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Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish
cold fjord writes "The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot. But, what happens when you apply that finding to politics? From the article: 'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. 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. The research shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments...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."'"
Can somebody explain to me what they mean by "not smart enough"?
"Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they 'effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders.''"
I would still say that's a plus.
"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."
Emotions! In your brain!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_Republic
@ picking dictators either.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
I think a properly enforced constitutional republic really does beat democracy. It has some built in safeguards for this form of idiocy, unfortunately we've more or less proven we can vote and ignore our way around the safeguards.
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Actually, that's just for the choice of leaders.
IMHO the real advantage functioning democracies have are in the balances and checks on those leaders' powers. Because basically you're not better off with a genius leader, if he only uses that genius just to get more power for himself and suppress any possible threats to his rule. And those balances and checks tend to be the first to go in a dictatorship.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Alexis de Tocqueville pretty much summed up the problem with democracy: "A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
That is one of the reasons why the founders of the United States wisely chose a republican form of government instead of a democracy (neither to be confused with the political parties we have in the USA today).
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
Representative Republics FTW!
Instead of that why not just give the power to the top 1% of people based on finances. ...oh wait....
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We just want more funding for our research... why can't people see how important it is!
This is my sig.
Top 1% by IQ or by merit?
Emotions! In your brain!
People tell scientists that they are not smart enough to understand the definition of "democracy".
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
"Democracy" is not smart enough for people to flourish
The best quote I've heard is that true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin).
...don't work in mental institutions.
Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions.
NOFX - The Idiots are taking over
I wonder which of the two candidates the people who did this study will vote for.
Democracy is the majority imposing its will on the minority. It is forced obedience, and it's inherently unjust.
Churchill only said what he said because he didn't live long enough to see the rise of modern Corporatocracy, which is the new worst form of government other than the ones who came before it, including democracy!
are they making a case for eugenics or eliminating democracy?
"incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people"
Not sure why it took "research" to understand this. I thought everyone knew this.
Just because the majority says something is correct/true does not mean it actually is.
Whoo I'm gettin' logic in your politics!
Sure there are dumb people voting, but who's better at manipulating dumb people than smart people?
effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders
uh what? lower-than-average in what?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the politicians have an agenda filled full of self interest, yet can lie to your face with out giving away anything, then there is nothing that a voter can do to better the system. You could vote people out based on previous actions, but the incoming politicians are just as likely to have their own agenda.
Yes I am being cynical, but I see very few politicians that don't have an obvious agenda based on self interest. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "Those that want to be in control shouldn't be allowed to".
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
In every election there are candidates who tells the voters they can have their cake and eat it to: tax cuts without spending cuts.
They used to argue that the tax cuts would stimulate the economy thus producing this magic, without any reference to the boundaries and degree of this effect. That didn't work and now most politicians don't even bother trying to explain the fact that their promises don't add it.
The very first democracy, ancient Athens, quickly turned into an Evil Empire.
Sill, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". An enlightened/benevolent monarch would be great, but there's no way to ensure the enlightenment and benevolence. Look what happened when Marcus Arelius made his son the next emperor. (And a million other examples.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Everything old is new again I see. Monarchies, theocracies, feudalism, etc. are based on the presumption that the "commoner" is incapable of ruling her/himself and that it is the holy privilege of a select few to rule.
Bullshit.
People are more educated, more connected, more aware of society on a large scale than ever before. Now is the time to have more democracy, not less. Eliminate the electoral college system so that voters outside of Iowa, California, and Florida get to decide national elections. Have more binding referendums and propositions so that people aren't stuck voting on which guy or gal in their town looks best in a suit but on actual issues that affect their lives.
Sure, voters don't research candidates and issues as much as we'd like and it would be great to have more scientists, engineers, and doctors running for office rather than lawyers and CEO's. That's idealism. To say that people simply aren't smart enough to govern themselves is elitist, bordering on fascist. I would rather be ruled by the collective will of a population with an 8th grade average literacy rate than the singular will of a man who happened to be born into the "right" family.
majority does not rule here, it takes 2/3 and sometimes 3/4 of a house of congress to pass a law
there have always been issues between large and small states and rich urban states and poor agricultural/industrial ones. the US government is set up to work around this
Is a ruling group of the intelligent, progressive elites to form a ruling body that makes the correct decisions for the rest of us.
Drop this direct or representative democracy stuff.
We could call the ruling body the politburo or something?
What makes you think that our "leaders" are smart enough to govern everybody?
When the media tells us only what they want us to know, and candidates and politicians lie to us, it's no wonder democracy is failing. Too much dishonesty and fraud. Just look at the elections in Russia, it's all fixed. People aren't stupid, they are just being lied to.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
People seem to miss the point about Democracy, citing it as the best form of government. The actual definition, and the reason it was selected for the fledgling nation of the United States, is that is was the "least bad" form of government. Aristotle defined 3 types, and therefore 6 variants of government. The best, and the worst, are single person rule - a good, just and benevolent ruler can accomplish the most good as he has the fewest obstacles to enacting his decisions, a dictator or tyrant can do the most harm for the same reason. The secong "best" and second "worst" are rule by a small percentage of the population, as in an aristocracy - it is less efficient, both for good or bad, in that it requires getting concensus or at least a majority of the few to agree to enact a decision. The least good, and least bad, based on the effort needed to get anything enacted or done is rule my the majority of the people through voting/acclaimation/concensus, enacted through representatives. This is the hardest to enact a good policy, but also the hardest to get a bad policy enacted as well. The founding fathers determined that a government that could do the least to run people's lives based on the effort necessary to enact the laws and policies necessary would offer the greatest protection from the actions of that government in any negative way. They also apparently hoped and trusted that people would be intelligent enough to favor good policy when they heard it. Most interesting in the aristotle-defined definition of types of government is this ; the word we selected to define our chosen form is the one he used to define government by the people at its worst - A good "public" government was in his terms, a "Polity" - a bad one was a "Democracy"
..and precisely how much of my hard-earned tax dollars went into this blindingly obvious conclusion?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You got 7 responses and none of them actually answer the question. They mean specifically that people cannot identify experts in the area of economics and leadership when tested. That's a pretty crippling problem, and worth discussion, even if the headline doesn't identify with enough precision the real problem(irony?).
Here You assume 100% participation...
It usually is one interest group getting a strategic alliance with some other interest groups, thereby getting themselves a majority of votes. Now the interest groups that each individually represent a minority opinion can have their minority opinion pushed through because they have the backing up of other groups to do so. In practice, most political decisions made, have less than 40% of actual people supporting the decision and over 50% opposing it.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think that problem is pretty rare, the common situation is 1% of the population buying off the majority of representatives to push through legislation and tax breaks that serve their interest. Anyways, what percentage would you be happy with? Or do you really think that some "enlightened" individuals are really going to do a better job? My money is that they will take care of themselves first.
Quoting a monotheism, the ultimate case of a dictatorship, totalitarianism, authoritarianism and despotism, is really quite an ironic way to make your point.
...because getting bad leaders is inevitable. It's an iron law of nature that the exact people you want kept away from power gravitate towards it. And it's an iron law of nature, that if or when people get fed up with bad leaders, they get rid of them, either with huge amounts of upheaval and bloodshed (e.g. the French and Bolshevik revolutions), or peacefully (representative democracy).
Simply put, the killer feature of representative democracy, is that it's easy and painless to kick a bad leader out of power without bloodshed and violence. Our corporate overlords insist upon it -- violent revolution is bad for business.
And I was just reading the other day also about the rampant illiteracy and innumeracy in today's society.
It really makes me wonder if we shouldn't establish some sort of prerequisite for voting. Say a College Diploma or 4 years of military service. Two tracks.
Heinlein took all kind of shit for proposing something similar in Starship Troopers, even being called a fascist. At the time, I didn't really appreciate the idea fully, either. But now I can see that if you had served in WWII, anything smacking of fascism would never have been voted for in the US.
Nowadays... not so much. This kind of enfranchisement prerequisite can't have a worse effect than handing down decisions like "unlimited political contributions are free speech that may not be abridged."
I can see the fnords!
Technically this is called aristocracy
The problem with the current system is that is grossly corrupt compared to an ideal system. Politicians lie, they use "yellow journalism," and they leverage money directly or indirectly to push their agenda. If we had a system where an unbiased entity summarized the views and the qualifications of the candidates, and any speaking the candidates did were in a purely professional manner, without trying to appeal to the emotional side of people, we would have a system that works. Unfortunately with the current expectations in place, considering that such a system would work seems impossible. Maybe in 200 years from now, people will look back at our current system and be appalled by how governments were run.
Democracy doesn't rely on the "best", whatever that means. Democracy, as structured in the US, is designed in a way that one individual politician doesn't have an overabundance of power.
That has tended to prevent demagogues and has led to what has become a pretty successful society, if you compare it to societies past and present. Saying people aren't smart enough for a Democracy to flourish (or, as people have pointed out, a Republic as in the US) is prima facie incorrect. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for successful government.
People are too dumb for democracy to work. Dictatorships are a bad idea. Communism is a failed experiment. Anarchy last until one person physically bends the will of another.
Obviously the only choice left is to allow robots and computers to rule mankind.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If so, then it is our own fault.
"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
Speaking as a scientist, whenever you see an article refer to "scientists" without any attribution, the best policy is to ignore it. Credit the specific person or group. "Scientists" are not a cohesive whole who all agree on everything, and this statement is almost assuredly not consensus opinion.
As to the content:
"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."
--Winston Churchill
The question isn't what form of government works best. It is about people having the right to make decisions for their own lives, even if those decisions aren't the best ones.
A scientist (or any academic) can always produce an interesting study with an interesting result, when they get to frame the question. This article summary starts out:
There's your problem right there. The democratic process does not exist to choose the "best" candidate or policy. Democracy is advocated on the belief that all individuals have an inalienable right to a degree of self-determination; to participate in the maintanance of the system that governs them. It is about being fundamentally free, not correct.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
If only voting was restricted to the top 1% of intellectuals. This will scare the shit out of dumb people, but that's their problem.
If only the top 1% of intellectuals had been allowed to vote in 1930, Soviet America would be digging itself out of the same wreckage that Russia is.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
to know when a study is required.
Democracy is 51% telling the other 49% what to do.
Which is a recipe for disaster when that 51% is only interested in milking more and more goodies from the minority.
Like today, when less than half pay taxes.
http://johngushue.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/angela_merkel.jpg
"Scientists Unable to Explain Flourishing Democracies" -- Lack of a scientific theory or model to explain observations does not refute the observations. There are plenty of flourishing democracies in the world; we're just not smart enough to know why they work and others don't. Apparently, scientists are also unable to recognize their own limitations.
Any form of government which is restrained by constitution and the rule of law will work well, even if it is an unelected dictator.
Any form of government which utilizes totalitarian control over its citizens will be destructive, regardless of whether it was elected democratically, by representatives, or emperor for life.
That being said, this article sounds like authoritarian big-government types whining about how they have to waste their money on the nuisance of elections all the time, and how it would be so much simpler if they could just be instated into power for life and not have to worry about accountability and such.
I see lots of parallels here from AI design.
We have a goal: elect the best possible leader. So we've provided for sets of inputs, provided a century or so of training on the system, and now we have in place certain mechanisms that produce a result.
However, our current system is not set up to select the best possible leader, but rather the leader who is best at being elected. That's why the marketing $'s spent means more than having a rational budget plan, or why sound bites and looks matter more than certifiable, documented proof of political and intellectual capability.
How do we 'fix' the algorithm? Well, here's where the analogy really falls apart. In AI design, we fix the inputs, assign weights, normalize features, pick better datasets, select alternative prediction models, etc. In the political sphere though, the democratic system itself is biased towards maintaining itself. No one in it will choose to give up power for the betterment of the system.
That's why each administration is lambasted for their power plays and draconian rules and policies by their challengers, who themselves quietly do nothing to reverse these rules upon replacing the administration.
I can think of a lot of theoretical mechanisms, like weighted votes (where a professor of political science's vote may have a bit more weight than an 18 year old who's just 'rocking the vote' based on MTV's preferred candidate), but these will be perceived as unfair, as any merit based system is perceived as unfair to those without merit. I like the libertarian ideal too, where national government is basically static unless 51% of the population can agree on a path - that means 51% of the total voting public have to show up at the polls and actually make a decision, but this has it's own downfalls too, like being inflexible in times of emergency.
Any of these things really going to happen? Naw. I may as well suggest we live in an enlightened dictatorship run by philosopher kings.
I think that the best we can hope for is that our government becomes so stale and entrenched that future leaders have no power or capability to make any changes of import whatsoever. Maybe in the future we'll be smart enough for democracies, but right now, where Rick Santorum can even be considered a candidate, I'm just not seeing it.
The first and main advantage of democarcy over is that a government can be thrown out without a bloody revolution. This prevents common people being hurt by the political plays of violent social climbers, where previously they were used as literal pawns on the battleground.
