Comment on Helpless Individuals

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:42:32 GMT

If you found a way to identify less rational people that didn't exclude any groups that were identifiable enough for government policy to discriminate against them, it could work, but that sounds hard.

Limiting the franchise sounds tough but there are some obvious ways to reduce the number of less rational people who are voluntarily choosing to vote: reduce the number of get-out-the-vote campaigns, specifically those that mindlessly repeat slogans about voting, and focus more on campaigns with a rational explanations of why people ought to vote Of course... perhaps get-out-the-vote campaigns tend to have more of an impact in demographics that vote less on average, like young people, so they might have other beneficial effects in that way (and given that probably the portion of potential voters who aren't swayed by mindlessly spouting slogans about voting is vanishingly small, this would probably dramatically outweigh any effects of them on voter rationality). Still, it's a thought. Get-out-the-vote campaigns just seem INCREDIBLY weird to me.

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