognize that, and vote over the weekend. I find the US stance on this incredibly maddening, and clearly a legacy from the dark times of slavery and "gentlemen" landowners who didn't have to work for a living. The problem, going forward, is how to give people the opportunity to take part more and more, while minimizing the time they have to spend in order to do so. One of them is having a good set of impartial media who can summarize honest arguments in a faithful way, providing different levels of analysis that don't contradict themselves. Another one might be some sort of collaborative service where people can contribute to the work of their representatives. Another might be a way of making representatives more accountable and in tune to the wishes of their electorate. And so on and so on... but nothing of this can happen unless we take part and move our ass, so to speak.
random_ind_dude 15y ago
David Dunning and Justin Kruger - aren't these the guys who proposed the idea now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect?
- jcarreiro 15y ago
  Yes. The new research builds on that work.
ez77 15y ago
It is anarchy that requires real smarts, not democracy.
shingen 15y ago
Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no. Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom. America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  What about Peter Thiel wanting to make a sea-based libertarian country that doesn't have a democracy because people arn't smart enough to keep it libertarian? (Granted, they could leave by relocating somewhere else, but that is true of most countries anyways.)
  - shingen 15y ago
    Anytime someone lays out an argument by stating that some other group of people isn't intelligent enough to self govern, you should be suspicious of the character and intentions of the person making that argument. Whether that applies to Thiel or not I have no clue, I haven't seen all his statement on the libertarian colony proposal (I've just seen brief discussions on it).
    - dantheman 15y ago
      If, the 3pt14159 was referring to seasteading http://www.seasteading.org http://www.seasteading.org Then the entire purpose is to try and live in the absence of government through voluntary cooperation and nonaggression. It's unfortunate that an experiment like this cannot take place on land - no government will ever voluntarily cede control of land & people that it does not own. In general the theory is that current government functions can be better handled by the market. That is, police and justice can be better served when they are enforced through voluntary contracts. For instance, the war on drugs, abusive police, the TSA, and all sorts of other detrimental policies will be more difficult to maintain when the people are your customers.
3pt14159 15y ago
Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. From Ron Paul to Che, the entire spectrum says "no" to armed resistance until all democratic means are exhausted.
- shingen 15y ago
  Che? He was a genocidal psychopath that hated gays and people that were religious. He personally oversaw the execution - murder - of thousands of innocent people that he regarded as undesirable or conflicting with his beliefs. Bloodthirsty, is the description he gave himself. He didn't start with democratic means, he started with sheer extreme violence. Che is one of the greatest villains of the last century.
  - angersock 15y ago
    It's a lot easier to have a united democracy when you start with a unified populace culled of undesirables, yeah? Sure, stacking the deck, but it can be made to work.
    - javert 15y ago
      Maybe this is satire, but this is utterly disgusting. but it can be made to work No it can't! The Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and Nazi Germany have proven that! How many more millions do you want to kill before you're convinced?
      - angersock 15y ago
        Disgusting, yes, but it follows reason. Cuba may or may not be as bad as you claim--go look at their life expectancies and number of doctors. The Soviet Union really seemed to run into issues when they'd integrated enough other nations to create a non-unified block; today Russia has the same issues with Chechnya. So, that underlines my point: uniform culture promotes strength. North Korea is a shitshow, but that has little to do with unification and more to do with abominable management. Nazi Germany... well, that's an interesting datapoint, right? Their government was most effective and popular support greatest when dissenting factions had been integrated. Germany is doing quite well nowadays, whereas when you look at the broader amalgamation of the EU you see strife and disagreement. From the standpoint of government, and democracy, it is a lot easier to govern/be governed by a homogeneous group than it is to handle dissenting views in an acceptable fashion. The fact that the US has done as well as it has--or the UK for that matter--without devolving to purges is quite impressive.
atakan_gurkan 15y ago
I am surprised that a normal distribution was used for the distribution of "leadership skills". I imagine this could be similar to income distribution which has fat tails. I wonder if the result would change if such a distribution was used.
- btilly 15y ago
  As long as you maintain the assumption that you cannot recognize relative abilities of better leaders than yourself, the result will remain the same. If you relax that assumption even slightly (thus you do not reliably recognize relative abilities, but you tend to prefer the better leader), then the conclusion will change dramatically. That is why this is a toy model. And people should not give it much weight.
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btilly 15y ago
This is what happens when one person writes an article, and another writes a link bait title. Here is the concise version. The well-known Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less competent people are, the less they are able to recognize competence. Someone named Mato Nagel used this as the basis of a toy computer model of democracy. The result of his simulations is that the leaders selected by democracy are only slightly above average. Of course there has been no testing of how accurate this model is. It is just a toy, and appropriate skepticism should be shown. However I wouldn't say that evidence is against particularly against his conclusion. For instance 3 of the 4 remaining Republican candidates for President actively disbelieve the scientific consensus on topics such as evolution and global warming. (The exception is Mitt Romney, and even he is not convinced enough about global warming to say that we should spend any money on the issue.) Conversely surveys of Democrats find that most fail to accept basic economic theory on a number of subjects. For instance economists broadly agree that rent control decreases the supply of rental housing, but in surveys the majority of Democrats think that this is wrong. I could start a debate by multiplying examples of widespread misconception on both sides, but these two are enough to support my point. My point is that it is easy to demonstrate that someone who actually understands and supports the best view of the world that experts from different fields have come to would be totally unelectable. That person might run the country very well, but will never, ever be selected by a democratic process.
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  Original article is less Yahoo! http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2191-people-smart-democracy.html http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2191-people-smart-democr...
  - flogic 15y ago
    I think that article might disprove it's own headline. If a single iteration of a simple simulated democracy tends to choose slightly better than average that may be all you need. A common theme among distributed systems is the parts don't need to be perfect to achieve a decent hill climbing effect. Real democracy has several elections. Nor do people as a whole consider only a single variable.
danmaz74 15y ago
Democracy isn't about selecting the "best leaders" - democracy is about self-determination and freedom.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  How is democracy not about selecting leaders?
  - danmaz74 15y ago
    Democracy means "rule of the people (demos)", and it was opposed to traditional Aristocracy, the "rule of the best (aristos)". Even if modern democracies are mostly representative, and not direct like the original Athenian democracy, they are still based not on the idea that we should elect "the best" leaders to make "the right" choices (as if there was an objective metric for any of the two), but on the idea that each citizen has the right of self determination even in collective matters - and that democracy (one head, one vote) is the best approximation of that. So, my point is that measuring democracy ("power to the people") against the purposes of aristocracy ("power to the best ones") is pretty misguided...
    - rbarooah 15y ago
      My point is simply that whatever the intentions, democracy has devolved to selecting leaders, and for the most part they aren't even representative. I'd say measuring the ideal instead of the reality isn't all that useful.
      - artsrc 15y ago
        Democracy is significantly about an expression of preference, rather than identification of quality. Think about it as voting for the dinner choices. It is not about finding the best chef, it is about getting Spaghetti Bolognese, because that is what you feel like tonight.
        deleted 15y ago
chernevik 15y ago