It usually also has the benefit of keeping the current leader in check; a truly terrible elected government will have a quick fall, so they have to at least pretend to cater to the will of people. This is a small plus that too often can be subverted, but even without it I'd say that the first reason makes democracy worth every penny.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
mr bounces-on-the-mattresses maharish mahesh yogi also said that democracy in its modern form is the weakest form of government. the very fact that one policy can be put into place yet ripped out and its reverse enacted by an alternative government means that simple decisions which are critical to the long-term viability of a nation just cannot be made, but worse than that is that the politicians themselves *know* this and don't bother to even think long-term!
maharishi therefore advocated that at the top of government should be pretty much life-long "powerless kings". effectively powerless, but acting as "proclamators" and as a mediator and a figurehead. below them you have local governance as well as "advisors" in specialist areas, where absolutely anyone (worth listening to) with a particular area of expertise can be an advisor.
what you end up with in this figurehead whose job it is to listen to what sane and sensible people have to say, and then tell everyone what the outcome was. it's then up to *them* - the people - to actually galvanise *themselves* to actually take action, either at a local or a national level.
at a local level, there *is* no "dependence" on "the guvvernmunt" to like ... solve everything: local people are on their own to sort out day-to-day problems and governance, with the additional backup that if things are a bit beyond them they can always ask for help further up the chain.
the interesting is if the UK went back about 800 years in its governance system, it would probably have something pretty close to this. mind you it would be a bit weird to have all the stuff about being a feudal slave and a freeman in the mix as well... :)
A few thousand years ago, philosophers were already indicating that the inherent problem with Democracy was that the majority of people were never going to be smart/wise/informed enough to make appropriate decisions. The founders of the United States also identified this as a problem, and had many debates about how to mitigate the dangers.
Can anyone point me to a totalitarian ruled country where life is better for the majority of people than in the U.S. Canada, The UK or Europe?
Yes, democracy may not work well, but I don't see anyone else doing a better job.
Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for everything else we've tried.
"effectively prevent(ing) lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders"' is actually worth something, you know.
Surely you aren't suggesting that a system that allows the minority to impose its will on the majority is any better, are you? Personally I think the US founders had it mostly right. First protect everyones right to life, then protect their liberty, and finally protect their right to pursue happiness. Yes they made mistakes through compromises along the way...allowing some to be slaves in order to allow others to pursue happiness was a huge mistake. But for the most part their vision was wise.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If every elected official and his/her staff were forbidden to have any conversation with any party (an "open meeting" law) without it being entirely public (think 24 hour webcast in every case) and were obliged to live their lives with the resources and services of the median household while serving plus 2 years thereafter, we as a governed people would be better off.
It kind of works.
As somebody else said...
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
I don't really want to start an argument with an insult, but this is a terrible post. Syntactically, it goes like this:
The fact that both statements are bare assertions against the data driven study from an actually famous sociologist cripples any chance of being insightful.
Your post's formulaic qualities of the structure rob it of any chance of being interesting or funny. How about you quantify or qualify the extent to which "it works". Or explain how democracy(and not just constitutional governance) "prevents the good from becoming the enemy of the perfect".
The sad part is I don't even seriously disagree with your prepositions, I just find your post to be so reprehensible in structure that I have to object.
The authors complain that democracy never selects the best leader, but that is an impossibly high bar. People are imperfect. We never do anything perfectly and so why should selecting leaders be any better? The question is does democracy result in a better selection of leaders than the alternative imperfect systems set up by imperfect humans. The answer to that is usually, but not always, that it does.
The first problem is that most people just aren't knowledgeable of advanced theory and precedents in any domain. That's not to say they're "dumb" or "stupid", just that they don't know everything, because nobody can know everything.
Basically, unless you're a physicist, imagine that you had to pick which form of energy supply should you back for interstellar travel. Should we pursue producing anti-matter (which can store incredibly much energy, but is so ridiculously ineffective to produce that we'll need several breakthroughs before it's even feasible to use like in Star Trek) or should we go with micro-black-holes and Hawking radiation, basically harnessing the incredible energy released as a small enough black hole evaporates? Both actually pack the same joules per kilogram, because at the end of it, both will have converted mess into energy as per e=mc^2. Maybe the black hole promises a bit less losses.
But anyway, imagine you had to vote on which of the two should get a trillion dollars in research grants to get us off this piece of rock before some mass extinction event gets us.
Now that's not to say that you're dumb or anything. You're a smart and educated person, and perfectly capable of rational thought and logical decisions. But unless you're a physicist, you won't know enough to understand what the choices are, much less to pick the best. They get a physicist proponent of each of the two to explain until they're blue in the face, but chances are even after a year you still won't know enough to make an informed choice.
Now worse yet, imagine that it's not just YOU who gets a vote, but also that hippie chick who only heard of "quantum" in some bogus quantum chi crystal pendants she wears. And that dude who actually believes that the universe is less than 6000 years old and less than 6000 light years across, because the bible says so. Yeah, I wouldn't rely on him to estimate the amount of energy for star travel correctly, when he literally believes that everything is three million times closer than the scientists think. And millions of other woefully unqualified people.
You probably see how the result of that vote will be no closer to picking the right one, than flipping a coin.
And those are probably the worst, because, quoth Bertrand Russell, "[i]The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.[/i]" YOU, if you're not a physicist, and are all that smart and educated, will probably realize, "wait, why are they asking me? I don't know enough to judge that." Whereas the guy who thinks "quantum" is the mystical force in his new crystal pendants he bought from some dodgy site, will actually be more likely to think he knows enough about it.
In effect, it's just Dunning-Kruger in action. The less you actually know, the more you'll grossly overestimate what you know.
And it's really getting worse for topics where everyone thinks they know something about, like economics. You'll find very few people who actually understand what, say, Keynesian vs Austrian School economics say. Or to what extent they even make testable predictions. Or to what extent they were ever actually tested.
But you'll find a LOT of people who think they know EXACTLY which theory will fix the economy, and furthermore, which candidate has the best grip on it, and exactly what they should do differently about it too.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with letting people vote on it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Didn't Plato come to the same conclusion 2500 years ago?
Don't we all come to the same conclusion every election cycle?
Yet somehow representative democracy keeps on gaining momentum.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Assuming you are referring to Bush 1, count me in. These days he may have to run as a Democrat, however.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
-- Federalist #51
Why are we paying these scientists again?
It's very easy to judge someone's credentials in hindsight. I propose we invent time-travel, allow everyone a go at it, and then tell ourselves how it went. The one who ultimately gets elected will be the one best suited for the job, or at the very least, the one who kills all the time travelers.
There's no reason a constitutional republic would be better than a constitutional democracy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
More specifically, technocracy.
Top 1% by IQ or by merit?
A high intellect and wisdom are rarely found in the same man or woman. To be a great leader, one does not have to have the highest intellect but rather wisdom to make the right choices. One of the most important choices a leader can make are the advisors they surround themselves with. A leader cannot be an expert at everything. Being able to admit that you are not an expert at everything takes humility which is a desirable trait in a leader.
If one takes a look at some of the most successful conquerers of history, a common theme emerges. They are all quite intelligent yet lacking in humility and human compassion. These traits ultimately lead to their downfall as they begin to kill off their closest advisors and take unwise risks based on their emotion and ego.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Sounds great. Just give me a minute to whip up the test to determine who gets to vote.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Although we have moved closer to being a true democracy, to our peril.
We are a representative republic. The 17th Amendment was a major blow to the US system, because it put us closer toward a central government ruled by the tyranny of the majority, rather than a series of states with limited common interests governed by a combination of the will of the people and the needs of their states.
In its truest definition, democracy means "mob rules". Involuntary collectivism is an absolute evil, because as the article states, we are subject to the whims of stupid people. We need only look at the idiots from both parties in Washington DC today to know this is true.
Think about a presidential election. Of likely voters, about 98% have made up their mind before a candidate is even nominated, either because of a single issue or a general ideological disdain/coherence (or nutty stuff like Bush planned 9/11 or Obama is secretly Muslim). In the polarized political climate of the last few decades, that 98% is split almost evening and therefore what you are left with is about 2% (maybe more, but probably not much) of swing voters that decide elections, based almost entirely on who spent more money on TV ads. There are a handful of people for whom their single issue is that unicorn of politics; a non-partisan, non-wedge issue. But most are people who cannot see any daylight between the political platform of, say, George W. Bush and Al Gore, or Barack Obama and John McCain. (Personally I have more trouble differentiating the personalities of John Kerry and Mitt Romney.) And that is after these men spend the preceding year taking every available opportunity to explicitly draw contrast between each other.
Now, in principle, you have two people running for president that are sane, competent, and potentially very good leaders (never mind their VP picks) because the primaries are governed by exactly the opposite type of people mentioned in TFA. That is, primary voters should be more informed and generally more competent than the entire electorate. Except when they aren't. The GOP primaries have been demonstrably taken over by religious extremists and cult-like followers of "conservatism." Now, even though Romney has made himself completely unelectable by endorsing insanity like banning birth control (e.g., via "person-hood" amendments) and taking both sides of every issue, he still has ~50/50 odds of wining--particularly if the economy sours before November. But let's up the scary; what if the GOP pulls another Goldwater (i.e., f-it, we've lost thing thing already--let's put a true believer up there to get the message out) and Santorum manages to get nominated? Then, as the thesis of TFA states, he will also have ~50/50 odds of winning simply because people are not competent enough to recognize incompetence (or crazy). And unlike Romney, who would probably make a decent president, Santorum would likely put the country in deep santorum.
I'm pretty sure Mike Judge is from the future--or at least he has visited it. How else could Idiocracy be so prophetic?
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Keep in mind that in the US federal elections, voter turn-out is rarely more than 50% of eligible voters. This means either:
1) Stupid people don't vote and everything is OK.
2) Smart people don't vote (which makes you question how smart they really are).
3) Stupid people account for way more than 50% of the population (in which case your country is screwed anyway regardless of what kind of government it has).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
So it's dictatorship for you then?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It explains the popularity of Sarah Palin. Well, other than all the men who just wanted to see her naked perhaps.
She's not that great looking. I'd consider voting for her just so she has a job and doesn't have to pose for playboy to pay the bills. Pres might not be a good position but she seems to be right around the median level of the average school board / PTO, or maybe clerk of courts, or dogcatcher.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin)
It's actually incorrectly attributed to Ben Franklin (see misattributed section).
Think about it - would one of the founders of arguably the most modern basis for democratic rule consider it rule by gunpoint / weight of numbers?
And yes, I've heard the usual "America isn't a Democracy, it's a Republic" etc - but a Republic and a Democracy are not othogonal concepts.
I was going to write out a very long response to your criticism describing how my minimalist approach is actually quite insightful, particularly in the ways in which it evokes the zen-like qualities of haiku. Then I decided that this would be a better response...
**FACEPALM**
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
It's a tradition on slashdot to not read the article, but has anybody of any political persuasion here actually clicked the link? It's a piece of crap designed to be echoed around the internet. So far I've been unable to locate the cited research from either this article or in any of its echoes or by searching directly. The word "smart" is something added to create heat, the phrase used is "leadership skills", and there is no indication how such skills are gauged in either the simulated voters or the simulated candidates. Nor any mention that the voters only get to choose between two starkly different candidates - this is a rather binary decision to simulate. It is insipid to blame the voters for the candidates produced by the major parties.
It depends.
A democratic constitutional republic is supposed to prevent corruption by having rights protected while leaving a limited democracy in place to adjust to the world around it. In the case of the United States we had an incredibly good Constitutional Republic system setup corrupted by those tasked with interpreting and implementing the paperwork that creating their jobs. The Liberty Tree needs watering, were we to water it the way we used to I think we could actually get things back on track and make it work again.
I could totally see the value in a constitutional republic run by a dictator. Say you take someone with Ron Pauls dedication to liberty, Cincinnatus' drive for power, and Steve Jobs' ability to assemble and manage talented people who can do what needs to be done a dictator of that sort doesn't need to restrained by a constitution to be awesome. People are assholes so it can't work, but don't think I haven't sat around and dreamed up a country with me as dictator and my primary job was to make the place run free and smooth and keep working that way after I die under the guidance of the bullet proof constitution and laws I tweaked during my term as dictator. No, Cincinnatus proved what the problem with being a good leader is, even if you do it right the next guy won't.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Part of the problem is evidence by the fact that some people think just letting people vote makes it a democracy.
Democracy is like economics, great in theory, but impossible in practice. You don't have fully informed actors making the best decisions. You have half educated actors making decisions based on irrational behaviors.
Democracy is about more than choice. It is about good information and good decision making by the electorate. Our democracies are failing because we have forgotten these tenets. We supply bad information and support bad decision making. So we get bad democracy.
Technically this is called aristocracy
Nope. Plutocracy. Aristocrats are aristocrats because their parents were aristocrats.
Fiat Lux.
The article states: "The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea." That sounds like a proposition coming from an economist who believes perfect decision making is the basis of any social progress.
A more sensible proposition as the basis for democracy was stated by E. B. White: "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time."
Only those with IQ above certain threshold and with the basic ability of logical thinking should be allowed to vote.
Of course, the latter constraint excludes all those with illogical belief in any kind of deity.
even if you are "smart enough" (that most aren't, are unaware of that, and even fight you if you even suggest that fact) you have partial, prettified, rigged or even plain false data, probably don't have the base context to understand it, neither won't dedicate the time that it needs to properly judge, And no matter how smart you are, you are human, you are pretty easy to get influenced by tone of voice, keywords, looks and other cultural signals surrounding the message.
Not really, technocracy would imply that domain experts made decisions in their relevant fields and not a flat 1% cutoff across the board.
