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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.
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.
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
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!
"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!
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.
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?
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"
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?).
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
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
You've got a better method of conflict resolution? You really think everybody is going to come to consensus on serious matters of difference?
In practice our system doesn't do this anyway, a minority impose their will on the majority by virtue of their economic power. Most Americans were against the various bailout programs but they did them anyway. Same thing with NAFTA. Iraq war. The list is long.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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".
Some days the US is a republic, some days a democracy.
I am John Hurt.
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.
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.
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.
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
"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!
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
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
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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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