The point of electoral government is people's right to govern themselves, not the superiority of their decisions. In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self-government, not thwart it.
- newman314 15y ago
  That may have been the intent but the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive. Consequently, you lose unless you happen to be one of the few in charge.
  - chernevik 15y ago
    Consider the course of governments dedicated to "the poor" and you may see the problem. I'd also point out that the intrusions of our current government aren't motivated by their advantages for the rich.
    - newman314 15y ago
      Do you think people that fly on private jets go through the same process that most people do while flying commercial?
  - javert 15y ago
    the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate That's just not accurate at all. You can still go to college and "make it" into middle class America, even if you come from a poor background. You can also go the entrepreneurial route and make it into rich America. resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive. That is the case, but it results from cultural philosophy, not from "the rich dominating".
deleted 15y ago
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DirtyCalvinist 15y ago
"Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers." So we know incompetence even if we don't recognize competence. This appears to be good enough for government work.
popplebop 15y ago
>Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders." No. Democracy is the best form of government discovered so far because it allows voters to remove incompetent leaders and bad policies without violence. However competent a king or dictator is, most of his competence will be directed towards remaining in power through military force, rather than addressing his country's real problems. He cannot be removed without risking civil war, which is the worst kind. However incompetent a prime minister or president turns out to be, and however dull voters are, incompetence is easier to recognise than competence. Besides, one doesn't necessarily need to personally recognise it: one can be persuaded by other people. It's easier to reach agreement about things that aren't working.
darengb 15y ago
This is not a new idea, it's why almost nobody took Democracy seriously before the U.S. I like Jefferson's answer to this problem: "if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson Democracy is really the only reason that we have universal education in the first place. If the elite are forced to allow the people to make decisions, then they're going to make sure the people are educated enough not to do anything too dumb.
- artsrc 15y ago
  Indeed, the whole theory falls down on this point. In areas where people are generally competent, they can judge to skill of others and can select the best leaders.
benmmurphy 15y ago
as long as stupidness causes people to vote randomly instead of being biased towards bad policies then it isn't harmful to democracy. the stupid peoples votes will cancel each other out and just leave the smart peoples votes. you need research which shows that people are systematically biased towards bad policies.
cjoh 15y ago
This is 15 year old research, sensationalized in a headline to sell advertising on Yahoo. Which, I mean, if you think about it, is kind of ironic. Here's some good info on the Dunning-Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
orbitingpluto 15y ago
Critiques of this sort are incredibly daft. Just like you or I can't possibly read every EULA and privacy policy that pertains to us, an individual in a democracy can't even begin to have sufficient knowledge to make the correct choices. Most politicians never even read the bills they vote for! That imperfect knowledge will exist in every possible form of government. So, um, what's the argument? Are we arguing against scaling ignorance from small select groups to the population? The conclusion is, "Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders?" Aggregating responsibility to narrow (and possibly wilfully ignorant) self-interests is not a solution. Edited: removed references to a certain political candidate.
laic 15y ago
Democracy is not about choosing one "Great Leader" and everyone else just follow. If that was the case, we don't need the congress, the high court and free press. Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake in a way that everybody has a say. In a democratic system, "Great leader" or not, it really doesn't matter that much in the long run, we will always get there. What important is the system makes sure that "Great leader" won't have the power to destroy our civilization. On the other hand, "smart" leader may not always yield better outcome than an "average" leader. Complex policy from "expert" may bring more disaster than "no policy".
- GFischer 15y ago
  "Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake " Well, no. What you're describing is a Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic It's often confused because most democracies are also republics.
  - artsrc 15y ago
    A constitutional monarchy does all those things. And they are not republics, but can be democracies.
    - GFischer 15y ago
      True, I stand corrected :) . What I wanted to say is that the OP was describing a divison of powers as commonly seen in a Republic, it was not something inherent in a democracy.
  - derleth 15y ago
    All republics that actually are republics are democracies; true republican government is a form of democracy.
    - GFischer 15y ago
      All republics might be democracies, but not all democracies are republics, which was my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy http://lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html http://lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.h...
mhd 15y ago
"In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own." That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?
yaix 15y ago
>> Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders." Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway? Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy. The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.
maratd 15y ago
The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. Unfortunately, the researchers in question aren't intelligent enough to realize the best form of government is a mediocre one. A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.
gersh 15y ago
If 90% of the population randomly picks between two candidates and 10% makes an informed decision, the better candidate will win. If the most informed are also the most engaged via volunteering, donating, etc. their influence will be amplified.
dgreensp 15y ago
I see fallacy upon fallacy here. In reality, political systems are complex; there often is no objectively "right" or "best" answer; it's not about smart vs. dumb. Here are some other headlines we could run. > Neurons Aren't Smart Enough for Brains to Flourish The system as a whole either works or doesn't; the burden is not on each part. This is just an empty way to blame the parts for the functioning of the whole. > Investors Aren't Smart Enough for Good Companies to Flourish Maybe it feels that way sometimes (ha), but what is a "good" company or a "smart" investor? There are many kinds of investors, and they can make up their own mind how to spend their money. This is just an empty way to blame whoever is making the decisions for the outcomes; yet we could just as easily assume the decision-makers are doing the best they can, or even could do, depending on what we assume the goal (i.e. definition of "best") to be. > Movie Critics Aren't Smart Enough for Good Movies to Flourish Again, what makes a movie critic or a movie "smart" or "good"? Not that we don't each have our opinions about this, but it's not anything so objective as skill at tax accounting. More importantly, do movie critics even have that much influence in shaping what movies are made? We may be looking in the wrong place.
batista 15y ago
Democracy isn't about putting the BEST people in power, or taking the BEST decisions. It's about WHO choses what it's "the best". The majority should choose, period. Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want". Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide. Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.
- MetaMan 15y ago
  well said !
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Why should the majority always have power over minorities?
  - batista 15y ago
    Only in cases where you can't have it both ways. If the majority wants to build a bridge, and a minority doesn't, well, the majority gets their say. For one, this makes the most people (the "majority", nudge nudge) get what they want. For another, if it all comes down to raw power struggle, i.e hitting each other, the majority will win anyway. Voting is a way to ensure you get the above effect without the blood. Consider also that for different courses of action, what is a majority and what is a minority changes. You can be pro "more taxes" and a majority, and also pro "legalize marijuana" (and a minority at that --just an example, doesn't mean the maj/min it talks about is accurate).
    - rbarooah 15y ago
      You originally said 'the majority should choose period', not 'the majority should choose only in cases where you can't have it both ways'. If democracy somehow limited itself to cases where you can't have it both ways, that would be great. It doesn't.
joejohnson 15y ago
