Democracy, instead, requires treating people as citizens – that is, as adults capable of thoughtful decisions and moral actions, rather than as children who need to be manipulated. One way to treat people as citizens is to entrust them with meaningful opportunities to participate in the political process, rather than just as beings who might show up to vote for leaders every few years.
Yeah.... the trouble is, that really doesn't seem to actually work.
Every day, people demonstrate that they are capable of learning. People master new languages, earn degrees, move to new cities, train for jobs, and navigate the complexities of modern life... People study things that they care about and where knowledge helps them to accomplish things.
Yeah, but I'm forced to ask, "has the author met people ?". Because cherry-picking examples of good things people do is nice, but ignores the fact that people do Bloody Stupid things on a regular basis too.
Last summer, I served on a grand jury in Westchester County in New York State.... Everyone in the jury took their responsibilities seriously, following the district attorney’s directions, asking questions of witnesses, participating in the deliberations, and voting...
Anecdotes are not evidence.
Of course, the ‘best and the brightest’ led the US into the Iraq War, the subprime mortgage crisis, and a raft of bad education policies; the track record of epistocracy in recent years is, at best, mixed.
Let's just ignore all the scientific advances then. Or the fact that people are really quite bad at selecting capable leaders, which gives me little confidence that they have much hope of understanding complex economic issues (or would want to). They have ample opportunity to learn about who they're voting for, but they still insist on making insane choices. If they can't even do that, what hope is there that they'd be more capable about direct decision making ? Not to mention recent disasters when they were actually given such a direct choice.
No, I'm afraid this whole thing is an oversimplification. Giving people more power isn't a magic bullet to make them educate themselves.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-rule-by-the-people-is-better-than-rule-by-the-experts
The people we elect are not the "best and brightest" at all, we elect the people who are good at winning FPTP elections. Which is not a transferable skill to running a country. Rather the opposite.
ReplyDeleteDemocracy sucks. I thought that even before the referendum last year. Some kind of aptitude test before letting people into the polls seems like an increasingly good idea. An actual, enforced epistocracy rather than this author's imagined one.
As George Carlin said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
My point exactly. They're also far too vulnerable to manipulation. They aren't going to become less vulnerable merely by giving them more responsibility.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do think that more local government where people have more say on issues might help, but only under the right circumstances. In principle, it would help people understand that their actions have consequences and that they've got to vote on the frickin' issue on the agenda, not on whichever political party they like best (as in the AV referendum). Minor, reversible inconveniences which cause annoyance before building up to bigger decisions.
It won't help by itself though; it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. You have to give people enough time to properly research an issue, education in critical thinking skills (some things come naturally, but others have to be explicitly taught rather than through life-lessons), a reasonably impartial media, etc. Nobody is capable of making sensible decisions without all of those criteria, no matter their innate intelligence.
I agree that more active local stuff would be good but it's not like local government is particularly inaccessible as it is. My wife works for the local authority and they're constantly running consultations and so on, rarely do many people bother. Anyone can go to a council meeting and have an opinion, try to convince some councillors. They can even run for a seat on that council (or on their parish council). But people don't. I have a friend who is active on my local parish council and he says it's overrun by old, stuffy people - and he's in his 70s so what he considers old I don't know! Whether people just don't have time or don't care, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteThe best I've been able to come up with to force the issue after several years of thinking vaguely about it is a change in the way ballots are drawn. They shouldn't have party or candidate names on them, just a random letter/number. With polling cards you get a couple of pages of plainly-printed paper where each candidate lays out their policies (still no names). Everyone is allowed, say, two pages. No graphics, same typeface for everyone. No party names. Pick the policies you like and then vote for that letter/number.
Then, if people want to know where to make their mark, they have to read the policy statements and decide which letter best represents them. If people can't be arsed to read and digest a few pages and make a (very slightly) informed decision then they can just not vote.
Ideally, candidates/parties not following through with the policies would be grounds for a recall.
Rhys Taylor re: trouble with voters
ReplyDeletehttp://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewar.php#nightwatch
Robert Heinlein had an amusing article about the problem with voting. He showed that you had to restrict voting privileges to informed thinking people.
ReplyDeleteThen showed half a dozen methods of limitations, and how each method had fundamental flaws.
Winchell Chung - every method of restricting voters has it's flaws but the question is whether those flaws are more or less flawed than just letting anyone near the polls.
ReplyDeleteI might argue that's the worst option.
A quiz is something I've been half-jokingly suggesting for a while. But I like very much the idea of only letting people vote by reading anonymised statements (would also work fine using unknown actors reading aloud for the blind or dyslexic) - it removes the difficulty as to who marks the questionnaires. It also doesn't prevent people from working out which statement is by which party - if they've been paying attention to the campaign, this will be easy - so their decisions will still be influenced by who they trust as well as what they say.
ReplyDeletePerhaps after reading the statements, the voter could be required to identify each party. If they get the wrong answer, their vote could be rejected.
ReplyDeleteWinchell Chung I'll counter that Pratchett quote with Senator Gracchus from Gladiator :
ReplyDeleteI don't pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.
My ideal politician would care roughly equally about both what the people want and what the people need. Where the two closely matched, they would deliver, so far as possible, what the people want. Where the two were in conflict they would deliver what the people need, but persuade them that that's what they want. Politicians who ignore people's feeling completely are every bit as bad as those who think the people are always right.
What we actually have are politicians who tend to say and/or do whatever's necessary to win the next election. Which is not at all the same as really caring about the people at all, be it of their wants or needs.
I sign numerous petitions just about every week. I also send letters to my senators, representatives, governor, etc on important issues to indicate my stance on various issues and why I take that stance. Participation is important. I'd say at least monthly for the average citizen.
ReplyDelete