Against Democracy

Against Democracy by Jason Brennan

Democracy enables everyone to have a say. This is both a feature and a bug. Everybody has a vote, but not everybody has a clue as to what they are doing. Many frequently vote against their own best interests - often because they don't have any idea how their votes impact them. They would be better off if they did not vote. It is not worth the investment to become more knowledgeable. Encouraging people to become involved and vote generally makes things worse. (As a thought experiment, how would Black activists feel if we could wave a magic wand and make all Black voters vote in all election? ... if it had the side effect of always having them vote for MAGA Republicans?)

The author explores different types of voters. "Hobbits" are uninformed. "Hooligans" are highly partisan and passionate, but generally clueless.  "Vulcans" dispassionately analyze and choose what is best. A nation of Vulcans would produce great results, but alas we have mostly Hobbits and Hooligans. People are often attached to a particular party and favor people that way and will even vote if out of their best interest.

Other systems may provide better results. Epistocracy is a potential system where the most knowledgeable rule. We could provide additional votes for those with more education or who have passed a civics test. Or we could randomly pick from among the people that had shown basic knowledge. (Though there are questions on how the demonstration of knowledge can be made - one proposal is to have that democratically produced. People often have a strong idea of how they should act, they just don't necessarily act that way.)  There are other ways that could also be explored that would be improvements on democracy. Is there a will to adopt anything better?