This is definitely true. Representative Democracy systems (and bodies like the Electoral College in the US) try to ameliorate the stupidity of the average voter, but ultimately add complexity and beauracracy to a simple idea (democracy). Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though). I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets. So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process. Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc. This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.
- joejohnson 15y ago
  I wish people would respond to this. Why did someone downvote me?
- derleth 15y ago
  So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Multiple reasons: 1. Because our ability to measure g (the general intelligence factor some psychologists think exists and others do not) is somewhere between marginal and nonexistent. Our attempts are better than they were but I don't know of anyone informed on the topic who would claim with a straight face that they're actually good. 2. Because intelligent people can be very, very wrong, and not just that, but wrong in more exciting ways than the average person. Libertarians tend to be intelligent, educated, and wrong about so many things it's barely worth debating them on politics or economics; doctrinaire Marxist Socialists are essentially the same way. 3. Because we're not starting from scratch, here; we're starting this system in an established political and social order, where opportunities for people to game this system as it's being born will be everywhere. If ensuring that my children have a berth on the deluxe class means redefining 'intelligence' to include them, I'll do it without looking back. Most people involved in politics now are like that, if not moreso. Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc. This is so biased towards a certain subculture I don't know where to begin. It's almost tailor-written to cater to middle-class and rich people, predominantly White and Asian, especially those who are not gay or transgender or otherwise going to be effectively locked out of certain preferred careers or lifestyles, such as the military or top-flight schools. It is, in short, precisely what you would implement to turn America into Brazil or the Soviet Union or China, where there is no vertical mobility and birth absolutely determines outcome. we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US I bring Russia, China, and most of Africa to your attention.
throughnothing 15y ago
This is just funny and ironic on so many levels. What exactly does it mean for Democracy to 'Flourish'? Does that mean that the 51% get to do whatever they want, and the 49% have to go along with it? The whole premise of the article seems to assume by default that Democracy is, somehow, a good form of government, and that if only people weren't so dumb, everyone would be happy under this tyrannical form of government. Democracy is, by definition, a system wherein the minority suffers at the whims of the majority -- mob rule, if you will. Most people seem to think the United States is a democracy, but it is actually (supposed to be) a Republic. Our elected officials are not (supposed to be) able to do whatever the majority wants at the expense of the minority, but rather their actions are strictly limited and restricted by the constitution so as to prevent the majority from violating the rights of the minority -- which is virtually always what results from a true democracy.
motters 15y ago
This is a very old argument against democracy. It's also divisive in the sense that you have the "competent" folks on one side and the "incompetent" ones on the other. Who decides who is "competent" to vote? About a century ago it was believed that women were not competent to vote. Before then it was thought that people who didn't own land couldn't possibly be responsible enough to vote. Also, there is no such thing as an objectively "best leader". That way lies tyranny and ruin. Democracy isn't about voting for candidates anyway. In general it's about having some say in decisions which affect your life, and as such I think it's still more of an aspiration than a reality.
rayiner 15y ago
"Democracy" is a fairly amorphous term. We don't have anything like a democracy in the United States. We have elements of democracy mixed with elements of republicanism mixed with elements of rule by a technocracy. Mediating all of these elements is a system of referees (the legal system) that is anything but democratic. If you look at how hard governance is, and how badly most countries do it, it's actually a pretty great system. Baroque, complex, inefficient, sure, but there is little to suggest that any system of governance for 300 million people would be anything other than those things.
robomartin 15y ago
Maybe it is becoming clear that the age of the generalist government is over. In science and industry the age of the generalist ended a long time ago. While it was, at one time, possible for someone to know almost literally all that there was to be known, that didn't last too long. Specialization in various fields led to significant improvements and progress within those fields. Could it be that a new form of government needs to emerge in this model? One where policy on a specific subject area is handled by those better equipped to understand it and, more importantly, with a good degree of isolation from others? Wouldn't it be better if, say, education policy was crafted in total isolation from the political goals of any party, special interest group or unions? Or how about energy policy? I firmly believe the basic premise of the article to be true: Most voters don't understand what the hell they are voting on. They are easily swayed by a barrage of numbers and pretend-facts and probably vote on what sounds good or believable far more so than what might have merit based on facts. Take the arguments on manufacturing, for example. Everyone from the President on down to Congress and GOP candidates are talking about bringing manufacturing back. Both parties at all level do it. Now, there are two possibilities here: One, they know the truth and realize that the masses might not be able to handle the truth. Or, they actually don't understand what's going on. Manufacturing, folks, isn't coming back to the US or Europe in massive numbers any time soon, if ever. The standard of living of the average manufacturing worker would have to be reduced to revolution-inspiring levels for this to happen. Environmental and worker safety laws would have to trashed by the thousands. Virtually all labor unions would have to be dissolved. And more. The loss of manufacturing jobs has taken place over sixty years of making the wrong decisions. This did not happen overnight. And this cannot be fixed overnight, if ever. Just try to manufacture a consumer good in the US and see how far you get. Sure, there are outliers that might buck the trend, but, for the most part, its a done deal: Mass manufacturing of consumer goods in the US is dead. Anyhow, I believe that voters do tend to vote people into office for entirely the wrong reasons. From religious groups to unions and special interest sectors. All seek to place puppets in office that will protect and further their interests. Virtually none --due to the nature of their egocentric focus-- act with the long term interest of the country in mind. Not an easy problem to solve as it would require a nearly complete change in the form of government we have known for so long. The problem is that the US Constitution does not provide for a mechanism through which these kinds of changes could be made. The only way is for a massive and very disruptive revolution to take place. This is unlikely to happen unless things get so bad that people are compelled to "take up arms against their oppressor". And, this is highly undesirable as well because it would probably result in half a century of uncertainty and turmoil before reaching a new stable state. And this takes us full circle to an inevitable conclusion: As much as we might hate the fact that the lunatics are running the asylum, it is probably the best option we have. The job, then, is to try to be as creative as possible in bringing issues to the masses in order to make it easy to understand what can sometimes be very complex. The day we elect politicians that, for example, laugh at the idea of rejecting something like the theory of evolution will be the day that we'll know that we are on the right path. That's because you'll have people in office that will be smart enough to consider evidence rather than indoctrinated ideological drones. This is a big topic.
rickmb 15y ago
Is this new? To offset this somewhat, many democracies have few to no directly elected officials, just elected representatives. Officials are then appointed by those representatives, to ensure a better process of vetting and appointing public officials. It's by far not a perfect solution (in fact, it sometimes leads to a serious democratic deficit), but it prevents ridiculous popularity contests like the US presidential elections.
praptak 15y ago
"The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas." This seems to overstate the actual results of the experiments. More here: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...
dimitar 15y ago
Democracy is flourishing when free elections occur. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy is not everything that is good about a state. Modern liberal democracies in Europe and North America also have traditions of rule of law, divisions of power, individual rights, collective rights, property protection, public education and welfare, etc., etc. Fareed Zakaria has written very interesting things about illiberal democracies and why democracies sometimes produce populists or repressive governments.
jshowa 15y ago
I've never consistently rated myself as "above average" on anything but a few things. Does that make my ignorance and knowing it half the battle?

