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If I may attempt some supplemental notes to your reply: What I took out of the puff piece (it's really a book advertisement, which if you need a quick heuristi

If I may attempt some supplemental notes to your reply: What I took out of the puff piece (it's really a book advertisement, which if you need a quick heuristic, features a herd of sheep on its cover - something I instantly view as at best landing it in "pop science / economics / sociology done badly") is that they offered an incentive to game the system. The author is attempting to make a 'free market' tragedy of the commons argument to suggest that voters should be given incentives to vote. The problem is two fold: #1 Voters already have these incentives, but are informed by others (who certainly don't have altruistic goals) that these do not exist[1] #2 Democracy, in America (arguably everywhere), is already driven by this mechanism, just not at the level that the author is addressing. It is called Lobbying. To use a quick metaphor, you pay to set the questions people get to vote on - this shouldn't be news to anyone with a moderate or above political understanding. As for the WMD claims, beyond the simplistic level of common media, the question of Iraq's ownership of chemical weapons was never in doubt (the USA, France and so on sold them to Saddam / provided the engineering expertise to build them), it was whether or not Saddam was a) building more, b) reducing stockpiles and c) willing to use them ever again. Hans Blix was on record[2] as stating that Saddam was obviously not attempting a and c, and was attempting b[2].Thus, again, the people setting the question didn't like this conclusion, so re-framed the question as widely as possible to be proven correct. A much more interesting question over all of this is how to separate beliefs from politics, or at the very least maximize the scientific basis for informed participation in society. And that's not going to be solved by a book with a picture of sheep on the cover. [1]It's called "living in a society", fire, police, health services etc which I realize will not be popular with a Libertarian readership. [2]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7051059/Hans-Blix-warned-Tony-Blair-Iraq-might-not-have-WMD.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/70... - this is a right-wing source

yummyfajitas 13y ago
Voters have no incentive to vote correctly. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is so fantastically small (read: too small to be represented by a double precision floating point) as to be irrelevant.
- lukifer 13y ago
  From where I sit, voters have precisely one concrete incentive beyond vague feel-goodery: bragging rights. (Granted, people can and do bullshit about how/if they voted, but that's a minority case.)
- specialist 13y ago
  In my jurisdiction, there's a mandatory manual recount triggered by a close result every single general election. If you think your vote doesn't matter, you haven't been paying attention.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    I should have clarified that what I said holds for national or state elections.
- zwegner 13y ago
  While I agree with the spirit of your post, doubles can represent numbers far, far smaller than that. They can represent the probability of two people randomly choosing four atoms out of the entire universe, and each picking the same four atoms.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Crunch the numbers with some reasonable estimates - you'll find that the probability of two people picking the same atoms is considerably more than the probability of one vote mattering.
- Helpful_Bunny 13y ago
  This is probably true at the National level; however on individual State / local government levels this isn't true at all. You can argue that the original tripartite division of US government doesn't scale to modern population levels, but your argument is otherwise extremely weak.
wcbeard10 13y ago
> And that's not going to be solved by a book with a picture of sheep on the cover. Attacking a book by its cover?
- Helpful_Bunny 13y ago
  Are you unaware of the "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" meme? Suggesting that voters (or "the masses", or "the proletariat") are a flock of dumb animals that need herding / shepherding is as old as the hills. Either you're unaware of this, or don't find it problematic. I find the latter to be less edifying than the former.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

Voters have no incentive to vote correctly. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is so fantastically small (read: too small to be represented by a double precision floating point) as to be irrelevant.

lukifer 13y ago
From where I sit, voters have precisely one concrete incentive beyond vague feel-goodery: bragging rights. (Granted, people can and do bullshit about how/if they voted, but that's a minority case.)
specialist 13y ago
In my jurisdiction, there's a mandatory manual recount triggered by a close result every single general election. If you think your vote doesn't matter, you haven't been paying attention.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  I should have clarified that what I said holds for national or state elections.
zwegner 13y ago
While I agree with the spirit of your post, doubles can represent numbers far, far smaller than that. They can represent the probability of two people randomly choosing four atoms out of the entire universe, and each picking the same four atoms.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Crunch the numbers with some reasonable estimates - you'll find that the probability of two people picking the same atoms is considerably more than the probability of one vote mattering.
Helpful_Bunny 13y ago
This is probably true at the National level; however on individual State / local government levels this isn't true at all. You can argue that the original tripartite division of US government doesn't scale to modern population levels, but your argument is otherwise extremely weak.

wcbeard10 13y ago

> And that's not going to be solved by a book with a picture of sheep on the cover. Attacking a book by its cover?

Helpful_Bunny 13y ago
Are you unaware of the "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" meme? Suggesting that voters (or "the masses", or "the proletariat") are a flock of dumb animals that need herding / shepherding is as old as the hills. Either you're unaware of this, or don't find it problematic. I find the latter to be less edifying than the former.