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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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For those who believe that the US is a democracy in the sense that public policy is an aggregate of public opinion, how do you deal with the fact that 42% of the US population don't know that Obamacare is actually law?
If the population doesn't even know about the easy facts, how do you expect a democracy in which public policy is driven by public discourse to work?
I'm currently in a weeklong design meeting. On Monday, the guy leading the meeting proposed a schedule for what we were doing when, in which my presentation was Monday, a likely followup for my presentation was Friday, and various other things were true. Some people objected, and he changed some stuff, though not those two things. Nobody objected to it, and it's the schedule we're using.
I have no idea what we're going to do this afternoon or tomorrow, and I was surprised by what we did yesterday and this morning. At no time have I ever known, I didn't bother to listen when it was announced. I don't care what we discuss when, as long as I know when my topics are so I can prep.
Still, I'm happy to say that our schedule is an aggregate of public opinion.
Would you disagree?
I approach public policy in a democracy similarly. Sure, most of us don't know anything about anything, but I'm not sure how much that really matters.
That being said, I'm also not sure how much I endorse public policy driven by public discourse. "Worst system in the world except for everything else we've ever tried" comes to mind.
By that definition the political decisions in most non-democratic states are also driven by public opinion.
Maybe; I'm not sure.
I mean, these terms are fuzzy, but to continue with my analogy... consider the following (tiny subset of all) possible processes:
- [A] "the guy leading the meeting proposed a schedule, and that's the schedule we're using; there was no opportunity to object nor any expectation of such an opportunity."
- [B] "the guy leading the meeting proposed a schedule, some people objected, he changed some stuff, nobody objected, and that's the schedule we're using; most people paid no attention and don't really care"
- [C] "everyone in the room was asked to propose a schedule, the various proposed schedules were merged in some standardized fashion and a composite schedule was generated; we're using the composite schedule"
I would say there's some property P() for which P(A) < P(B) < P(C) where P() bears some relationship (perhaps partially homologous, perhaps simply analogous) to what we're calling "democracy" here. At some point it's a question of where we draw a fairly arbitrary threshold line.
I'm inclined to draw the line such that B and C are both "democratic" and A is not.
It seems to me that you're drawing the line such that only C is "democratic."
If I'm correct, then I guess my answer to your question is "I don't believe the US is a democracy, nor do I endorse it being one; I can't imagine what a democracy comprising human minds would even look like."
I suspect I'm misunderstanding you, though.
I'm interested in power. A and B describe outcomes.
It makes a difference whether the person who leads the meeting changes the schedule when objections happen because he's nice or because he if forced to change.
When it comes to Obamacare I don't think the issue is that 42% of the US population don't care about it. From my perception of US politics a lot of people in the US care a great deal about the issue.
It's a problem when you can better convince the voting public by buying TV ads then you can convince them through good policy.
Could be that your perception is not of the same group of people as don't know it is law when polled.
72% of American seem to believe that it's unconstitutional so they care to some extend about it.
Yes, I would agree that regardless of what label we assign to the U.S. political system, power is not equally distributed within it, and the people "leading the meeting" are not reliably (or typically) "nice," and policy selected for some goal other than being convincing typically isn't as convincing as well-designed propaganda.
Note that this isn't particularly specific to the US. The situation is pretty much the same in every country, AFAIK.