116 points by pwg 15y ago

noonespecial 15y ago

Democracy isn't about putting the best people in power. Its about being able to get rid of the worst ones.

btilly 15y ago
Indeed this is what the article concludes. The last paragraph says, Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  A republic is all about establishing a reasonably strong mean, back to which a succession of various administrations tends to revert. Other forms of government allow for much higher variance. You might get a brilliant and benevolent monarch, for instance, but his son might turn out to be incompetent or tyrannical. In which case, sucks to be you. Hopefully the 30-year dice roll turns out better with the next heir.
afterburner 15y ago
I would go on to say that, IMO, the most important feature of a democracy is the periodic and orderly transfer of power every X years. Or, to put it another way, the ability to easily get rid of a leader.
- scarmig 15y ago
  Hmmm. The PRC seems to have this down. I'm not sure if that's a point against you or a point in the PRC's favor.
  - gaius 15y ago
    The PRC is democratic. They filter for eligibility to vote based on your membership standing in The Party.
  - afterburner 15y ago
    Does the general population get most of the say in terms of a) who is a candidate and b) the general election? Because I certainly think universal suffrage is extremely important, as well as open elections, and I don't mean to imply that I somehow support the kind of result you get in the PRC. Obviously a real democracy doesn't only have one party, for instance. I hardly made an exhaustive list of all the parameters of the kind of democracy I like, so try to exercise some judgment...
praxeologist 15y ago
That sounds nice, but put into practice is, at best, marginally effective. Democracy is actually quite good on a small scale without the element of compulsion, like your chess club or picking the most able-bodied man to lead the local volunteer fire co. People are both more familiar with the people being voted for and can see a payoff for voting. There's more chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polls in the US than of your individual vote mattering though. Democracy such as in US politics, in comparison, creates a perverse incentive structure where it is more often the most suave liars rising to the top. The millions spent on Super PACs or stroking the media is chump change compared such things as awarding gov't contracts or the power of politicians and unelected bureaucrats to shape industry-changing regulation. Can we vote out the worst ones? I guess, as long as we are talking about a more legitimate democracy than Russia or Venezuela. Still, even in the US people are going to elect pretty much the same thing every time they switch. There's very little difference between a Romney (or clones) and Obama. What needs "voted out" is democracy as a whole. I realize that this cuts to the core of most Americans' religious worship of democracy, but hopefully people can at least consider the options—I suggest libertarian anarchy—and educate themselves about some serious criticisms of the system we have. I suspect I am going to get more downvotes than coherent objections, but oh well. See Hans Herman Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed or Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
  Marx and Engels are a good place to start if you look for a comprehensive debate against capitalism. Of course, I would expect Adam Smith and his disertation to say something akin to "we've not seen 'real capitalism'".

pnathan 15y ago

One thing that I am reminded of in the current zeitgeist with respect to capitalism and democracy is the 1930s and its condemnation of democracy as outdated and how fascism was the progressive way forward.

