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Lumifer comments on No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science - Less Wrong
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Democracy requires capable voters in the same way capitalism requires altruistic merchants.
In other words, not at all.
The grandparent is wrong, but I don't think this is quite right either. Democracy roughly tracks the capability (at the very least in the domain of delegation) and preference of the median voter, but in a capitalistic economy you don't have to buy services from the median firm. You can choose to only purchase from the best firm or no firm at all if none offer favorable terms.
In the equilibrium, the average consumer buys from the average firm. Otherwise it doesn't stay average for long.
However the core of the issue is that democracy is a mechanism, it's not guaranteed to produce optimal or even good results. Having "bad" voters will not prevent the mechanism of democracy from functioning, it just might lead to "bad" results.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L.Mencken.
The median consumer of a good purchases from (somewhere around) the median firm selling a good. That doesn't necessarily aggregate, and it certainly doesn't weigh all consumers or firms equally. The consumers who buy the most of a good tend to have different preferences and research opportunities than average consumers, for example.
You could get similar results in a democracy, but most democracies don't really encourage it : most places emphasize voting regardless of knowledge of a topic, and some jurisdictions mandate it.
Could you clarify? Are you saying that for democracy to exist it doesn't require capable voters, or that for democracy to work well that it doesn't?
In the classic free-market argument, merchants don't have to be altruistic to accomplish the general good, because the way to advance their private interest is to sell goods that other people want. But that doesn't generalize to democracy, since there isn't trading involved in democratic voting.
See here
However there is the question of what "working well" means, given that humans are not rational and satisfying expressed desires might or might not fall under the "working well" label.
Ah, I see. You're just saying that democracy doesn't stop happening just because voters have preferences I don't approve of. :)
Actually, I'm making a stronger claim -- voters can screw themselves up in pretty serious fashion and it's still will be full-blown democracy in action.