Democracy requires capable voters in the same way capitalism requires altruistic merchants.
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 a capitalistic economy you don’t have to buy services from the median firm
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.
In the equilibrium, the average consumer buys from the average firm. Otherwise it doesn’t stay average for long.
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.
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.