rmc 15y ago
Interesting. Got a link?
- pnathan 15y ago
  Unfortunately not; the most recent book I read on the period was Gathering Storm, by W. S. Churchill (not the most unbiased observer, but very engaging reading).
synor 15y ago
Also, that time gave rise to the Technocracy Movement, which proposed an allegedly new way to run society other than by dictatorship or democracy.
- swalsh 15y ago
  From this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movemen... The idea of currency based on energy units is quite intriguing. It makes me wonder how our world would change.
sliverstorm 15y ago
It might actually be, but we won't find out any time soon. Nazi Germany put such a stain on fascism, it will be quite a while before it is taken seriously.

gaius 15y ago

The elephant in the corner of the room of course is that the ancient Athenians quite deliberately didn't have a universal franchise. Property-owning tax-paying full citizens who fulfilled their military obligations voted, because they were the ones that would pay for, implement and generally be responsible for whatever was voted for.

tlholaday 15y ago
And the property they owned included slaves, whose votes the owners did not want to count.
rmc 15y ago
This was the dominant form of voting in most democracies until about 100 years ago. E.g. in the UK, only men who owned property could vote (can't let the common man vote!). This didn't always produce a good democracy.
- gaius 15y ago
  Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." This is the one crucial defence of a restricted franchise - if the only people voting are the ones paying, they are much more resistant to this kind of corruption.
  - swalsh 15y ago
    His book is free on Amazon Prime by the way! http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1330972523&sr=8-3 http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7...
- javert 15y ago
  This didn't always produce a good democracy. Really? I think the British Empire was a high point in world history (for both the British and their colonies). So I don't see how your point is supported. That said, I think a constitutional republic is the right solution, not democracy.

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d4nt 15y ago

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Churchill, 1947 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#column_206 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...

Sthorpe 15y ago
I honestly think this is the best piece of rhetoric to keep our old system in place. The system is awful, but its the best we got. I'd prefer if we brought back our philosophers and started to have large debates on the writing of new law. We are to afraid to change our old old system. Depressing.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  The bigger problem is that the only folks who can improve the system(the people in charge), have an active self-interest not to do that since they are likely to lose power and influence with the changes. That's why the US Congress has an approval rating worse than herpes [1] and still most people will keep their jobs thanks to lack of reform, redistricting and gerrymandering by the only people who can fix it. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-failure/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-fa...
  - toyg 15y ago
    One of the best Italian artists of all time, Giorgio Gaber, said once that "Democracy is Participation", or "taking part". Check the number of active voters in the US at most levels: it's depressingly low. Low participation means less democracy, it's as simple as that. Most people thought it would have been impossible for a black man to be President of the United States of America, but for once "the people" thought differently, you got the highest turnout ever for a presidential race, and lo and behold, change happened (at least for that particular thing). Try to imagine how things would change if you could add another 10 or 20% to that 63% who elected a black President. Now repeat that at any level: Congress, State, City, even school board. All of a sudden you have a decisive element that can change majorities and express real power. The problem, of course, is that "taking part takes time". Politics is a very slow game, and most people have a life outside of politics, so they drop out (me included). Even voting every few years is a problem, if you can't afford to take a day off; most European countries recognize that, and vote over the weekend. I find the US stance on this incredibly maddening, and clearly a legacy from the dark times of slavery and "gentlemen" landowners who didn't have to work for a living. The problem, going forward, is how to give people the opportunity to take part more and more, while minimizing the time they have to spend in order to do so. One of them is having a good set of impartial media who can summarize honest arguments in a faithful way, providing different levels of analysis that don't contradict themselves. Another one might be some sort of collaborative service where people can contribute to the work of their representatives. Another might be a way of making representatives more accountable and in tune to the wishes of their electorate. And so on and so on... but nothing of this can happen unless we take part and move our ass, so to speak.

random_ind_dude 15y ago

David Dunning and Justin Kruger - aren't these the guys who proposed the idea now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect?

jcarreiro 15y ago
Yes. The new research builds on that work.

ez77 15y ago

It is anarchy that requires real smarts, not democracy.

shingen 15y ago

Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no. Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom. America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.

3pt14159 15y ago
What about Peter Thiel wanting to make a sea-based libertarian country that doesn't have a democracy because people arn't smart enough to keep it libertarian? (Granted, they could leave by relocating somewhere else, but that is true of most countries anyways.)
- shingen 15y ago
  Anytime someone lays out an argument by stating that some other group of people isn't intelligent enough to self govern, you should be suspicious of the character and intentions of the person making that argument. Whether that applies to Thiel or not I have no clue, I haven't seen all his statement on the libertarian colony proposal (I've just seen brief discussions on it).
  - dantheman 15y ago
    If, the 3pt14159 was referring to seasteading http://www.seasteading.org http://www.seasteading.org Then the entire purpose is to try and live in the absence of government through voluntary cooperation and nonaggression. It's unfortunate that an experiment like this cannot take place on land - no government will ever voluntarily cede control of land & people that it does not own. In general the theory is that current government functions can be better handled by the market. That is, police and justice can be better served when they are enforced through voluntary contracts. For instance, the war on drugs, abusive police, the TSA, and all sorts of other detrimental policies will be more difficult to maintain when the people are your customers.

