I don’t think the greatest thing about democracy is that the elected politicians do exactly what the voters want them to do.
I don’t think so either. The VAA idea should go in tandem with the other ideas, intended to reduce voters’ degree of selfishness and tribalism, and to enhance the quality of political debates. We want an electorate of rational and altruistic voters to rule.
It’s an interesting topic. I might write a longer post about it later on.
I don’t think so either. The VAA idea should go in tandem with the other ideas, intended to reduce voters’ degree of selfishness and tribalism, and to enhance the quality of political debates. We want an electorate of rational and altruistic voters to rule.
No. We want a group of rational and altruistic politicians to rule. In a representative democracy it’s not the role of a voter to rule.
Besides rational and altruistic politicians we also want a public debate with multiple actors that each have different incentives. Newspaper journalists who care about the trust of their readers. Academics who care about getting citations for their work. Debates inside political parties where people want to get more political power within the party. Trade unions who care about workers issues. Corporations who care about making a profit. Various foundations that have complex motivations. Forums like the one in which we are debating.
You will never have a situation where every voter has an informed opinion on every topic. That simply takes to much time and the average voter has an IQ of 100. Tribalism isn’t bad. If a tribe has a few individuals who spend the effort required to get an informed opinion about a topic we want that members of the tribe who spent less effort on developing an informed opinion copy their opinions and thereby giving those people who spend the time to develop an informed opinion more power.
The academic community is a tribe. I personally do read original research papers if I care about an issue but many people don’t and for most people it’s a decent heuristic to simply go with the academic tribal consensus instead of forming their own opinion.
It’s just that you want more than two tribes in a pluralistic society. There’s also again the theme of establishing trust relationships.
I don’t think so either. The VAA idea should go in tandem with the other ideas, intended to reduce voters’ degree of selfishness and tribalism, and to enhance the quality of political debates. We want an electorate of rational and altruistic voters to rule.
It’s an interesting topic. I might write a longer post about it later on.
No. We want a group of rational and altruistic politicians to rule. In a representative democracy it’s not the role of a voter to rule.
Besides rational and altruistic politicians we also want a public debate with multiple actors that each have different incentives. Newspaper journalists who care about the trust of their readers. Academics who care about getting citations for their work. Debates inside political parties where people want to get more political power within the party. Trade unions who care about workers issues. Corporations who care about making a profit. Various foundations that have complex motivations. Forums like the one in which we are debating.
You will never have a situation where every voter has an informed opinion on every topic. That simply takes to much time and the average voter has an IQ of 100. Tribalism isn’t bad. If a tribe has a few individuals who spend the effort required to get an informed opinion about a topic we want that members of the tribe who spent less effort on developing an informed opinion copy their opinions and thereby giving those people who spend the time to develop an informed opinion more power.
The academic community is a tribe. I personally do read original research papers if I care about an issue but many people don’t and for most people it’s a decent heuristic to simply go with the academic tribal consensus instead of forming their own opinion.
It’s just that you want more than two tribes in a pluralistic society. There’s also again the theme of establishing trust relationships.
Yes, it is.