Emotions! In your brain!
The best quote I've heard is that true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin)
And true liberty is when the sheep has a gun
With democracy, you need a high incentive to create major change. That is a difficult barrier to pass, but not impossible. It is basically a means to a peaceful revolution through the election process.
What if each individual tax payers instructed government as to where their taxes are to be spent and government was then required to verify their spending/accounting openly. Wouldn't this make for a far more democratic process where elections would be more inline with an employer looking for someone to simply execute a defined job though handling the details, via their genuine skill set? Instead we have corporate sponsored candidates where the best advertising gets the winner the position to lie to the people for their terms length.
Stupid is not the people but the process which includes all sorts of detours from the majority vote.
Are the people stupid or just wrongly informed and why?
On the whole, I agree with the premise that the average person is not qualified enough to make judgements on the quality of an elected officials ideas and actions, and that this is a huge flaw in Democracy. I do believe however that it isn't ignorant politicians that destroy a democracy, it is malicious or self serving politicians that do.
Problem 1: Politicians hold a lot of power for a temporary period of time, and this makes the position highly desirable to power seeking people. Take away the ability for a person to seek out a political appointment and this problem become a lot smaller. The ancient Greeks were close to having this right. Political appointment was based on civic obligation that some of them performed grudgingly. With the Greeks however the citizens were all well to do property and slave owners. Anybody who didn't own property was pretty much a slave to somebody.
Problem 2: The power that a politician holds makes them highly attractive allies to powerful and wealthy interests. This is primarily why only a handful of our current Federal politicians can be considered uncorrupted. Remove outside money from campaigns and this solves half the problem. The other half of the problem is that a politician can be bought off post-office in a gentlemens agreement, with cushy private sector appointments and what not. If we pay our politicians handsomely and make sure they are punished for accepting such bribes after they get out of office then you remove the very corrupting incentives that encourage politicians to vote against the electorates interests.
In this way the only people ever seeking office truly are doing so out of a desire to promote the common good and out of a patriotic sense of duty, much like voluntary military service. Does this eliminate BAD ideas? No, but it does more to curb malicious and self-serving interests than any other proposed idea to fix democracy. Democracy can survive a bad idea, not a corrupt one.
Being able to admit that you are not an expert at everything takes humility which is a desirable trait in a leader.
Actually, that's a function of intellect, not humility.
Smart people never say they know everything. Only dumb people do that.
The answer would be that the sheep and wolf A vote to have wolf B for dinner.
Wolf A gets a meal and kills a competitor (and can go full dictator later and eat the sheep anyway).
The sheep gets to live another day.
How about represntation by lottery? "Sorry, sir, you "won" the lottery and have to go to Congress."
This idea occurred to me because I read somewhere that "average people on the street" do better on civics tests than average Congresspeople.
At least, if you have a lottery like I propose, then you get real population representation. You'll have single moms, welfare people, homeless, lots of middle class, and maybe just ONE OR TWO (in the Senate) rich bastards.
And *all* of them there as a duty, not as some sort of power trip.
--PM
"Republic" means "no monarchy." "Democracy" means "elections." Don't pretend those words mean anything more than that.
Republic and Democracy: France
Democracy but not Republic: UK
Republic but not Democracy: PRC
Neither: Saudi Arabia
So please, please stop with the trite, hackneyed nonsense about "This is why the US Constitution is republican but not democratic" because... no.
Then our democracy is failing to produce educated people to make democracy work.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If Obama had the Secret Service out finding where all the money pissed away by the banks went, and then went round all those responsible and repatriated their assets while presiding over an economic boom, and also didn't have to deal with newspapers run by the friends of the bankers and the asset thieves, I suspect even Republicans would vote for him. Russia has never been a democracy...but it has obviously been worse governed at times than it is now. After Yeltsin, I imagine an awful lot of Russians are suspicious of "democracy".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illusory_superiority
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
While I can understand and even maybe with much of the assessment, and would love to see some kind of merit based technocracy take off here, the underlying fact is that we still live in a world where millitary conflict is always looming, and any citizen may ultimatly be asked to fight for this country. As long as we live in a nation where men and women may be asked to put their lives on the line for national defense, it's really hard for me to justify the idea that they wouldn't have a voice in their government, however uninformed, uneducated, or misguided that voice may be.
"The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea."
Since when? Democracy is about preventing the abuse of power. Putting the "right people" who have the "best ideas" in charge leads to fascism.
we all know this is true, particularly many of the people on Slashdot. Think the person who cuts your hair, or the waitress at your local Denny's can make an objective rational assessment regarding the economy, peak oil, red-light cameras or even pick the best low cost cell phone? You know they can't. You also know that they don't know they can't.
Empirically, we're seeing democracy fail in the USA as the dumberati elect people like themselves such as Reagan or Bush II (Well, OK, he wasn't exactly *elected* the first time, but that's for another day). We see politically motivated media hacks whipping up the less gifted electorate by labeling anyone who demonstrates an IQ over 100 as "elitist." While I'm not fond of the fact that the wealthy and powerful accumulate power and care only for themselves, I think the egalitarian democracy that used to exist in the USA is anomalous, that attempts to enforce it have failed, and will always fail. A population of more intelligent people will, (on average) will be more wealthy and powerful over time than a less intelligent bunch.
Bottom line? Expect a multi-tier society to evolve in the USA until we look more like a high tech version of medieval Europe. Oligarchy is inevitable, as are the inevitable revolutions against it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The best quote I've heard is that true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin).
Usually continued with "And liberty is an armed sheep".
No, what's really going on is they're trying to dismantle self-governance before the populace wakes up from its nearly century-long mind control by mass media.
Seastead this.
It could be both. A smart person might not be able to lie to himself to the extent that hubris is a problem, and a naturally humble person is per definition humble. But the smarter person would still be preferable since it's not about being humble, it's about knowing what you do or do not know and act upon that knowledge.
Emotions! In your brain!
Right now, the topic in Holland is the costs of the Euro vs the Guilder. A politician has commisioned a report to examine the costs of switching back. 51 miljard is the worst case cost (this second part is rarely mentioned by the media, against a cost of 71 to stay with the Euro.
To give an idea of the amount, the current deficitit is 24 miljard. So we ain't talking peanuts.
But who do you believe? The corrupt officials who didn't see the crisis coming or a politician with a long track history of grandstanding, who is an ex party member of the current ruling party and as such a collegue of Zalm, one of the liars about the Euro?
Any individual cannot possibly do his own research, it would take to much time, so it all comes down who you believe. The lying incompetent or the incompetent liar.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Tell that to Nancy Pelosi, she'll be happy to know that she could have rammed through any healthcare legislation she wanted. Except it didn't work that way, did it?
The pendulum swings always to the extremes. If you look at it as it is going up, no it is coming down, aw shucks it is going up again, it looks like a stupid system. If you draw the free body diagram of the pendulum bob and calculate the restoring force you find that there is a restoring force, that is constantly trying to bring the bob to the equilibrium, and it is proportional to how far from the "norm" the bob has deviated, and actually you will see it as a smart system, but with a little too less damping.
At any given moment Democracy will be making decisions, will be pushing the extremes, and over shoot sane limits and seem to be very chaotic and dumb. But it has correction system built in, when one party over reaches, it will lose power and the pendulum will swing the other way.
So, yeah, people are not very smart when they elect the politicians, but the beauty of Democracy is that they don't have to be.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There's no reason a constitutional republic would be better than a constitutional democracy.
For the civics-impaired people: that's because a constitutional republic contains all sets of constitutional democracies. A republic merely requires that the head of state is not an inherited position. It is NOT a form of government that is different from a democracy. If you absolutely want, you can argue that a direct democracy could in theory function without a direct leader, but a government like that has never existed, will never exist, and will fall apart even if it is tried with siamese twins.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
really is that their are too many stupid people but that the group does not trump the individual and often adding more people to a problem just increases the probability of getting it wrong.
It is not about people being stupid, it is just the psychology of groups.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have found it useful to let go of the pedantry (for lack of a better word) when judging other's speech based on the use of specific words. You clearly understand that smart can mean different things in different contexts, or in different people's minds. Rather than trying to figure out what this one specific person believes, ask yourself, does this person's general idea (i.e. "non-smart people aren't good at judging smart peoples' competency") hold up in most cases where you allow 'smart' to mean whatever you imagine it to mean?
You stated that you're somewhat gullible and not so 'smart' when it comes to people skills. (I'm still learning and am not a social butterfly myself.) Would it then follow that you are not so good at judging the competency of people who have excellent social skills? I submit you would be able to in general tell that a person is more competent than you, but you would have a hard time judging some nuances of just how good of a "player" someone is compared to others.
Likewise, one subject I have been trying to learn about lately is the economy. I know very little about it. My bullshit detector is top notch and honed from many years of active use. Most times I can spot dumb/misinformed people within minutes. But when it comes to a subject like this that I'm not too familiar with, I really have to put that thinking cap on to analyze what this person is saying and finally after a while decide if this person is either a complete moron talking totally out of his ass, or the second coming of Jesus in economist form.
A bit of History leading up to the current world wide protests and why..... Limitations being reached.
In human evolution there was a time when we did not use high level abstraction in communications and certainly not in organized structure of society. Not really much different than animals. We knew working together we improved survival rate and even were able to develop small societies. As population increased so did the complexities of society so to maintain the benefits of such team work. But population growth eventually caused a breakdown in communications as team work became more specialized. Many know the story of the tower of babel but its a story representing an event that happened around the world, each growing society in its own time. It was teh event of human transition from bicameral mind (Julian Jaynes) mental functioning to the creation and use of higher level abstraction which required a new way of mental functioning, what Julian Jaynes identified as Consciousness.
In this creation of higher level abstraction we also discovered that misuse, wrongful use of this new tool of abstraction can bring personal benefits, what we recognize as cheating, lying, being dishonest. Mathematics was the next major refinement of our abstraction tool set and solidified when we transitioned from the limited roman numeral system to the Hindu-Arabic decimal system which was far more powerful and did not require experts to do accounting. Of course as accounting is, the abstract tool of money was created to ease trade, based on mathematics as so much has been since.
Today we have reached the limitation of our abstract tools of language and structures we have created, i.e. government, financial, religion, etc. due to the growing abuses, misuses of these abstract tool to deceive and distort and distract from real value.
People are not stupid, for if they were we'd not be having these world wide protest and they will increase as the population grows. This population growth resulting issue is why there is effort and intent by those in positions to influence, to reduce population massively and by all means, preferably by those means that reduce retaliation.
Limitations of those who deceive is now being challenged...... Because the people are NOT stupid and growing wiser to the cheats all the time.
It's quite obvious. I do.
As you said, history is filled with examples of other people deciding who could vote. None of these examples, of course, include me.
So, your choice are a series of systems that you know have failed, or me. ^_^
I am John Hurt.
With democracy, you need a high incentive to create major change. That is a difficult barrier to pass, but not impossible. It is basically a means to a peaceful revolution through the election process.
But you've just been told that the election process is ineffective.
Is there really nobody paying attention today?
I've long thought that perhaps there are actually two distinct "human" species alive today. Sexually compatible, very closely related, but separate in that one is genetically pre-disposed to basically follow anyone around and do what they're told. While the other actually has whatever genetics lead to the logic to step back and think things through. The majority simply do not have that ability. Now that's not to say the "higher" order of humans always ends up in leadership roles. In fact I'd guess that it's more rare, being able to step back, think things through and realize that in a lot of situations there is no "good" outcome. They're more likely to try and just not get involved. They're also far more likely to be pushed down by the follower majority, as those people are instinctually terrified of not simply following whoever they've determined to be alpha.
Haven't had time to read it yet but the original paper by Mato Nagel is here: http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjss/v2-255-261.pdf. I didn't see a link to it in the linked article.
This study now makes clear how a meme like "Obama is responsible for rising gas prices" starts and moves around. The people repeating it are too dumb to realize how what they are saying is impossibly stupid.
"He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills."
Including or excluding the author of this article?
The US president is not accountable to foeigners. US voters don't care about those people. They threw a fit and had their state legislators block attempts to move those prisoners to prisons in the states. So yeah outsiders don't have much protection in a democoracy.
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.
I would argue that the idea of democracy is so that most people get a government that they want. In a mobile society, by limiting the scope of the government to the states rather than federal, you decrease the likelihood that someone is under a government that they do not desire. The whole idea of democracy is based on the idea that no man should control the actions of another man unless the second man is infringing on the rights of the first. This has nothing to do with what is "best" for someone. If a man wants to do something that only harms himself, who am I to say he can't do it? I would be a friend to warn him of the dangers but in the end, the choice is his own.
I think what we need is some sorta "Administrator" like the one mentioned in the wonderful book "Phillip Drew - Administrator". Because the average joe is such a dumb dumb we need an elite class of people who know much better than the rabble to tell us all what to do. These central planners are so much better at knowing what Fred T. Bagger needs in Podunk Kansas needs and will be able to aloocate resources far far better and more effectively for the nation as a whole.
Democracy and Republic are such old outdated dusty ideas, what we need is something like a Philosopher or a Properly Educated Intellectual who has unrestricted power to make the Correct Choices for all of us. Maybe something like a "Philosopher King" or an "Intellectual Emporer" would be a better title for our new Enlightened leaders.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I would not say it is so much about picking good candidates that is important for success but in what training and performance measurements they use.