3pt14159 15y ago

Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. From Ron Paul to Che, the entire spectrum says "no" to armed resistance until all democratic means are exhausted.

shingen 15y ago
Che? He was a genocidal psychopath that hated gays and people that were religious. He personally oversaw the execution - murder - of thousands of innocent people that he regarded as undesirable or conflicting with his beliefs. Bloodthirsty, is the description he gave himself. He didn't start with democratic means, he started with sheer extreme violence. Che is one of the greatest villains of the last century.
- angersock 15y ago
  It's a lot easier to have a united democracy when you start with a unified populace culled of undesirables, yeah? Sure, stacking the deck, but it can be made to work.
  - javert 15y ago
    Maybe this is satire, but this is utterly disgusting. but it can be made to work No it can't! The Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and Nazi Germany have proven that! How many more millions do you want to kill before you're convinced?
    - angersock 15y ago
      Disgusting, yes, but it follows reason. Cuba may or may not be as bad as you claim--go look at their life expectancies and number of doctors. The Soviet Union really seemed to run into issues when they'd integrated enough other nations to create a non-unified block; today Russia has the same issues with Chechnya. So, that underlines my point: uniform culture promotes strength. North Korea is a shitshow, but that has little to do with unification and more to do with abominable management. Nazi Germany... well, that's an interesting datapoint, right? Their government was most effective and popular support greatest when dissenting factions had been integrated. Germany is doing quite well nowadays, whereas when you look at the broader amalgamation of the EU you see strife and disagreement. From the standpoint of government, and democracy, it is a lot easier to govern/be governed by a homogeneous group than it is to handle dissenting views in an acceptable fashion. The fact that the US has done as well as it has--or the UK for that matter--without devolving to purges is quite impressive.

atakan_gurkan 15y ago

I am surprised that a normal distribution was used for the distribution of "leadership skills". I imagine this could be similar to income distribution which has fat tails. I wonder if the result would change if such a distribution was used.

btilly 15y ago
As long as you maintain the assumption that you cannot recognize relative abilities of better leaders than yourself, the result will remain the same. If you relax that assumption even slightly (thus you do not reliably recognize relative abilities, but you tend to prefer the better leader), then the conclusion will change dramatically. That is why this is a toy model. And people should not give it much weight.

deleted 15y ago

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btilly 15y ago

This is what happens when one person writes an article, and another writes a link bait title. Here is the concise version. The well-known Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less competent people are, the less they are able to recognize competence. Someone named Mato Nagel used this as the basis of a toy computer model of democracy. The result of his simulations is that the leaders selected by democracy are only slightly above average. Of course there has been no testing of how accurate this model is. It is just a toy, and appropriate skepticism should be shown. However I wouldn't say that evidence is against particularly against his conclusion. For instance 3 of the 4 remaining Republican candidates for President actively disbelieve the scientific consensus on topics such as evolution and global warming. (The exception is Mitt Romney, and even he is not convinced enough about global warming to say that we should spend any money on the issue.) Conversely surveys of Democrats find that most fail to accept basic economic theory on a number of subjects. For instance economists broadly agree that rent control decreases the supply of rental housing, but in surveys the majority of Democrats think that this is wrong. I could start a debate by multiplying examples of widespread misconception on both sides, but these two are enough to support my point. My point is that it is easy to demonstrate that someone who actually understands and supports the best view of the world that experts from different fields have come to would be totally unelectable. That person might run the country very well, but will never, ever be selected by a democratic process.

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
Original article is less Yahoo! http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2191-people-smart-democracy.html http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2191-people-smart-democr...
- flogic 15y ago
  I think that article might disprove it's own headline. If a single iteration of a simple simulated democracy tends to choose slightly better than average that may be all you need. A common theme among distributed systems is the parts don't need to be perfect to achieve a decent hill climbing effect. Real democracy has several elections. Nor do people as a whole consider only a single variable.

danmaz74 15y ago

Democracy isn't about selecting the "best leaders" - democracy is about self-determination and freedom.

rbarooah 15y ago
How is democracy not about selecting leaders?
- danmaz74 15y ago
  Democracy means "rule of the people (demos)", and it was opposed to traditional Aristocracy, the "rule of the best (aristos)". Even if modern democracies are mostly representative, and not direct like the original Athenian democracy, they are still based not on the idea that we should elect "the best" leaders to make "the right" choices (as if there was an objective metric for any of the two), but on the idea that each citizen has the right of self determination even in collective matters - and that democracy (one head, one vote) is the best approximation of that. So, my point is that measuring democracy ("power to the people") against the purposes of aristocracy ("power to the best ones") is pretty misguided...
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    My point is simply that whatever the intentions, democracy has devolved to selecting leaders, and for the most part they aren't even representative. I'd say measuring the ideal instead of the reality isn't all that useful.
    - artsrc 15y ago
      Democracy is significantly about an expression of preference, rather than identification of quality. Think about it as voting for the dinner choices. It is not about finding the best chef, it is about getting Spaghetti Bolognese, because that is what you feel like tonight.
      - deleted 15y ago

chernevik 15y ago

The point of electoral government is people's right to govern themselves, not the superiority of their decisions. In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self-government, not thwart it.

newman314 15y ago
That may have been the intent but the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive. Consequently, you lose unless you happen to be one of the few in charge.
- chernevik 15y ago
  Consider the course of governments dedicated to "the poor" and you may see the problem. I'd also point out that the intrusions of our current government aren't motivated by their advantages for the rich.
  - newman314 15y ago
    Do you think people that fly on private jets go through the same process that most people do while flying commercial?
- javert 15y ago
  the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate That's just not accurate at all. You can still go to college and "make it" into middle class America, even if you come from a poor background. You can also go the entrepreneurial route and make it into rich America. resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive. That is the case, but it results from cultural philosophy, not from "the rich dominating".

deleted 15y ago

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DirtyCalvinist 15y ago

"Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers." So we know incompetence even if we don't recognize competence. This appears to be good enough for government work.

popplebop 15y ago

>Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders." No. Democracy is the best form of government discovered so far because it allows voters to remove incompetent leaders and bad policies without violence. However competent a king or dictator is, most of his competence will be directed towards remaining in power through military force, rather than addressing his country's real problems. He cannot be removed without risking civil war, which is the worst kind. However incompetent a prime minister or president turns out to be, and however dull voters are, incompetence is easier to recognise than competence. Besides, one doesn't necessarily need to personally recognise it: one can be persuaded by other people. It's easier to reach agreement about things that aren't working.

darengb 15y ago

This is not a new idea, it's why almost nobody took Democracy seriously before the U.S. I like Jefferson's answer to this problem: "if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson Democracy is really the only reason that we have universal education in the first place. If the elite are forced to allow the people to make decisions, then they're going to make sure the people are educated enough not to do anything too dumb.

