Test: find someone who just voted and ask the person to (a) justify their vote, and (b) justify the purchase of some large ticket item (cell phone, car, house) they made. I bet they make more intelligent arguments for (b) than (a).
Given an impartial arbitrator to judge the intelligence of the arguments, I think I would probably take that bet, at least for cell phone or laptop scale purchases, rather than something like a house or car, where the decisions are usually made over much longer timeframes.
However, regardless of which decisions people argue for more persuasively, it doesn’t really prove much, because these types of explanations overwhelmingly tend to be justifications people create for themselves, rather than the true reasons underlying their decisions.
They may be able to justify the act of purchase, but they won’t be able to justify (or usually, even comprehend) how their purchase affects the prices and supply of items on the market. Yet their purchase does exactly that, and does so much better than some central authority setting prices and deciding how much of an item is to be sold. In fact, that’s the best system we’ve found so far of running a market and it depends on millions of people who are only acting for their own selfish reasons and have no idea how what they are doing affects the larger picture.
Test: find someone who just voted and ask the person to (a) justify their vote, and (b) justify the purchase of some large ticket item (cell phone, car, house) they made. I bet they make more intelligent arguments for (b) than (a).
Given an impartial arbitrator to judge the intelligence of the arguments, I think I would probably take that bet, at least for cell phone or laptop scale purchases, rather than something like a house or car, where the decisions are usually made over much longer timeframes.
However, regardless of which decisions people argue for more persuasively, it doesn’t really prove much, because these types of explanations overwhelmingly tend to be justifications people create for themselves, rather than the true reasons underlying their decisions.
They may be able to justify the act of purchase, but they won’t be able to justify (or usually, even comprehend) how their purchase affects the prices and supply of items on the market. Yet their purchase does exactly that, and does so much better than some central authority setting prices and deciding how much of an item is to be sold. In fact, that’s the best system we’ve found so far of running a market and it depends on millions of people who are only acting for their own selfish reasons and have no idea how what they are doing affects the larger picture.