If you measure success by how many votes you get in the next election then you get policies created to get votes in the short term.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The U.S. was not a democracy. Democracies degenerate into mob rule and ultimately tyranny again. The founding fathers knew this when they penned the Constitution. The understood all too well that democracies always resulted in failure. The U.S. was a republic modeled after the Roman republic.
Unfortunately, once we directly elected our Senators, we went from a republic to a democracy. And that is why you see people like Santorum catoring to the lowest common denominator.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
At least the children of Lake Wobegon have something to look forward to,
This author pitches essentially the same story on the same site two days in a row:
http://www.livescience.com/18678-incompetent-people-ignorant.html
"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."
-Winston Churchill
Ooooh. Scientists figured it out, eh? They suddenly discovered that people of below-average intelligence are allowed to vote and drive cars. I am sooo thankful that we have such geniuses to work these things out for us. Otherwise we would never know.
Proverbs 21:19
I have a different idea (while we are throwing spaghetti at the wall),
Let's just randomly choose people for positions, and see if it's an improvement.
I am John Hurt.
This assumption is flawed. Where does the idea of choosing the 'best' even come into the democratic process. Citizens are choosing someone to represent them in the democratic process, not the 'best' of anything. You might hope that the person chosen 'best' represents your interests, but that does not necessarily have to be true.
Citizens are choosing a candidate to represent them. 'Best' or 'worst' doesn't usually enter in to it.
'Optimal' might be the most accurate word to use.
Its kind of like making a decision when buying a car. Does it have the best mileage? Does it have the best performance? Does it have the best price? Does it have the best towing capacity? Does it have the best safety rating? Does it have the best looks? Does it have the best Insurance rates? ...
The real question is: Does the car have the optimal mix of attributes that satisfy the most of my needs? It may not be the best in any single category, but the overall mix might make it the winner.
Like voting, for some a single issue may be the only deciding factor. Experience tells me that most people decide on a range of issues and that a minority decide on a single issue. Of course in countries where voter turn out is low the single issue voters become a larger percent of the actual decision makers to cast their votes. If only 35% of the eligible voters go to the polls, a single candidate only needs 18% of the eligible voters to win an election. A candidate could pretty much build a winning platform by appealing to only 2 or 3 groups of single issue voters.
Pretty much explains the current state of affairs.
The solution? Vote.
The point of democracy isn't to pick the best leaders. The mechanisms of democracy basically prevent that, because you cannot predict the next leader far enough in advance to provide that person with much training. You doom yourself to an endless cycle of rookies: talented rookies on occasion, but forever rookies all the same.
The point of democracy is to limit the damage bad leaders can do. Rare indeed is the democracy that can go even fifty years without picking at least one leader who, if he were a king, would drive the country into the ground. And yet, most democracies survive such leaders, or even short strings of such leaders. That's powerful stuff, and it's the reason democracy has become so popular: not for its performance, but for its robustness.
We're still not a true democracy. You could call it a democratic republic or a representative democracy, but in a true democracy, we would each vote on every single issue. Personally, I have other shit to do so I just vote for whomever has the most free time and is least likely to fuck it up. Unfortunately, that guy usually doesn't get elected.
There's also no reason a constitutional democracy would be better than a constitutional republic, by that line of thinking.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The only thing Democratic is THE PROCESS of choosing the representatives.
Also some of the Ballot measures in the states and voting on Constitional Amendments is Democratic as well.
The problem with a Democracy is that you end up in scenarios where "Two Wolves and One Sheep, vote on what is for dinner and it is Mutton".
One of the real differences between Democracy and a Republic is that a Republic is based upon "Rule of the Law" vs. a Democracy which is "Rule of the People".
When the People get out of control they make bad decisions as they did in the 1930's. Hardly anyone remembers that A certain Austrian Painter was elected as Chancellor of Germany by Popular Vote. Invoking Goodwin because it is relevant.
If the Rule of Law is setup to RESTRICT the AMOUNT of power that the government can use against the people then there is less chance the people can vote in a tyrant and even if they do the restrictions inherent can at least slow down or make a Tyrant ineffective, which is the Genious part of the "Charter of Negative Liberties" of the US constitution.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
We have a representative republic instead of a Democracy.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
I don't know, did it?
Are you sure that what we got wasn't exactly what she wanted? It's not like anyone else ever read the bill in advance of the vote (it's not even sure that the authors read the entire bill before the vote)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Agent K said it best: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Sometimes you need the dumb panicky ones to get the herd moving. Of course those sames ones can cause the herd to run right into a pack of meat-eaters. So, flip the coin and take your chances.
I've been in a couple of situations where things went bad very quickly, and a leader had to emerge to get us out of trouble. The leaders were NEVER the smartest people in the room - it was the person we intuitively understood as being able to get us out of a bad situation and make our condition better.
Movies show this all the time. In everything from the Braveheart to every single disaster movie ever made, to the Avengers to Sky Captain - we see the same pattern - the leader is the one who takes charge and listens to the smart people, but takes the tough decisions. And I am sure this is not a human thing. You see it every pack out there. Natural selection of leaders goes all the way back to the cretaceous from the study of foot prints of pack hunting behavior of carnivores (e.g. Raptors in Jurassic Park).
What politicians seem to be doing consistently is make us panic and subvert our lizard brain processes for identifying a leader. I can't remember the last democratic election where we were not seeing this in action. Each time I read or watch V for Vendetta the message gets reinforced.
I have lived in Dubai and Singapore for short stints - and seeing "benevolent dictatorships" at work. I have watched up close the slow motion train wreck that is the European parlement. I cringe as I watch the legal corruption based system in the US. Sometimes democracy does not see to be the cut and dried choice I was taught it was all my life.
That's a youtube video. We can't read that.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
This is why Thomas Jefferson and others fought hard for free public education--they knew democracy could never work in the absence of a well-educated society.
Another key problem (especially in the US) is the first-past-the-post voting system, which ensures a system dominated by two parties, and practically guarantees that, in any contested race, a majority of people preferred someone *other* than the winner.
Maybe we should take a vote on this.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I think you're mistaking disdain for anger. You don't communicate well.
The average prose and document literacy scores of U.S. adults were not measurably different in 2003 from 1992, but the average quantitative literacy score increased 8 points between these years.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69
"democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies"
Not quite true. If you change "mediocre" to "corrupt" you're right on the money.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
I like Churchill's quote, too: "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."
Usually it's paraphrased as "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
While I really like it, I don't think your quote was Franklin; I think it was more recent. Also, there's been a piece tacked to the end at some point: "Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Well-armed is a pretty modern term, though, so I'm guessing it was added even more recently.
Recent studies confirm: It * DOES * take one to know one.
In summary: after 500 posts, Winston Churchill wins the thread.
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39249145
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39249167
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39247993
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39249515
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39247601
In any case, yes, it's frustrating to deal with dumb people in a democracy, however I can't think of any good solution to the problem. We can try to educate as much as possible, but there are some people who just don't seem to have the knack for certain types of reasoning or who are more easily deceived by both a slick politician or a slick used-car salesman (sometimes one and the same!)
Perhaps we could breed smarter babies? Let's see... I'm sure I have a clean test tube around here somewhere...
coding is life
Where are you when we really need you?
Perhaps we should be running this country by Slashdot Poll.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sure the "voters are too stupid for democracy" research coming out on the eve of an election in which the candidate of the Left/Academia is likely to get trounced* is sheer coincidence?
*fwiw I don't believe it will be as lopsided as "everyone" assumes. The GOP has assembled a pretty unattractive field.
-Styopa
Smart is bandied about like it's a tangible, measurable metric. Would somebody please explain how 'smart' is not a relative abstract and explain how it is measured? Isn't it more or less a subjective potpourri of logic, intuition and experience? Does it count when it is skewed by 'not smart' decisions made from misinformation/ignorance, spontaneous emotions or the mob mentality... or do some 'smart' people get a mulligan from time to time? Is the rocket scientist 'smart' even though she cannot tie her own shoes? A better focus, perhaps, would be on how easily led the collective is and start looking at ways to educate the public how their 'individual' thoughts are not theirs alone. I don't know... I can memorize and calculate numbers, problem-solve errors in a system and program the VCR clock, but apparently I'm not that 'smart'.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
There should, then, be a standardized national test in place of 'votes'.
You take the test, which is designed by a collaboration between the most tenured academics at the most prestigious institutions, and then it is compared with the rest of people in your state, and then in the country. The #1 test score in the state would be governor, the next few scorers would become national congress reps, with the subsequent ___ scorers being the rest of the state government.
The #1 test score in the country would become president with the next ___ people filling in the succession of power and cabinet positions. Clearly, there would be areas of strengths and weaknesses on most tests, so you can use 'categories' of the test to determine which positions the person should be eligible for. For example, someone who scores highly on a civics section could become a SCOTUS justice, while the extremely high scores for sciences and math could be appointed as NASA/JPL/Technology Oversight or something in that realm.
It should be obvious that for this system to work, you would need to make all religion illegal, regardless of what type, as Religion has proven itself the opposite of intelligence and progress. This is the only form of government I can see being truly fair and representative of what is best for the people, instead of a popularity contest based on the lies about perceived morals the candidates feed you or who buys the winning candidate.
Right now, our system awards those who are corrupt or latch onto some popular tenet of fantasy provided by the church. Isn't it time to start rewarding intelligence and potential instead of ignorance and greed?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I'm also very wary of smart people who start to get the "We know better than everyone else," attitude. The reason is that usually means they don't, it means they've become blinded by their own brilliance, and unable to recognize their own limitations. I see it often with geek types. They are used to being smarter, at least academically, than many of their peers. So this leads to a view that they are smarter in ALL ways.
Great example? Hans Reiser. Guy was extremely bright, no question about that. However he figured because of that, he could kill his wife and get away with. No way those stupid police could catch him... But of course they did, his bullshit wasn't nearly so brilliant as he though and he got charged. Well despite all that, he might have been able to get off since it was a circumstantial case against him. Those are possible to beat. However he decided he needed to take the stand and in essence explain to the jury why they were dumb and he was right. The prosecution had an easy time trapping him in to inconsistencies in his story since he wasn't nearly as good at the whole legal wheeling and dealing as he though.
End result? He got convicted and sent to prison. Clearly he wasn't as clever as he thought, at least when it comes to matters of police work and law.
So I am always wary of smart people who think they can do everything better, who have an immediate solution to all problems, who can tell you how everything should be. To me it says they may be smart, but they aren't wise. They don't recognize their own limitations and that is a real dangerous state.
In particular governing, managing, statesmanship, all the aspects of dealing with people are very different skills than science or programming or the like. This is why you often see people who are great techs that get in to management and suck. The place I used to work has that problem. A few people I knew and respected there for their tech skills were made directors and have done a horrible job. That they were good techs and of above average intelligence doesn't mean they can deal with people.
They mean specifically that people cannot identify experts in the area of economics
You mean like Paul Krugman?
Lets put it this way. The Dunning-Kruger effect is what defines the fundamental difference between Keynesian economists and Austrian economists.
How is anyone else supposed to understand?
My personal suggestion is to raise the voting age to the retirement age.
Deleted
Once again, the Onion leads on this story. Twice.
"American People Ruled Unfit To Govern" ("99)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-ruled-unfit-to-govern,748/
"Nation Finally Breaks Down And Begs Its Smart People To Just Fix Everything" ("11)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-finally-breaks-down-and-begs-its-smart-peop,26450/
Big bang has nothing to do with it. According to Genesis 1:14-19:
14. And God said, âoeLet there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years,
15. and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.â And it was so.
16. God made two great lightsâ"the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.
17. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth,
18. to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19. And there was evening, and there was morningâ"the fourth day.
The stars were created on the 4'th day of creation, about 3 days after the Earth itself. Hence if Earth is no older than 6000 years, the stars themselves cannot be older than 6000 years. Any light we receive today CANNOT have started more than 6000 years ago. Hence, If the speed of light didn't change, everything we see must be within a 6000 light year radius.
Mind you, technically the Bible also doesn't say that the creation was 6000 years ago. There's a different reason why everyone calculated about 6000 years old in the 3'rd century, and in the 11'th century, and in the 18'th century, now it's still about 6000 years.
The reason is basically that the idiots want to have a rapture any day now, instead of dealing with the rest of their lives. And they wanted a rapture any day now at just about any point in the history of Christianity.
So the reasoning which appears IIRC around the 2'nd-3'rd century is basically this: God worked for 6 days, and the 7'th day was God's day. And for God it is said that 1000 years are like a day. Hence it makes sense (bear in mind that these are not scientists, but theologians, so get used to pulling stuff out of the ass and handwaving it as making sense to them therefore being true) that the world from that point on would be based on the same 6+1 pattern, with 6000 years of toil and hardship, and the 7'th "day" of 1000 years being God's reign on Earth.
So they're not actually doing some real maths to get that 6000 years, but fudge the numbers to get the 6000 they want.
There's a lot of false accuracy involved. Think: there are 28 generations between David and Jesus in Matthew, a generation is 40 years, therefore there are EXACTLY 1120 years between Jesus and David. Down to the day. No, seriously, the reason we got Xmas on 25 December was because a 3rd century lemming added generations with such amazing accuracy as to get precision down to the day between Jesus's birth and the creation of Earth, which had already been postulated by Philo to have happened on a spring equinox. The thought of error bars and human reproduction not being that predictable, tends to not occur to these people.