artsrc 15y ago
Indeed, the whole theory falls down on this point. In areas where people are generally competent, they can judge to skill of others and can select the best leaders.

benmmurphy 15y ago

as long as stupidness causes people to vote randomly instead of being biased towards bad policies then it isn't harmful to democracy. the stupid peoples votes will cancel each other out and just leave the smart peoples votes. you need research which shows that people are systematically biased towards bad policies.

cjoh 15y ago

This is 15 year old research, sensationalized in a headline to sell advertising on Yahoo. Which, I mean, if you think about it, is kind of ironic. Here's some good info on the Dunning-Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

orbitingpluto 15y ago

Critiques of this sort are incredibly daft. Just like you or I can't possibly read every EULA and privacy policy that pertains to us, an individual in a democracy can't even begin to have sufficient knowledge to make the correct choices. Most politicians never even read the bills they vote for! That imperfect knowledge will exist in every possible form of government. So, um, what's the argument? Are we arguing against scaling ignorance from small select groups to the population? The conclusion is, "Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders?" Aggregating responsibility to narrow (and possibly wilfully ignorant) self-interests is not a solution. Edited: removed references to a certain political candidate.

laic 15y ago

Democracy is not about choosing one "Great Leader" and everyone else just follow. If that was the case, we don't need the congress, the high court and free press. Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake in a way that everybody has a say. In a democratic system, "Great leader" or not, it really doesn't matter that much in the long run, we will always get there. What important is the system makes sure that "Great leader" won't have the power to destroy our civilization. On the other hand, "smart" leader may not always yield better outcome than an "average" leader. Complex policy from "expert" may bring more disaster than "no policy".

GFischer 15y ago
"Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake " Well, no. What you're describing is a Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic It's often confused because most democracies are also republics.
- artsrc 15y ago
  A constitutional monarchy does all those things. And they are not republics, but can be democracies.
  - GFischer 15y ago
    True, I stand corrected :) . What I wanted to say is that the OP was describing a divison of powers as commonly seen in a Republic, it was not something inherent in a democracy.
- derleth 15y ago
  All republics that actually are republics are democracies; true republican government is a form of democracy.
  - GFischer 15y ago
    All republics might be democracies, but not all democracies are republics, which was my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy http://lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html http://lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.h...

mhd 15y ago

"In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own." That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?

yaix 15y ago

>> Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders." Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway? Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy. The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.

maratd 15y ago

The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. Unfortunately, the researchers in question aren't intelligent enough to realize the best form of government is a mediocre one. A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

gersh 15y ago

If 90% of the population randomly picks between two candidates and 10% makes an informed decision, the better candidate will win. If the most informed are also the most engaged via volunteering, donating, etc. their influence will be amplified.

dgreensp 15y ago

I see fallacy upon fallacy here. In reality, political systems are complex; there often is no objectively "right" or "best" answer; it's not about smart vs. dumb. Here are some other headlines we could run. > Neurons Aren't Smart Enough for Brains to Flourish The system as a whole either works or doesn't; the burden is not on each part. This is just an empty way to blame the parts for the functioning of the whole. > Investors Aren't Smart Enough for Good Companies to Flourish Maybe it feels that way sometimes (ha), but what is a "good" company or a "smart" investor? There are many kinds of investors, and they can make up their own mind how to spend their money. This is just an empty way to blame whoever is making the decisions for the outcomes; yet we could just as easily assume the decision-makers are doing the best they can, or even could do, depending on what we assume the goal (i.e. definition of "best") to be. > Movie Critics Aren't Smart Enough for Good Movies to Flourish Again, what makes a movie critic or a movie "smart" or "good"? Not that we don't each have our opinions about this, but it's not anything so objective as skill at tax accounting. More importantly, do movie critics even have that much influence in shaping what movies are made? We may be looking in the wrong place.

batista 15y ago

Democracy isn't about putting the BEST people in power, or taking the BEST decisions. It's about WHO choses what it's "the best". The majority should choose, period. Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want". Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide. Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.

MetaMan 15y ago
well said !
rbarooah 15y ago
Why should the majority always have power over minorities?
- batista 15y ago
  Only in cases where you can't have it both ways. If the majority wants to build a bridge, and a minority doesn't, well, the majority gets their say. For one, this makes the most people (the "majority", nudge nudge) get what they want. For another, if it all comes down to raw power struggle, i.e hitting each other, the majority will win anyway. Voting is a way to ensure you get the above effect without the blood. Consider also that for different courses of action, what is a majority and what is a minority changes. You can be pro "more taxes" and a majority, and also pro "legalize marijuana" (and a minority at that --just an example, doesn't mean the maj/min it talks about is accurate).
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    You originally said 'the majority should choose period', not 'the majority should choose only in cases where you can't have it both ways'. If democracy somehow limited itself to cases where you can't have it both ways, that would be great. It doesn't.

joejohnson 15y ago

This is definitely true. Representative Democracy systems (and bodies like the Electoral College in the US) try to ameliorate the stupidity of the average voter, but ultimately add complexity and beauracracy to a simple idea (democracy). Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though). I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets. So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process. Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc. This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.

joejohnson 15y ago
I wish people would respond to this. Why did someone downvote me?
derleth 15y ago
So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Multiple reasons: 1. Because our ability to measure g (the general intelligence factor some psychologists think exists and others do not) is somewhere between marginal and nonexistent. Our attempts are better than they were but I don't know of anyone informed on the topic who would claim with a straight face that they're actually good. 2. Because intelligent people can be very, very wrong, and not just that, but wrong in more exciting ways than the average person. Libertarians tend to be intelligent, educated, and wrong about so many things it's barely worth debating them on politics or economics; doctrinaire Marxist Socialists are essentially the same way. 3. Because we're not starting from scratch, here; we're starting this system in an established political and social order, where opportunities for people to game this system as it's being born will be everywhere. If ensuring that my children have a berth on the deluxe class means redefining 'intelligence' to include them, I'll do it without looking back. Most people involved in politics now are like that, if not moreso. Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc. This is so biased towards a certain subculture I don't know where to begin. It's almost tailor-written to cater to middle-class and rich people, predominantly White and Asian, especially those who are not gay or transgender or otherwise going to be effectively locked out of certain preferred careers or lifestyles, such as the military or top-flight schools. It is, in short, precisely what you would implement to turn America into Brazil or the Soviet Union or China, where there is no vertical mobility and birth absolutely determines outcome. we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US I bring Russia, China, and most of Africa to your attention.

