in 2012 a majority of Democrats (51.6%) cannot correctly answer both that the earth revolves around the Sun and that this takes a year. Republicans fare a bit better, with only 38.9% failing to get both correct.
I file this under “libertarian thought,” because to me it speaks to the issue of how romantic one should be about democratic voting.
These kinds of polls need a control, like, “What is your name?” or “What is the electronic device through which we are currently speaking?” My bet is around 33% of the answers would be wrong.
This paper uses representative samples of the adult general public to challenge two of the most common assumptions of political psychology: (1) that a belief in astrology is such a good indicator of conservatism that it is appropriate to use as a measure of conservatism itself
Wait…what? Where did that come from? Has any of these political psychologists ever actually met a conservative? I went to a Christian school in 8th grade and clearly remember getting a lecture on how astrology was wrong because it wasn’t Christian.
They do realize that the term “conservatism” denotes a particular political philosophy and is not just a synonym for “stupid,” right?
Download the paper and check the citation 1. Haven’t read any of the cited articles, but that’s where the author claims support for that statement.
Keywords: Astrology, Motivated Cognition, Conservatism, War on Science, Political Party
Wasn’t “War on Science” one of those MoveOn.org type memes from 2003? At least get with the times, Lindgren! We moved on to the War on Women two years ago!
Aren’t all these people also market actors? Why should their ignorance make us depressed about their ability to vote but not depressed about their ability to rationally maximize their own utility in the free market?
To me, this study says that democracy, like markets, must work better than alternatives because of the wisdom of crowds and because it lines up incentives better, not because the individuals it empowers are, as individuals, so smart. As such, the fact that they empower stupid people doesn’t hurt my romantic beliefs about either. I mean, a priori we would have expected about half of voters and market participants to be dumber than the median, right?
“Why should their ignorance make us depressed about their ability to vote but not depressed about their ability to rationally maximize their own utility in the free market?”
Two reasons. First, if they make poor choices in the market, that has little effect on your or my ability to make our own choices. Second, their market choices are likely to be better informed because the negative feedback effects of stupid beliefs and decisions are much more direct. If you believe in astrology or intelligent design or vote for an idiot, there’s little personal impact. In fact, the personal impact may be positive in terms of strengthening group affiliations — even while the societal effects are negative. But if you waste your own money on dumb, useless stuff, the money’s gone.
Regardless of which works better, unless you think markets are perfect at eliminating the effects of individual irrationality, news that makes you think people are dumber and therefor democracy works worse should also make you think markets work worse.
Anyways, in defense of democracy 1. There is an immediate and huge effect if you vote for someone and he does something disastrous. That’s why democracies work better than other forms of government: they are better at avoiding outcomes which are disastrous for most people. Rational voters only ignore bad policy, not terrible policy, and that means rational voters have an incentive to avoid policies terrible for them. Smaller selectorates don’t have as direct an incentive to avoid policies that are terrible for people outside the selectorate, so democracy puts everyone in the selectorate. 2. I agree, markets *are* better at providing feedback and eliciting rational decisions than democracy. The problem, by my lights is that it’s hard to use markets to govern and hard to make markets work without government. Maybe futarchy will solve the problem. Until then, democracy is worse than markets, but markets aren’t actually a form of government. Hence I admire markets as a relatively wonderful system for aggregating information, and democracy as a relatively wonderful system for governing. I don’t see them as in competition.
Problem to your point on democracy.
With markets you are the decisive actor in whether or not your irrational decision affects you. If you spend $10,000 on an astrology reading you’re the one who made the choice and the one who can choose not to in the future.
With democracy, your vote is pretty never decisive except in the weirdest and least likely of circumstances. As such changing your mind personally has a negligible effect on outcomes you experience. Thus the feed-back mechanism isn’t just a little weaker, it’s just slightly above non-existent. This doesn’t even begin to get into the severe bundling problems of representative democracy (maybe the representative is an idiot on astrology but has really good ideas on foreign policy) and the problems of only giving input at particular limited points (elections which are far rarer than most market transactions).
You are right, widespread irrationality should decrease faith in markets, but only to a limited extent due to the feedback mechanisms and more limited externality problem. But it should majorly decrease faith in democracy because though feedback mechanisms are hugely weakened and the externality issue is gigantic.
I am big on fair voting, it creates educated people I think.
I’d put this sort of thing in “anti-libertarian thought”. After all, how many statists look at this sort of thing and figure “they’re all idiots, only fit to be ruled by enlightened, educated folks like me”.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is a matter of astronomy, not astrology. Or perhaps I’m wrong, and shouldn’t vote anymore.
It is. The two questions aren’t intended to be related.