And there's a lot of generously applying Flannagan's Finagling Factor, i.e., "That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten."
Because that's basically what it's about. it's not about actually calculating an unknown result, but about fudging the maths to give them the result they already decided they want. One which says that their precious judgment day will come any day now.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Would they remain so? Power really does corrupt. Would there be anyone who could do a good job, given unlimited power? We'd like to think we could, but the answer is probably not. So even the most worthy person starting out would likely not be so, given time.
That was part of the reason Washington pushed for term limits (though he didn't get them they came way later) and then acted on his own advice and left after two terms. He was concerned that the president could become a king, could become corrupted with the power and be a despot.
Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the rest.
Either we have democracy and let everyone including stupid people pick the government, or we don't. If we don't, *someone* has to pick the people who are allowed to vote. That set of someones is going to be as stupid as the general public, so you don't really get any benefit, but you increase the chance for corruption and power grabs when the system of deciding who's smart enough to vote is biased.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VooaLRqTSPI
This video is the seventh episode of the sixteenth season of NOVA. It revolves around the issues and pressing concerns behind scientist's career when they cheat, as well as the people who work with them, and their impact on society.
Part 1 of 7.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
I never really get that one. Well-armed lamb, sure. But contesting the vote won't do any good. It will always be a 2-1 majority.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Seen at the bottom of Slashdot's pages today:
"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know. -- Michel de Montaigne"
This is not a new concept. I've heard many people claim that the average voter is too stupid, too ignorant, too emotional, or some such to vote. That we need to have some smart people make the decisions for them.
Two problems I see with this claim. First is that we've had this system for over two centuries. This is the longest lasting government in contemporary times. As flawed as the system is now, and has become, it has outlived all the others.
The second problem I have with the idea of having "benevolent dictators" decide what is best for us is the problem of choosing these people. Do we take a vote? Well, that's effectively what we do now. Every two years a large portion of them come up for elections.
For a government to last it must have the permission of the governed. Without a certain level of agreement between the governing body and the governed the governed will disobey, revolt, cast off the governing body.
If you don't like having to require the permission of another to tell them what to do then... good luck with that. They outnumber you.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Some days, I have to wonder why I follow this site.
Democracy is better than other systems, but not necessarily because it's better at picking better leaders. Democracy is better because it obtains the consent of the governed. By putting the rule of the country to vote, the people who are ruled in it get a chance to choose a different rule. The ones who vote for the winning rule are part of the reason it rules.
The benefit is that the people don't just choose what rules them, but they have given their consent.
Better democracies have better ways to get that consent. America's democracy doesn't get enough people to vote, which leaves them without giving consent. Getting more people to vote might or might not get better leaders, but it will get more consent. Getting better ways for them to vote than the bizarre 1800s contraptions we use (gerrymandered districts, backroom-chosen sequences of primaries, electoral college disproportions, a single election day on a Tuesday, riggable voting machines...) would not just improve the sampling of "the will of the people". It would also include more people in the decisions, which would get more consent from them for whatever the system eventually produces.
--
make install -not war
Well, while you may be right about the cases which are actually about investing money, you probably also realize that it was just an analogy. It's supposed to illustrate something from domain X, via something that the other party knows from domain Y. The two won't be and fundamentally can't be identical in all aspects, or it's not even an analogy any more, it becomes just an identity.
Basically the only thing that's really equivalent with letting people vote for politicians is... letting people vote for politicians. But that doesn't help much with illustrating it, unless you already understand it in the first place. Illustrating a political choice by comparison with a technology investment, is kinda like comparing computers to cars. Of course they won't be identical.
And here an important difference is that while you might leave fundamental physics research to private initiative to sort out, in politics you HAVE to decide and organize some things, because leaving them to whoever has the money tends to end up very badly every single time. E.g., history shows that time and time again, if you let someone else do the policing and army as they see fit, you end up at best with a dictatorship and at worst with a civil war. Outside of the deranged delusions of Anarcho-Capitalists, privatizing the state's monopoly on violence, doesn't work and never did. From Sulla and Caesar to contemporary Somalia, whenever someone had an army that was reasonably "theirs", they started a bid for totalitarian power with it, and that often went through a civil war too. So you can't really wait for private initiative to sort out the army and police. You have to decide something at state level, and that involves making people vote... for stuff they don't really understand, and don't know they don't understand.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate..."
Not really. Democracy will give people whatever they want. If they're stupid and want a theocracy, then that is what they'll get.
or else!
...our democracy...
What is this "our democracy" you speak of??
The 47% of the people who don't pay the IRS are mostly because they're too poor to afford it. They're exempted because the IRS is a progressive tax that doesn't give those people an impossible taxation. They still pay the other taxes, like Social Security, property, sales and use taxes, which are even worse for people who can't afford it.
Meanwhile the top 20% by income pay 63.5% of collected taxes, but receive 66% of tax expenditures. That's a 4% return on their tax investment, which isn't supposed to earn any profit at all. The numbers surely are weighted by the richest of that 20% getting an even better return than the rest. BTW, over 90% of "entitlements" go to old people, disabled people or working people.
Your "entitlement generations" are a fake, designed to make you sick.
Also, any government can take someone's private property, in whatever way they do that. And without a government, anyone with the force can take the property. In fact, we have thousands of years of history showing that "no government" guarantees that people will collect whatever force, even momentarily, to take others' property, and that democracies are the best at protecting private property.
It might be easy to just repeat the corporate anarchy propaganda cooked up for you. But you're helping your masters steal from you.
--
make install -not war
Politicians work full time at deceiving you. You work part time at not to be deceived by them. Ergo it's hard to be "smart" enough especially when you need to work full time to tell the difference between the truth and all the disinformation out there. Is it any wonder why everyone would just rather play dumb and go about their business?
I want this account deleted.
The global hegemony.
Didn't you cast your vote for global hegemon last week?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Look at the R's to choose from. Even if people were "smart enough" to choose the best candidate, we don't really have a good candidate on the list. Then, for all the D's who were disappointed with how little change we got from Obama, why is there not a second choice there? The system is completely rigged to avoid the possibility of a "best" or even a "good" candidate to vote for.
This is, IMHO, as it should be.
:)
While I am not in favor of electing "idjuts" to any office, if we are to treat all as equals, then everyone has a right to their opinion. We no longer allow the (physically) strong to rule the weak, so why should we allow the (intellectually) strong to rule also? The phrase "too smart for one's own good" seems to come to my mind all too often when reading about the crap that politicians pull on a seemingly-daily basis.
IMHO (of which everyone is entitled), the higher offices should *not* be served by those with the highest intellect, but by those with the best morality. I, personally, would be more than happy with someone of middling intellect but of high moral standards and, more importantly, integrity being elected to congress or the presidency. (Note that I said "middling intellect" - as in, not a dullard or a moron)
No one is able to be an expert in everything and this should not be expected of anyone, including our leaders. With that being said, being able to choose the morally "right" option out of those presented is a much more valuable asset than being an expert in tax code. There are offices in the IRS for those with that level of expertise.
If we moved to a direct popular vote and did away with the electoral college, I would imagine there would be quite a few "bad" politicians elected ("bad" as determined by the majority of the populace), but that should be a clear indication to everyone that they messed up and need to do better. I don't trust that everyone would actually get that message from the situation, but I feel that enough of them would for it to be mostly effective and the level of competence of our leaders would improve over time by necessity. Either that, or they'll become MUCH better at hiding their shady dealings.
Just my $0.02, take it as you will.
I think everyone is reading this as an assessment of weather stupid people know they're stupid. The problem is I don't think its so much about "stupid" people as it is about people making judgements in areas for which they have no/little understanding. So someone may be a perfectly intelligent person but they don't have much of an understanding is physics so they can't identify a person with actual knowledge of physics versus one who is merely good at making things up. By fixating on who is or is not "stupid" we are missing the point. If a topic is an important topic for a current vote we should be taking the time to do some self learning before listening to the candidate's ideas. The article essentially says that people anoint themselves as being knowledgeable (enough) to make decisions even though they are not.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
So .. the study suggests that democracies aren't the 'best' way to select leaders, and are only slightly better than almost anything else.
... nothing.
And their solution was
I'll take the best of the worst over no other solution, thank you very much.
It also suggest that people need to be smart to understand things like tax reform and the rest and then pick the best leader. That also is BS.
One of the reasons the US is a REPUBLIC is so that the average citizen DOESN'T have to be an expert on anything. My personal goal when selecting someone for office is to select someone who has the same basic principles I do about what the governments role is, and is a good leader. Their job is then to get together with the rest and figure out what is a good solution for a problem.
In theory, if they do a bad job, then in another 2 or 4 years I can put someone else in that might do a better job.
This is not much different from capitalism. I don't know how good something is until I try it. Then I decide I either think it's worth buying again or I find something else. As I get older, I start to recognize things that increase the odds I'll get something I want the first time, like discovering that ordering a french dessert in a sushi restaurant probably isn't a good idea, so I'll stick to specialties the next time. The same with leaders, I start to see qualities that I think make a good leader, and things that don't. Young people probably aren't the best at picking good leaders, but they will hopefully get better as they recognize what their leaders can and cannot do for them v/s what they promise.
I'll admit the US democratic/republic process isn't perfect. It was never meant to be.
It was meant to be resilient and prevent one person from gaining too much power. So far, I think it's done a pretty good job. It swings from one side of the aisle to the other, but it manages to hang out in the middle most of the time.
If anything, what the last two years have shown in the US congress is that when they can't decide on anything, it's probably for the best for them to NOT do anything. We may whine about their inability to fix the economy, but it seems to be doing fine the less they try to manage it. So my guess is that since they are not able to come to a solution, no good solution exists. Stalemate it is, and probably should be.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Most of the problems I see in democracy are caused by people who are very smart. Because they are very smart, they think they are always right. They design systems and bureaucracies to reform and fix real, actual, world problems. Then really smart people figure out ways to abuse the system the smart people above created. Socrates, the protagonist in Plato's Republic said "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing," and, "An honest man is always a child."
Gently reply
By the same logic, isn't it also at least plausible that this is simply happening because the President today is more of a figurehead than anything else? What if the reality of the situation is, you get elected President and then immediately find out it's really your job to go along with what a whole cabinet of advisers tells you to say and do? Your speeches are all put together for you by speechwriters, and designed to make the general public feel like you're calling all the shots -- except you're not.
Just throwing out an alternate theory here, but it doesn't seem impossible, does it? I mean, we've heard so much speculation as to how relatively unknown people like a Governor from Arkansas or a relatively unknown Senator from Illinois (who we can barely even find more than 3 or 4 people admitting they remembered him in college, and who some people even claim isn't really a U.S. citizen at all) got elected. And Busch, Sr.? Well, he was pretty clearly tied closely to the CIA, and once he was in, that'd kind of explain his son's ability to leverage that.
Not saying this IS how things are working ... but only, it's an interesting alternate option to consider.
That is a partial assessment, but one must keep in mind how voting is done. I'm sure it varies county to county and what not, but typically you get one day to vote, usually in the middle of the week (Tuesday) when everyone is working, and the polls don't even stay open that long after the typical 5pm end of work shift.
What you can end up with is people that are willing to be involved but are discouraged from participating, and sometimes even completely unable to participate. I have known people to get scheduled for double-shifts quite easily, and without election day being a federal/state/local holiday, plenty work the entire day from before the polls open to after they close.
When elections are a mandated holiday of some sort, or at the least spread out to an entire weekend (probably makes more sense for weekends than weekdays anyway, the majority of people would have some free time at some point during a weekend), and the voter turnout is STILL lower than 50%, then we can go with your assessment. But until then, I can't help but feel a large segment of the population is shut out from a say -- and these are students that work crap jobs to get by (but fairly well educated, and remember that non-traditional students make up a large part of education now, I am not talking about just 18 year olds out of high school), or people that are well-educated but simply can't make enough money to pay the bills (several of my family members and friends have degrees but have had to settle for various side-jobs or low-paying jobs until a good one comes through, meaning often that you have to take up two or three jobs to pay all the bills and loans off and keep the family fed). It's not a simple situation.
Of course, being available to vote is one thing. But a holiday won't help if those people have 3 jobs normally and never have time to keep on political developments and learn enough information to have a good say. I would advocate some sort of holiday weekend where no one is allowed to work more than say 10 hours the entire weekend, supplement people with unemployment or tax breaks or something, and encourage them to spend free time that weekend attending caucus-type meetings at their local library, or at least read the paper and have discussion groups. Follow that up with an observed Monday holiday to vote, and maybe will start to swing things. I don't claim to have a complete answer, naturally there's lots of logistics, but hey maybe this will get the ball rolling on a good idea.
My sincere belief is, the ability to look at American politics and reach that conclusion after a reasonable time is a perfect litmus test for competence.
If you do, then you are receiving an entitlement from the government, in the form of the mortgage interest deduction, or in the form of your health benefits being paid with pre-tax income.
Do you have children? You might be receiving an entitlement referred to as the Earned Income Tax Credit.
