Democracy is a local optimum over the medium term because it’s unusually stable. You can give plenary power to your favorite electrical engineers today, but in 40 years you’ll be governed with an iron fist by the engineers’ innumerate, egotistical kids. Democracy is the only system we know of that can be trusted to crank out the same level of mediocre decision-making for hundreds of years on end. I’m sure there’s a way to improve on it—but more attention needs to be paid to the long-term consequences of our revisions.
I’ll take that as a “yes”. (I agree with what you wrote; but much of it is moving the conversation backwards (to whether democracy is an improvement over dictatorship) instead of forward (to what a more rational system is, how to get there, and which of today’s governments are likely to transition to it first).)
Sorry; comes of butting into the conversation two years late—hard to tell which way it’s headed. Anyway, yes, a rational dictator would find it easier to impose, say, futarchy, than a coalition of rational voters would. There is an interesting question as to whether dictators are more or less likely to want to switch a rational system as compared to a majority coalition of voters. Dictators probably show more variation in their preferences than entire voting blocs do (although see http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter for a strong argument that voter preferences do NOT exhibit much destructive interference), but dictators are also less likely to feel comfortable with (a) a major change that (b) encourages decisions to be made on some kind of ‘expert’ basis that is independent of the dictator’s will. Even brainstorming in public about such a system could be dangerous to the dictator’s continued enjoyment of the perks of power; once people start repeatedly applying the concept of “objectively right no matter what our Fearless Leader says,” they’re less likely to support the Fearless Leader.
I read Lee Kuan Yew’s book on the development of Singapore From Third World to First some time ago and recall it being startlingly rational and scarily pragmatic. (Detractors would probably say revisionist and self-congratulatory but, even if that is true, most Western leaders wouldn’t even try to portray themselves as detached, rational and pragmatic.) I’m sure if there were a more rational means of statecraft (say, large-scale computer simulations) such a one-party state would be able to take greater advantage of it providing they’re not compromised by some other ideology (religion or communism).
Is it easier to move from monarchism, dictatorship, or one-party rule, to some more rational system? Is democracy an overly-stable local optimum?
Democracy is a local optimum over the medium term because it’s unusually stable. You can give plenary power to your favorite electrical engineers today, but in 40 years you’ll be governed with an iron fist by the engineers’ innumerate, egotistical kids. Democracy is the only system we know of that can be trusted to crank out the same level of mediocre decision-making for hundreds of years on end. I’m sure there’s a way to improve on it—but more attention needs to be paid to the long-term consequences of our revisions.
I’ll take that as a “yes”. (I agree with what you wrote; but much of it is moving the conversation backwards (to whether democracy is an improvement over dictatorship) instead of forward (to what a more rational system is, how to get there, and which of today’s governments are likely to transition to it first).)
Sorry; comes of butting into the conversation two years late—hard to tell which way it’s headed. Anyway, yes, a rational dictator would find it easier to impose, say, futarchy, than a coalition of rational voters would. There is an interesting question as to whether dictators are more or less likely to want to switch a rational system as compared to a majority coalition of voters. Dictators probably show more variation in their preferences than entire voting blocs do (although see http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter for a strong argument that voter preferences do NOT exhibit much destructive interference), but dictators are also less likely to feel comfortable with (a) a major change that (b) encourages decisions to be made on some kind of ‘expert’ basis that is independent of the dictator’s will. Even brainstorming in public about such a system could be dangerous to the dictator’s continued enjoyment of the perks of power; once people start repeatedly applying the concept of “objectively right no matter what our Fearless Leader says,” they’re less likely to support the Fearless Leader.
I read Lee Kuan Yew’s book on the development of Singapore From Third World to First some time ago and recall it being startlingly rational and scarily pragmatic. (Detractors would probably say revisionist and self-congratulatory but, even if that is true, most Western leaders wouldn’t even try to portray themselves as detached, rational and pragmatic.) I’m sure if there were a more rational means of statecraft (say, large-scale computer simulations) such a one-party state would be able to take greater advantage of it providing they’re not compromised by some other ideology (religion or communism).