throughnothing 15y ago

This is just funny and ironic on so many levels. What exactly does it mean for Democracy to 'Flourish'? Does that mean that the 51% get to do whatever they want, and the 49% have to go along with it? The whole premise of the article seems to assume by default that Democracy is, somehow, a good form of government, and that if only people weren't so dumb, everyone would be happy under this tyrannical form of government. Democracy is, by definition, a system wherein the minority suffers at the whims of the majority -- mob rule, if you will. Most people seem to think the United States is a democracy, but it is actually (supposed to be) a Republic. Our elected officials are not (supposed to be) able to do whatever the majority wants at the expense of the minority, but rather their actions are strictly limited and restricted by the constitution so as to prevent the majority from violating the rights of the minority -- which is virtually always what results from a true democracy.

motters 15y ago

This is a very old argument against democracy. It's also divisive in the sense that you have the "competent" folks on one side and the "incompetent" ones on the other. Who decides who is "competent" to vote? About a century ago it was believed that women were not competent to vote. Before then it was thought that people who didn't own land couldn't possibly be responsible enough to vote. Also, there is no such thing as an objectively "best leader". That way lies tyranny and ruin. Democracy isn't about voting for candidates anyway. In general it's about having some say in decisions which affect your life, and as such I think it's still more of an aspiration than a reality.

rayiner 15y ago

"Democracy" is a fairly amorphous term. We don't have anything like a democracy in the United States. We have elements of democracy mixed with elements of republicanism mixed with elements of rule by a technocracy. Mediating all of these elements is a system of referees (the legal system) that is anything but democratic. If you look at how hard governance is, and how badly most countries do it, it's actually a pretty great system. Baroque, complex, inefficient, sure, but there is little to suggest that any system of governance for 300 million people would be anything other than those things.

robomartin 15y ago

Maybe it is becoming clear that the age of the generalist government is over. In science and industry the age of the generalist ended a long time ago. While it was, at one time, possible for someone to know almost literally all that there was to be known, that didn't last too long. Specialization in various fields led to significant improvements and progress within those fields. Could it be that a new form of government needs to emerge in this model? One where policy on a specific subject area is handled by those better equipped to understand it and, more importantly, with a good degree of isolation from others? Wouldn't it be better if, say, education policy was crafted in total isolation from the political goals of any party, special interest group or unions? Or how about energy policy? I firmly believe the basic premise of the article to be true: Most voters don't understand what the hell they are voting on. They are easily swayed by a barrage of numbers and pretend-facts and probably vote on what sounds good or believable far more so than what might have merit based on facts. Take the arguments on manufacturing, for example. Everyone from the President on down to Congress and GOP candidates are talking about bringing manufacturing back. Both parties at all level do it. Now, there are two possibilities here: One, they know the truth and realize that the masses might not be able to handle the truth. Or, they actually don't understand what's going on. Manufacturing, folks, isn't coming back to the US or Europe in massive numbers any time soon, if ever. The standard of living of the average manufacturing worker would have to be reduced to revolution-inspiring levels for this to happen. Environmental and worker safety laws would have to trashed by the thousands. Virtually all labor unions would have to be dissolved. And more. The loss of manufacturing jobs has taken place over sixty years of making the wrong decisions. This did not happen overnight. And this cannot be fixed overnight, if ever. Just try to manufacture a consumer good in the US and see how far you get. Sure, there are outliers that might buck the trend, but, for the most part, its a done deal: Mass manufacturing of consumer goods in the US is dead. Anyhow, I believe that voters do tend to vote people into office for entirely the wrong reasons. From religious groups to unions and special interest sectors. All seek to place puppets in office that will protect and further their interests. Virtually none --due to the nature of their egocentric focus-- act with the long term interest of the country in mind. Not an easy problem to solve as it would require a nearly complete change in the form of government we have known for so long. The problem is that the US Constitution does not provide for a mechanism through which these kinds of changes could be made. The only way is for a massive and very disruptive revolution to take place. This is unlikely to happen unless things get so bad that people are compelled to "take up arms against their oppressor". And, this is highly undesirable as well because it would probably result in half a century of uncertainty and turmoil before reaching a new stable state. And this takes us full circle to an inevitable conclusion: As much as we might hate the fact that the lunatics are running the asylum, it is probably the best option we have. The job, then, is to try to be as creative as possible in bringing issues to the masses in order to make it easy to understand what can sometimes be very complex. The day we elect politicians that, for example, laugh at the idea of rejecting something like the theory of evolution will be the day that we'll know that we are on the right path. That's because you'll have people in office that will be smart enough to consider evidence rather than indoctrinated ideological drones. This is a big topic.

rickmb 15y ago

Is this new? To offset this somewhat, many democracies have few to no directly elected officials, just elected representatives. Officials are then appointed by those representatives, to ensure a better process of vetting and appointing public officials. It's by far not a perfect solution (in fact, it sometimes leads to a serious democratic deficit), but it prevents ridiculous popularity contests like the US presidential elections.

praptak 15y ago

"The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas." This seems to overstate the actual results of the experiments. More here: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...

dimitar 15y ago

Democracy is flourishing when free elections occur. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy is not everything that is good about a state. Modern liberal democracies in Europe and North America also have traditions of rule of law, divisions of power, individual rights, collective rights, property protection, public education and welfare, etc., etc. Fareed Zakaria has written very interesting things about illiberal democracies and why democracies sometimes produce populists or repressive governments.

jshowa 15y ago

I've never consistently rated myself as "above average" on anything but a few things. Does that make my ignorance and knowing it half the battle?