:(){
Our democratic systems for representation have been hacked and functionally do not operate under our control. It is quite an effective hybrid in that it provides enough of a feedback loop and massive distractions to keep the public powerless in most areas that matter. Social issues are great for letting the people "eat cake" and appease them - just how far this will go we will find out since history shows ALL such systems fall to despotism. This is likely due to the corrupting influence of power causing gradual overreach until despotism. Only in history is it written to have sudden changes by specific events; it is usually more gradual with more events, people just like to cling onto some symbolic turning point.
The problem with "modern" democratic system design is that civil revolutions attempt to replace actual revolutions and while that is a noble goal, it creates a revolution process which the corrupt ruling class has the most control over and in advance before any movement even forms. Sure, violence is not good but one aspect to avoiding anarchy is greatly limiting the agility and unpredictability of popular movements thereby making the number of people involved far less important than money, power, and influence -- which the ruling class likely has (almost always the motives of a revolt.) The news is extremely critical and this was recognized by modern systems but here we are today again with a censored press - but this time it evolved beyond simplistic censorship.
I've said the public wasn't "smart" enough for over a decade; but it was always along the lines that MODERN SOCIAL SCIENCE has surpassed the majority's "intelligence" - not exactly about being "smart" because propaganda and life-long indoctrination by cultural engineering can sucker anybody if properly done. Few people can think outside the box in which they've lived, especially in a society which prides itself on individualism making them less capable of recognition of their own herd mentality. Pride is a really powerful method for thought control; it goes hand in hand with cognitive dissonance. Besides, a distracted and/or uninterested smart person can be act stupid - we have an escapist and A.D.D. culture way beyond the imagination of Roman spectator "sports". Our propaganda (aka "P.R.") is based upon the same stuff Hitler used and has passively evolved as well as benefited greatly by advances in the social sciences.
Chemistry seemed dangerous because of gas (poison or rapid expansion.) Physics seemed dangerous because of nukes. Biology because of its chaotic and unknown nature; a greater threat today because of advances. For a century, the "soft" sciences have been the most powerful and deadly of all sciences.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Works fine, if it is in small communities.
But it doesn't work over large populations because of corruption.
As I have mentioned before, governments are a bad idea of large populations of people, and it usually ends up disasterous.
Too much centralization isn't good as it turns out, just like in computer networks and server systems.
Small communities combined through a confederation works best.
It also limits war, and you would have things like we are seeing now in the United States, which is a complete breakdown of the rules of law, (Defined by the Bill of Rights and Constitution) and being transformed into a land ruled by the laws of men. (Obama, Bush the Politco and their Wall Street henchmen.)
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
We need to have some sort of intelligence test for voters. We can still let everyone vote, but better informed, more intelligent people's votes should count more than the dope's votes.
The current system counts everyone's votes more or less equally, but there are so many more dopes they end up deciding who gets to run things. This leads to political parties (especially the GOP) pandering to the least intelligent among us with promises of lower gas prices, prayer in schools, deslutification of our women by denying them birth control and abortions, denial of science, etc.
The US has lost its mojo. We are finished.
It is more a lack of time and interest than intelligence. You could sit down with most people and make them experts on tax policy but it would take a while. That is time that most people do not want to spend, and rightly so. That is why pure Democracy is a bad idea. Democratic republics are much better because people don't need to spend time understanding all the issue, that is what elected officials are paid to do. Unfortunately, our crappy education system combined with a complete lack of interest makes most people have ZERO understanding of the consequences of decisions politicians make. People don't need a thorough understanding but they do need some understanding. Again, it isn't that people aren't "smart enough" it is that people aren't interested and when we sit them down and force them to learn things in school we teach them useless crap like pottery and 13 years of English instead of critical thinking skills.
Technically this is called aristocracy
Nope. Plutocracy. Aristocrats are aristocrats because their parents were aristocrats.
Is there really any difference? I know what the old definition of Aristocracy was, but I think it has changed. It seems like big money plays a factor now.
I think it's more about the lamb (minority) being able to keep the wolves' (majority) power from becoming absolute, not about preventing a majority vote.
In other words, the minority voters have a few options to keep the majority voters from absolutely railroading a bill through (say, filibusters or other obstructionism, "educating" the public, amendment negotiations, etc). Also, some of the potentially devastating actions require a much higher majority vote than others. And, I think it brings the point home that even if the minority has some defenses available, it still has the deck stacked against it; the minority has to be vigilant and watchful to keep the majority in check.
Still, I agree, it's one of those quotes that that's pretty open to interpretation, which is another reason I don't think Franklin said it.
Back when he was in office, I asked my mother what she thought of Bush.
She replied that if she knew the things he did, she probably couldn't sleep at night.
That gave me a new appreciation of the man.
Well, yes, the idea certainly didn't originate with Russel, and is in fact as old as we have a written record. Before Yeats, we had for example Michel de Montaigne in the 15'th century which argued and justified that, "it turns out that nothing is so firmly believed as whatever we know least about, and that no persons are more sure of themselves than those who tell us tall stories" That's someone pretty much explicitly statind Dunning-Kruger effect, centuries before Dunning and Kruger. And he in turn was quoting from Plato's Critias, who says, "the inexperience and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a great assistance to him who has to speak of it", which isn't exactly Dunning-Kruger, but is actually even more on topic for explaining why politicians get away with economically-impossible promises and other complete BS. And that's, you know, Plato, 5'th century BC.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Democracies require effective school systems that teach critical thinking and rhetoric to survive.
In the US, there is a major political party that is waging war on the concepts of critical thinking and the scientific method, while proclaiming we should all have faith (the absence of questioning) and follow our gut instincts.
Without critical thinking, we get our current political situation where those most dependent on social programs for sustenance, form the largest constituency of the tea party that wants to cut all their benefits and raise their taxes through a flat tax, while cutting the taxes of those most able to pay.
1: Bush was neither fairly elected (appointed), nor re-elected (Diebold, Ohio).
2: Believing Bush was actually in charge.
I've been thinking lately about this, as I live in a country where somewhat less thank intellingent beings have been making 'policy' fore some time (Italy)
How can it be that politicians who need/want to be re-voted again next term can make decisions that are _not_ popular for a population?
Politicians will always have to choose options that are as pleasurable as possible for many (so as to be voted again), but this is hardly ever the best option, as mostly any form of government has to take (liberty/money) from all and redistribute/manage it for all.
People, mostly anyone smart and less smart, when presented with different parties' programs will naturally choose the one that pleases them most.
So, what we got is someone ho did away with some unpopular taxes (and was chosen as PM again) only to make financial things for the whole of the country much, much worse.
argh.
I think we should be wary of solutions which involve education as a substitute for the raw intelligence and common sense required to make complex decisions.
At every job I've worked, there have been over-educated people who could not (successfully) make basic decisions about how to regulate their own lives, budgets, technology and other day-to-day responsibilities. Not surprisingly, most of them were very enthusiastic about "it's so simple" political ideas that they wanted us all to adopt.
To my mind, while stupidity is a big challenge to democracy, an even bigger challenge is the trend of people to get caught up in whatever meme of the moment seems to deliver that "it's so simple" moment of feeling in control. We are herd animals and when we follow the herd we are usually wrong.
Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'"
I think you've got that backwards, the only candidates we seem to get are well below average.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Let's imagine that the world would be better off if a certain percentage of people weren't allowed to vote.
I think we can probably all agree that if only the "top 98%" of society could vote, this would yield positive election results.
I think we can also agree that if only the top 2% of society could vote, this would be a bad thing.
So what's the right number? Half can vote? 70% can vote?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
"Next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election."
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
Might I suggest a partial solution.
Perhaps we need to mandate that in order to vote you need to take a test. We do the same for driving yet bad voting decisions are even more calamitous than bad driving.
1. Require voters to have taken and passed a comprehensive 3 hour exam. It would cover the US political system (with a local component), history, economics, international relations and war, law (constitutional, federal and state), science and engineering (including energy), healthcare, the environment, finance, business, transportation, social economic and racial factors, regulation, tax, criminal justice and cost benefit analysis. It would included questions where multiple areas impinged on one issue - eg energy where cost, poverty, national security, the economy and the environment all tugged in possibly differing directions and where any policy involved compromise between these competing priorities. And people would need to know that Row vs Wade was built on Griswold v. Connecticut where the Court found constitutional protection emitting from "penumbras" within several amendments to the Constitution. And they would need to know what median household income was currently and how it compared with 40 years ago.
2. Require that on the federal level, candidates for congress and the presidency take a series of exams in the above subjects. They would be difficult, challenging and would make certain that the candidate was intelligent, had wide critical thinking skills and had a wide knowledge base. They would assume a college background in all those areas and the exams would be similar in difficulty to the bar, the CPA, the Step 1 exam (taken in med school), the actuarial exams and cumulative exams in graduate school. I think this would attract a lot more engineers to congress - something, that would in my opinion greatly enhance our polity. And it would prevent someone like John McCain from running for office when he had never even sent an email.
3. Require retesting at age 50 and 75.
4. Require high schools to teach rigorous civics courses. They would cover not just the basics, but committees, sub-committees, lobbyists, zoning regulations, town committees, bylaws and ballot initiatives.
5. Provide regular synopses of state and federal budgets, laws and regulations that are being considered, and recent significant judicial decisions. This would provide a depth that would go beyond the New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico.
6. Incentive citizens to, actually read them. Tax breaks maybe? Cash? etc.
7. Mandate that citizens attend town meetings etc.
8. We need to replace the idea of the patriotic citizen being a flag waving nationalist with a citizen who is informed, cares about their community and country and votes. For example, when we are not at war, the ideal citizen does not 'serve' in the military, rather she/he 'serves' on a local sub-committee, reads and comments on prospective laws and regulations and takes the time to learn about mundane uses of intellectual property in agriculture.
it is not enough to trust one exam or some courses..... picking a good leader depends on so many things other than book knowledge. People need to be able to recognize strength, leadership abilities, good decision making skills, ethics and morality and much much more.
Jean Rasczak: All right, let's sum up. This year in history, we talked about the failure of democracy, how the social scientists of the 21st Century brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and imposed the stability that has lasted for generations since. We talked about the rights and privileges between those who served in the armed forces and those who haven't, therefore called citizens and civilians. [to a student] You. Why are only citizens allowed to vote?
Student: It's a reward. Something the federation gives you for doing federal service.
Jean Rasczak: No. Something given has no basis in value. When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
...not the monied interests and mass media (I apologize for the redundancy) that have polluted our political discourse? How is the average American supposed to make an informed opinion on, say, Iran when the the overwhelming view presented from the point of view of right wing Israelis and Americans?
How many Americans know that for all the sabre rattling on Iran, that the 'Islamic Republic' boogyman hasn't actually attacked another nation in two centuries? How many Americans hear the hyperventilating about Iran 'getting the bomb' and know that Israel already has hundreds of nukes? How many Americans know that Iran had a secular, democratic government until it was overthrown in a coup by the U.S. and Britain?
Before you attack the population at large for not knowing shit, you might want to address the fact that the population at large is fed shit to begin with - don't be surprised with what comes out.
You allow yourself to be led?
(My memory of a line from Eric Frank Russell)
Seriously, do you not consider accepting a leader as intellectual cowardice and moral bankruptcy? Can you not think for yourself? Do you not understand that "follow the leader" is a child's game?
Be a man. Stand up for yourself.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
In the end, you get a choice between two candidates, while you may hold a variety of opinions on 20 subjects.
Also, after elections, the electee usually backpedals when he has to conduct actual business (as usual).
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
With a parliamentary system people tend to vote on party lines rather than on the personality of whoever happens to be party leader at the time of the election. John Major's victory in the 1992 British general election is proof of that.
I think the parliamentary system is much maligned. It actually has a lot of advantages. The cabinet members are elected, since the executive branch is drawn from the legislative branch the government can actually get things done, and nobody becomes party leader and hence Prime Minister without years of experience as a lawmaker.
I think the parliamentary system is less prone to turning into popularity contests, although that seems to be changing in Britain where Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats was able to raise the profile of his party thanks to his impressive performance in TV debates. But still, it was a long way from the "I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a beer with him" syndrome that has infected US politics.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Pick the leaders at random with no option to stepdown, and severely punish underperformers by democratic voting.
Pickable people will have to prepare themselves for the task and every aspect of it well or they will suffer!. Additionally, being picked does not get them any tangible benefit or money during the tenure, only until the end without being punished, and they loose it all if punished.
Pros .- Increased voting (everyone wants to cause other people pain) .- nobody will want the job, but in all honesty, everyone wants to be president because the benefit / investment ratio is close to infinite...
Cons
UgaBuga!
Just to be objective, but this sort of pandering has gone on throughout the history of the United States and pretty much every other democratic government. In the United States, we've had candidates run commercials that said electing the other guy would make us slaves of the King, slaves of the French, lead chaste white daughters to be violated by scary black people, lead to people beating their waves, lead to our blood poured out upon the soil we farm, lead to nuclear weapons raining down upon our children, and the list goes on and on. Candidates have called each other brutes, hermaphrodites, socialists, communists, fascists, fanatics and heathens. Note that none of these examples even come from the last twenty to thirty years either. Sad part is that this is just a normal part of democracy, and the best we can hope for is that we've sufficiently educated enough of the populace to inoculate them against this sort of rubbish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_4jrMwvZ2A
to vote themselves plenty of the elite aristocracy's money. 50% of Americans pay no income tax.
