asr comments on Democracy and rationality - Less Wrong

8 Post author: homunq 30 October 2013 12:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (47)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Lumifer 30 October 2013 06:28:05PM 2 points [-]

As a result, I don't particularly care if the process delivers results most voters want. Instead, I care if the process delivers decent results.

You seem to want some kind of a hidden technocracy where what the (ignorant and confused) voters say they want doesn't matter much.

This requires strictly less input from me, and therefore probably less attention and thought, which is a Good Thing.

Which quickly goes to requiring zero input from you.

Most people wouldn't call the result a democracy.

Comment author: asr 30 October 2013 08:07:38PM *  1 point [-]

You seem to want some kind of a hidden technocracy where what the (ignorant and confused) voters say they want doesn't matter much.

I want the voters to have neither too much nor too little influence. I don't know how to characterize that amount other than by the results, unfortunately.

Which quickly goes to requiring zero input from you.

This is not the historical experience. Britain has had elections that matter, going back many centuries. In their system, the general election ballot is quite simple: "which of party's candidate do you like?" In contrast, a US general election ballot can have several pages of officials, referenda, and so forth. In California, it's routine to have 30 separate things to vote on every two years, at just the state and federal levels.

My sense is that Britain is better governed and has a more stable political system, I think in part because the voting avoids over-burdening the electorate. Simple elections don't seem to degenerate to dictatorship, and more complicated systems don't produce results I like better.