Poor people are pretty smart at voting themselves other people's money.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I agree with you completely; civics test to demonstrate you care enough about the process to learn about the candidates
Fantastic solution - I volunteer to me the grader. I promise to make sure that only those who have answered all the questions "correctly" get to pass and to vote.
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.
may be true but
. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts
since the main problem isn't that they are poorly skilled, but that whatever their skill is it will serve unintended interests, this is plain bullshit and renders this issue:
Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders.
... totally irrelevant. dictatorships aren't essentialy different to democracies in terms of efficiency. dictatorships are, however, more costly to maintain. you need a full police state for that. this is indeed bulky and error prone. with democracies you just buy off the media, hire some convenient political starlets every couple of years, and you're good. this is a far more maintanable explotation system. people even gets the illusion of freedom for free! cool!
Elegant proof of this hypothesis would be Fox News and the foam-at-the-mouth Republicans they brainwash.
Take the Red Pill.
If you are incompitent of course you can't be a good judge of leadership. I don't believe that has anything to do with the failure of the democratic process. Voter apathy, laziness, greed and corruption are very good reasons why the democratic process has failed (at least in the USA ymmv). What's the average voter turnout of a presidential election, reps or senate? Compare that to say 50 years ago. I don't know the numbers but I'll bet they are consistently getting lower. The voters are getting lazy and we'd rather play our Xbox than pay attention to who is holding the reins of power. We've let corporate interests and big money dictate who has power. Look at the presidential race as a perfect example. Hell thhat far right wacko santorum couldn't even get himself on the ballot in most of Ohio because he didn't have an organization already set up. He's been running on a shoestring budget and the only reason he has any money is because the far right is so afraid of a Mormon being elected president. I'm pretty sure Mitt, Newt and Ron didn't have trouble getting themselves on the ballot because they have money. That's my 2$.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
50% of Americans do not earn enough money to pay federal income taxes, but do pay a lot of other taxes such as state, payroll including social security, sales, property, or other various taxes. Those same people are generally not in a position to influence the position of the Senator(s) from their state and thus have little influence on where the money goes.
I'm pretty sure that's what you meant to say, although I credit you for including "income", where the typical Republican talking point is to assume that it is assumed.
The people who decide where the money goes tend to be senior members of the Senate, who get themselves appointed to the Committee on Appropriations by sucking up to the Majority/Minority leadership. So stubbornly re-electing the incumbent seems to be the way to get money for your state.
These are the same types of people who stubbornly go to the same church year after year, and vote Republican because their daddy did (or because they expect one day to be part of the financial elite they vote to protect), which explains why Republican states get money while Democrat states donate. That last bit is just my opinion, but fits the facts well enough.
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39250665
It is a vast oversimplification to say what you did, to say it politely, or gross ignorance if I were to be quite blunt.
I've long advocated a form of governement still controlled by the citizens BUT with the limitation that the citizens can only vote in a self-chosen limited amount of topics. For example, a citizen could apply one "expert" position at a time, and only elect a representative for those topics.
I guess most Slashdotters feel most related to IT, so Slashdotters would probably be the ones electing the IT-representatives of government. If you're a health-worker, the health-minister is probably the post you care most about assigning, and so on and so forth.
Let people have their voice heard in the questions they think care about and think they now, without simultaneously endorsing aspects of a political party they don't have a chance to educate themselves enough about.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work".
It's a feedback loop. Self-correcting, eventually, if we don't all died from climate change.........
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
The founders never wanted a democracy. What makes you think they did? They always thought of their system as a constitutionally limited republic. Democracy was chosen to select politicians simply because they couldn't think of a better system. The constitution was supposed to protect the people from tyranny. Not the voting process. A system in which only white male land owners are allowed to vote and which even then uses that vote as a mere suggestion isn't much of a 'democracy'. It's quite far from majority rule.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Democracy is two wolves and 1000 sheep voting on what to have for dinner. But in this case, the sheep are all idiots and the only thing you hear from them is... "But it's a two party system, if I don't vote for one of the wolves I'm throwing my vote away!"
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Full disclosure: I am a conservative, evangelical Christian so anything I say on the subject is going to be biased...
Having said that, I think it's a horrible solution even if you start with the obviously flawed premise that everyone believes in the same (if any) deity. Look at what happened the first time that was tried: There he was, RIGHT AMONG THEM, zapping people right and left and exhibiting supernatural weather phenomena right in their midst (mountainside on fire with a disembodied voice speaking directly from it, etc.) Those very people who personally witnessed an omnipotent sovereign leader failed to follow his leadership -- golden calf one day, taking home the idols of their defeated territory the next day, disobeying a direct order to march against the people they were told to defeat... the list goes on and on.
The point of that little theological lesson is, even when the huddled masses have what is arguably the perfect leader, they manage to screw it up. So good luck finding that true moral center among the likes of us. If anything we're even less inclined towards a moral center because after a few millenia without having James Earl Jones' voice speak to us out of a pillar of flames, we've stopped even pretending to care.
Everyones "smartness" is more or less the same. It is how much you are willing to learn, apply yourself and challenge your own bias and conclusions that really matter.
If a society is having trouble with this then maybe they should spend a little more time developing critical thinking skills and a little less time on test scores.
The only thing worse than allowing the "ignorant" to vote is not allowing them to vote.
"Studies on the Dunning–Kruger effect tend to focus on American test subjects. Similar studies on European subjects show marked muting of the effect;[citation needed] studies on some East Asian subjects suggest that something like the opposite of the Dunning–Kruger effect operates on self-assessment and motivation to improve: Regardless of how pervasive the phenomenon is, it is clear from Dunning's and others' work that many Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth. It is interesting, therefore, to see the phenomenon's mirror opposite in another culture. In research comparing North American and East Asian self-assessments, Heine of the University of British Columbia finds that East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities, with an aim toward improving the self and getting along with others.[10]" => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#Cross-cultural_variation
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
> The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens
> can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea.
No, it doesn't.
Even the greatest benevolent dictators in history didn't consistently find the _best_ policy ideas for every single situation (and then they eventually died and had to be replaced, usually with someone worse). Democracy, or a Republic for that matter, has never been about finding the BEST option for everything. It's about preventing anyone from obtaining enough power to do the absolute worst.
Have you noticed that the US government does the least evil when the Presidency and the two houses of Congress are NOT all three controlled by the same political party? Yeah. If we could arrange for the senate to *always* be controlled by conservatives and the House to pretty much always be controlled by liberals, that would be a major improvement. Unfortunately, the terms "conservative" and "liberal" are impossible to define in legal terms, much less enforce, so I guess we'll have to settle for what we've got.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
> The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot
Covered on Slashdot? I thought that was Slashdot???
Bark less. Wag more.
"Democracy is 51% telling the other 49% what to do."
You are among the many who have not understood what democracy is. It's not the power of the majority, a democratic organization tries to determine how the distribution of opinions is amongst voters. If 30% are not supporting the issue, steps are being taken to try to make these 30% also "a bit" happy.
Democracy in its current form is simply a bad system. It emphasizes profit over technological advancements and prosperity. Open your eyes: http://tromsite.com/
I read through the 4-pointers and didn't see a citation to the original paper. This appears to be it: http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjss/v2-255-261.pdf It has precious little to do with any of the grandiose claims being attributed to it. TFA and the scores of echoed "See? I told you democracy was a scam!" articles are aggressively misconstruing the meaning of this. The paper is a couple of years old and the author appears to have no special expertise in this field.
At least in liberal democracy, it seems as if democracy is reduced to picking from Corporate Candidate A and Corporate Candidate B. At most, people go out and raise money or campaign for either Corporate Candidate. Once the voting is done, that's the end of the masses' participation in the democratic process.
I see the problem is that we elect and pay people to attempt to do politics on our behalf. There is no participating, deliberation, debating, execution, etc of policy by the people. We are wholly at the whim of people who are bought off by folks who do not have our best interests in mind.
I also agree that the education esp here in America is abysmal. Not only are we not politically educated in the form of govt we have in the US, we are unaware of how any alternatives work. We also don't encourage the well rounded general education and critical thinking skills that would allow us to make at least properly informed decisions. This is further exacerbated by the 24/7 propaganda that comes over the TV by the establishment to get you to act against your own interests.
There are numerous other reasons why democracy is flounder, and they tend to be intimately related, such as the lack of time to do politics because of jobs, cynicism resulting from the obvious failure of our political apparatus to address the real needs of Americans and instead defends the bottom lines of corporations, etc. However until we can address the issue of education and the failures of token representative democracy we will continue to elect people and get results ranging from mediocre to the TEOTWAWKI :?
How about, true liberty is when the sheep stop being sheep?
You REALLY think you want to be surrounded by sheep with guns?
You REALLY think that, in a discussion about research about intelligence and democracy, that the only solution is guns?
Where were the small government gun nuts when the government took away your liberties? They were on the side of the government because - you guessed it - they were sheep.
You really are an idiot if you think a group of people with guns cannot be convinced to do things which ultimately makes things worse of for them an everyone.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
In modern English, "democracy" is any form of government where all citizens are involved on equal basis. A constitutional republic with representative democracy, which is what US is, is therefore also a democracy.
Due to shitty news reporting and general broad-spectrum moronity, I totally agree Democracy is broken. Granted, it remains relatively fair. The key question is how do we get people's heads outta their asses and out of social-politics? We have the communication technology for everyone to contribute to decisions. How do we facilitate that? How do we reduce trolling? I'd start by ignoring any input originating from IE users. ^_^
Actually, I think true liberty is when all 3 are herbivores.
It's thinking like that that gets people stuffed in trains and herded off to camps. (Or stuffed on boats and herded off to distant continents)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The Founders of USA understood this only too well, that's why they didn't give you a democracy, but a republic ('if you can keep it'). A Republic, where not everybody is allowed to vote, but only those actually participating in the economy directly.
People who aren't paying income taxes must not be allowed to vote, because they don't have the same type of incentive to keep taxes low as those, who pay these taxes, and then it's turned into simple thievery by government force.
A bunch of people voting to steal a bunch of money from a smaller group of people and to use government to get a bunch of shit 'for free', destroying the freedoms and the economy in process - that's what you get with a 'democracy'.
You can't handle the truth.
In other words we are running one hell of a deficit!
The human prefrontal cortex does not completely mature until one is in their early twenties. It makes no sense to let 18 year olds vote.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I blame lack of parenting & the dumbing down of education. Instead of trying to bring the dumb ones up to the level of the smart ones, we are bring the smart ones down to the dumb level. Outcome based education, political correct education, taking god completely out of the classroom, single parent families, teen pregnancy and on and on. Ask kids about any "save the whales" program, and they can recite it chapter & verse. But, ask a high school student to name 2 supreme court justices, how a bill becomes a law or if we are a representative republic or a democracy, and 8 out of 10 students would probably respond: "dude...I have no clue". Bringing the vote age BACK up to 21 would be a good start. Bringing it down to 18 just promotes stupidity in the electorate. 18 to 22 year olds are in COLLEGE. In other words, NOT TAXPAYERS. (for the most part) Property owners should be the ones allowed to vote. They are the ones with a stake in the game. Not the welfare bums who's only existence is governed by "where is my check & free stuff!"
I used to think more like you do. I've learned otherwise and my rose colored glasses are now shattered.
What you seem to suggest is universal application of half-assed decisions. The problem with half-way implementing things like you seem to support is that nothing is ever implemented properly and everything only half works.
The real answer is to do very little on a federal government scale. When something is done do it all the way, don't half way anything. If there's lobbying involved or you half to convince other people to change their vote to get your way it's probably something we shouldn't be doing. Unless it's a 90% support item out of the gate we should probably avoid it.
There's a reason the word "compromised" is used to identify weakness. The amount of money and energy dedicated to supporting compromises is far more than needed to support solid structures. Commit to little, but commit whole heartedly.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I'm not a huge fan of 100% participation.
I think there are people who pay attention to what's going on and they should vote.
I think there's also a large body of people who tune the political process out. While I think they should still be allowed to vote I don't believe in encouraging them to do so. Usually pushing people out the door to vote is done to support an otherwise weak special interest. Special interest groups push these couch potatoes out the door to vote with visions of faeries and unicorns and free chocolate pie for all! They do this while simultaneously telling them the opposition uses croquette mallets on faeries, saws the horns off of unicorns and doesn't like chocolate. They do this while glossing over the fact that fulfilling the specialist interest will make their parents go broke and they'll no longer be able to afford the mortgage on the house that contains the basement they're living in.
I would rather they just stay on the couch watching American Idol between sessions of refining their Skyrim skills.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The point is not, and never has been, that the people know the exact perfect Sales Tax rate.
Nobody, including most of the people, think they know that. What the people can judge are results. If Obama delivers that's not prima facie evidence that every single word of his platform is better advice then every single word of McCain's platform, but it does imply that giving him four more years is a safe plan. OTOH if he doesn't deliver it doesn't prove that McCain's ideas were actually better, but it does imply that firing Obama might not be a bad idea.
More cynical Political Scientists support Democracy for a slightly more brutal reason: in a modern economy the alternative is almost certainly literally too horrible to contemplate. How many people could have killed you today simply by not showing up for work? OK, that was hyperbole, but I think we can all agree that the number of groups/classes of people who could seriously inconvenience everyone else is pretty much everyone. It's a lot easier to convince garbage men to not go on strike for higher wages from the city if those garbage men got the opportunity to vote for the guys responsible for the Municipal Budget, and therefore trust those guys when they say "sorry, it ain't in the budget."
For a Republic or Democracy to work the Citizens have to have something invested. It must be limited, something you earn. Traditionally this was through seemingly unfair methods, but it was always there because it was necessary.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
3 of the 15 items in my grocery cart, and the guy behind me pays for the other 12, I can say, "but I pay for my groceries."
Utter nonsense. You're the ignorant one, parroting lefty talking points. Income taxes for my bracket are 35%. Payroll taxes are 7.65%. My overall tax rate is nearing 50%, thanks to California's "progressive" income tax. And of course, you aren't even accounting for net money received by half of Americans, like EITC, Welfare, food stamps, and various other government checks. If you get a net credit from the government, you aren't actually paying taxes into the treasury, you're taking them.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Sure it is. Or are you arguing that it is impossible for humans to discover or learn anything unless they apply the rigorous 37-step Scientific Method(tm)? And that any other knowledge discovered by any other means is completely useless?
Some people say that scientists aren't smart enough to tell the difference between a democracy and a republic.
Step 1: Choose 100 voters at random from the given state/country/whatever, or use something more similar to the courts where the campaigns get to challenge potential voters selected from a larger pool.
Step 2: Give the 100 voters a month or two to grill the candidates and educate themselves on the issues.
Step 3: The 100 voters vote.
Clearly you'd need to put in a lot of safeguards to avoid voter tampering, but if you could pull it off I'm sure you'd have an extremely reformed and responsible electorate, and a higher quality of candidate to match.
Only downside is this changes politics into a much more explicit spectator sport and it's hard to say how that will affect the country as a whole.
I stole this Sig
Hey look at my sig!
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
There are several long-lived democracies that can prove these scientists wrong. Switzerland would come to mind.
Democracy is foremost about cohesion, about open debate, about seeking compromise. Most of all, democracy requires educating people to think critically, and ensuring that some fundamental values are shared. This foundation doesn't come automatically and needs to be maintained, but it is worth the effort.
Of course a democracy also needs leaders that promote big changes and ideas. A democracy ought to provide an environment where such leaders can flourish.
There is no ideal outcome, but we can agree as Churchill said, that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".
See my sig.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
And so do the wolves.
And yes, I've heard the usual "America isn't a Democracy, it's a Republic" etc - but a Republic and a Democracy are not othogonal concepts.
They are orthogonal, actually. There are democratic republics, undemocratic republics, democratic monarchies and undemocratic monarchies. They're not mutually exclusive concepts.
If you take the empiricist stance seriously, then you have to say that neither Galileo nor Einstein practiced science. Galileo proceeded counter-inductively. He ignored the empirical evidence at hand because he thought that his theory was more harmonious. Eventually he was proved right, with regards to heliocentrism, but only because elliptical rather than spherical orbits were discovered. The evidence Galileo actually recorded was an argument /against/ his theory.
Similarly, Einstein's relativity was a mathematical construct that took years to be validated via empirical methods.
And much of string theory seems to be in principle unfalsifiable at the empirical level.
So if we're going to hold to strict empiricism, we have to say that much of what seems to be science isn't actually science.
And then there is good old Piere Duhem's observation that empiricists, when trying to falsify a hypothesis, really have no good way to determine whether the experiment is falsifying the experimental method, the hypothesis, or the over-arching conceptual schema that the hypothesis depends on. This line of logic was (apparently) independently discovered by WVO Quine and is now commonly referred to as the Duhem-Quine Indeterminacy Thesis. The empiricist school of thought still has not come with a good argument against it. For the most part, they just ignore it.
This is the prime reason why I vote for smaller government. People are stupid. Our leaders are at best mediocre. Why should they have so much power to tell us what light bulbs to use, how many gallons we can flush, how we spend our healthcare dollars, etc. Most importantly, why should they be able to take such a large percentage of my labor through taxes to impose tyranny upon me?
The Constitution had more than enough power for these weasels that the dumb-ass masses keep electing.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I was really hoping that the post above would be at +5 by now, but I guess people are too busy arguing the fine points of the jokes way above.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As far as I can tell, the article and post are incorrect when they state "The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea." They are begging the question of what the justifications for democracy actually are (please, no pendants picking apart this use of the phrase). The article looks like it was more reserved, and started with the goal of finding the best possible leader without claiming that was the purpose of democracy in general.
I would contend that the strength of democracy is avoiding truly terrible candidates. The ones who write like the developer of the time cube. A tyranny of the majority is superior to the tyranny of one.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
to conduct a "study" to get paid to tell people what they already know...
Let's put it down to the Fox News Effect, but your post is pretty much conservative urban legend crap.
Vote REGISTRATION fraud. Not actual VOTING fraud.
This is not some trivial difference, as organizations are required by law to turn in all the forms they collect. So if someone registers as Micky Mouse, ACORN would flag that form and set it aside for state officials to look at - a fact that seems to have been left out of your storyline. They can't pick and choose forms to throw in the trash, for reasons that should be obvious - partisans would throw forms from the opposing party in the trash.
You mean people like Usman Ali?
Or Kimberly Prude?
The only **actual fraud** here is the Republican Party pretending this is a grave problem necessitating draconian voter ID laws when you can literally count the number of actual cases on one, maybe two hands. Out of millions and millions of votes cast nationwide.
Your partisan stone throwing would be funny if the Secretary of State of Indiana wasn't just convicted of half a dozen counts of actual voting fraud when he was the man in charge of the state's elections. And if Ann Coulter hadn't voted in two districts in the same election.
And if the GOP hadn't stolen a presidential election by disenfranchising tens of thousands of eligible voters in Florida.
Seems to me it is obvious that choosing government policy the same way we choose Top 40 hits is silly, but at least it's democratic and everyone gets a say-so. Of course, not everyone does get a say-so in straight-up democracy. In US dollar-fueled democracy, it is even worse.
True representation could be done thru a lottery system. Then the much-lauded One-percenters would only comprise 1% of Congress.
See subject.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm thinking Tea Party
People don't have to be experts, nor do they have to right all the time for representational democracy to function.
I've been pointing out for some time that in fact most of us, myself included, lack the expertise to elect a government based on their proposed policy platform (even assuming the candour of the politicians). But as you say that does not mean that representative democracy cannot function.
To me the telling statement in TFA (not by D-K) was that the "advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."" That is exactly wrong!
The advantage of a representative democracy is not the right to elect a government of our choice to office --since as stated above almost all of us are ill qualified to make this judgement --the advantage is the right to dismiss from office a government which is under-performing, and that, as the recipients of the effects of poor performance, We The People are in the best situation to judge.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I've always heard it as:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote."
Perhaps this explains why so many poor & middle class folks still vote for Republicans.
I like that point better than most I've read here. It was well thought out. I have often been asked about who I'll vote for by people. I then explain that as an expatriate that did not establish a voting district before leaving, my vote is purely as part of the absenty counting which has no representation in the electoral college. Therefore, my vote is generally through attempting to educate others about my perspectives. To do this, I tend to try and help people choose the candidate they should want as opposed to the candidate I want. This way, I'm not stealing their vote but helping them to vote in the way that will best represent their needs and wants as opposed to simply voting for the guy with the nicest hair for example or that's part of the right party.
The ability to dismiss is an incredibly important feature of the American political system and it needs revision. Based on the original topic of the article and even your opening statement about lacking the expertise to make an informed decision based on who should in fact hold office based on the issues, I believe the system as it stands now makes it too easy to throw a person out of office before anything they have tried to accomplish actually is given a chance to work. People generally want instant gratification and instant improvements when a new president comes to office for example.
There is almost nothing a candidate can do prior to taking the presidency that will provide them enough information to actually make informed decisions regarding plans. They can make a plan to design a plan once they have the knowledge, but it's almost impossible to actually make a good plan without the actually experience from within the office. The exception would be if a vice president ran as the incumbent for the party and worked together with the president to prepare the plan before hand. Therefore, we have to assume that prior to coming into the presidential office, the plan is based mainly on intentions. Once the president comes to office, it's time to turn those intentions into a plan after learning about the presidential resources, liabilities and assets involved in making the plan happen. Unless you like hack and slash politics, the planning phase for the presidential programs should consume the first year of their term. Not only that, but teams of people should be assembled to identify what can go wrong with the plans and build contingencies for it.
The second year of office should be spent getting bills proposed, gaining support and passing them. With a good plan, it may be possible to pass laws without ear marks everywhere which, due to the insane financial crisis, Obama didn't have the luxury of on his initial bills. But he really should have had more time to get Obamacare right. By letting it be hacked and slashed by everyone who opposed it or wanted to tack something onto it, it was a bit of a mess. But if an entire year is devoted to just kissing asses, making back room shady deals and whatever else to pass the bills, then the third year will be about implementing them.
Now comes the real problem. The fourth year. It's utterly wasted. The president now has to spend all his time finding another country to fight to get the redneck vote (which is a HUGE vote). He has to raise money, make good on promises to big backers etc... he is in a position of power and he's forced to kiss rich peoples asses to raise money to get reelected. This is a terrible idea. What's worse is that he's being attacked by A LOT of people. He's losing support. Unless the other candidate is a total waste of skin who as no chance of winning, opposition in congress will do whatever is possible to stonewall the president to gain favor with the other candidate they are betting on. They'll even stonewall the president to make it harder for him to do anything in his last year before the election in order to make him look bad.
Instead of two 4 years terms, a president should have a single 8 term with something like a vote of no confidence in place which makes it near
Whats the form called where the best people from each field are chosen to represent that field in government?
I am too intellectually limited to interpret the results from the Google, so Im asking here instead.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
The stupidity of that assertion is just another proof of the topic subject.
Failed on several fronts:
1) Procreation is a natural function of (almost) every organism on this planet.
Government, especially an elected one, is an artificial construct.
2) Your vote can potentially affect the whole country.
You shagging has significantly less far-reaching consequences.
3) A lot of activities require a license, often accompanied by a mandatory test. Driving, flying, transmitting on certain frequencies, carrying weapons (in many countries), practising law or medicine...
The same "slippery slope" arguments may be applied.
Better luck next time.
I didn't say anything about overseas wars.
I didn't say anything about internal spying on the citizens.
I didn't say anything about a general overreach of government.
I was responding to two points: the Constitutionality of the "defined roles of federal government", and the "appropriateness" of how much we spend on defense, which is double the advertized size. On all accounts, you failed to respond to what was actually written.
It's basically the averagest of all possible governments.
No it isn't, because people vote based on hair and personality rather than policies. The result is a government which is far worse than 'average'.
No sig today...
Voting in elections is NOT democracy.
Casteism
The power of democracy comes from people feeling they have some control over their lives. Whether they put the "best" people in office or not is irrelevant. It is the decision, the asking for permission, that is the true foundation of democracy, It is the sense of inclusion. And, as a bonus, while people cannot tell who is the "best" for a position, they sure can tell when they don't want someone. The power to throw someone out of office is essential to short circuiting rising social discontent. It feels good to "throw the bum out."
E Proelio Veritas.
Politics is the only profession where you can make money by cheating people (election manifesto/poll promises etc) and yet you'll not be prosecuted/punished.
Go and start your own political party in your free time.
http://www.investoruprising.com/author.asp?section_id=1287&doc_id=231809
Casteism
What actually happens is that most people don't even vote for their own economic interests: about 80% vote straight party tickets (according to research reported in the book "The Political Brain"). Political parties are nothing more than scale-up tribes or sports teams: you join a team and then want your team to win. Can't get much less intelligent than that.
In Victorian England no more than 10-15% of the populace could vote. When 'everybody' votes you get populism which eventually mutates into fascism. Because everyone wants to be part of an angry mob lynching someone, anyone. Or at the least they want to be brutally lead. It's not about brainpower it's about the nature of why people think they want a voice in the process. Mostly it's to scream and complain and talk shit. And in a generation blogging or whatever social media turns into, will take the place of participatory governance. And as long as everyone gets to shriek like monkeys they'll be happy with that.
otherwise sayings like "The people get the government they deserve" wouldn't exist
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Banal and useless proverb.
We are limited to our own experience, and lack the 3rd party omniscient viewpoint to know who knows that he knows. As if there were only one thing to know and only one way to know it.
A wise person doesn't just follow someone who sounds like he knows - that's what sheep do. And voters.
It's interesting to notice how the current democratic system, used pretty much all over the world, rarely results in good leadership. In my mind, it's not an issue of intelligence. It's an issue of education.
As an Argentinian, I wondered lately how it would be to have qualified voting: in order to be eligible to vote you would be required to pass a small test answering questions about your countries' democratic system - what a Senator does, how laws are passed, what different branches can and cannot do, and which liberties and responsibilities are defined in our Constitution. Free courses for those who need it. Perhaps if most people start realizing what exactly they are doing when they vote we might see some changes.
H.L. Mencken was a delightful troll, but he did always have something fun to say about democracy. Let's try this one:
"If X is the population of the United States and Y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that X times Y is less than Y."
---don't make me break out my red pen.