It’s interesting that China’s leadership is full of engineers and economists; as a whole they’re probably far more qualified to do their jobs than the leadership of most Western countries. I think there’s some truth to the idea that you can have qualified leaders or you can have elected leaders but you can’t have both. Getting elected just doesn’t translate into being the best candidate for the job. If positions in the private sector were filled by popular vote, industry would grind to a halt. I think if you honestly consider that as a though experiment, it’s obvious that only a truly absurd and impractical amount of voter rationality would solve the inherent problem, which is just that it isn’t a sensible way to fill vacancies.
For what it’s worth, I offer this summary of a study about Chinese and American education. Even though Chinese students know a heck of a lot more science, they can’t reason scientifically any better than their American counterparts.
I confess I don’t know a lot about China, and so my preference to live in almost any Western country and not in China may be biased by ignorance, but… would you prefer to live in China, or another authoritarian state but whose management would be experts in various fields? Do you honestly think such a state would be better at various important parameters of societal welfare?
A final point: while congressfolk may be less competent than we might wish, actual state managers—civil servants in high positions—are often accredited veterans in their fields.
Democracy is a local optimum over the medium term because it’s unusually stable. You can give plenary power to your favorite electrical engineers today, but in 40 years you’ll be governed with an iron fist by the engineers’ innumerate, egotistical kids. Democracy is the only system we know of that can be trusted to crank out the same level of mediocre decision-making for hundreds of years on end. I’m sure there’s a way to improve on it—but more attention needs to be paid to the long-term consequences of our revisions.
I’ll take that as a “yes”. (I agree with what you wrote; but much of it is moving the conversation backwards (to whether democracy is an improvement over dictatorship) instead of forward (to what a more rational system is, how to get there, and which of today’s governments are likely to transition to it first).)
Sorry; comes of butting into the conversation two years late—hard to tell which way it’s headed. Anyway, yes, a rational dictator would find it easier to impose, say, futarchy, than a coalition of rational voters would. There is an interesting question as to whether dictators are more or less likely to want to switch a rational system as compared to a majority coalition of voters. Dictators probably show more variation in their preferences than entire voting blocs do (although see http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter for a strong argument that voter preferences do NOT exhibit much destructive interference), but dictators are also less likely to feel comfortable with (a) a major change that (b) encourages decisions to be made on some kind of ‘expert’ basis that is independent of the dictator’s will. Even brainstorming in public about such a system could be dangerous to the dictator’s continued enjoyment of the perks of power; once people start repeatedly applying the concept of “objectively right no matter what our Fearless Leader says,” they’re less likely to support the Fearless Leader.
I read Lee Kuan Yew’s book on the development of Singapore From Third World to First some time ago and recall it being startlingly rational and scarily pragmatic. (Detractors would probably say revisionist and self-congratulatory but, even if that is true, most Western leaders wouldn’t even try to portray themselves as detached, rational and pragmatic.) I’m sure if there were a more rational means of statecraft (say, large-scale computer simulations) such a one-party state would be able to take greater advantage of it providing they’re not compromised by some other ideology (religion or communism).
Getting elected just doesn’t translate into being the best candidate for the job.
The job of government is to enrich itself while limiting the actions of its people, with the side-effect of having a monopoly on the initiation of violence. I would rather live in a place where people in government are terrible at their jobs. Preferably a place where the government is divided into separate groups that are divided against each other so it can hardly do anything at all.
As Mal Reynolds would say, “that’s what a government’s for—getting in a man’s way”
It’s interesting that China’s leadership is full of engineers and economists; as a whole they’re probably far more qualified to do their jobs than the leadership of most Western countries. I think there’s some truth to the idea that you can have qualified leaders or you can have elected leaders but you can’t have both. Getting elected just doesn’t translate into being the best candidate for the job. If positions in the private sector were filled by popular vote, industry would grind to a halt. I think if you honestly consider that as a though experiment, it’s obvious that only a truly absurd and impractical amount of voter rationality would solve the inherent problem, which is just that it isn’t a sensible way to fill vacancies.
For what it’s worth, I offer this summary of a study about Chinese and American education. Even though Chinese students know a heck of a lot more science, they can’t reason scientifically any better than their American counterparts.
I confess I don’t know a lot about China, and so my preference to live in almost any Western country and not in China may be biased by ignorance, but… would you prefer to live in China, or another authoritarian state but whose management would be experts in various fields? Do you honestly think such a state would be better at various important parameters of societal welfare?
A final point: while congressfolk may be less competent than we might wish, actual state managers—civil servants in high positions—are often accredited veterans in their fields.
Is it easier to move from monarchism, dictatorship, or one-party rule, to some more rational system? Is democracy an overly-stable local optimum?
Democracy is a local optimum over the medium term because it’s unusually stable. You can give plenary power to your favorite electrical engineers today, but in 40 years you’ll be governed with an iron fist by the engineers’ innumerate, egotistical kids. Democracy is the only system we know of that can be trusted to crank out the same level of mediocre decision-making for hundreds of years on end. I’m sure there’s a way to improve on it—but more attention needs to be paid to the long-term consequences of our revisions.
I’ll take that as a “yes”. (I agree with what you wrote; but much of it is moving the conversation backwards (to whether democracy is an improvement over dictatorship) instead of forward (to what a more rational system is, how to get there, and which of today’s governments are likely to transition to it first).)
Sorry; comes of butting into the conversation two years late—hard to tell which way it’s headed. Anyway, yes, a rational dictator would find it easier to impose, say, futarchy, than a coalition of rational voters would. There is an interesting question as to whether dictators are more or less likely to want to switch a rational system as compared to a majority coalition of voters. Dictators probably show more variation in their preferences than entire voting blocs do (although see http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter for a strong argument that voter preferences do NOT exhibit much destructive interference), but dictators are also less likely to feel comfortable with (a) a major change that (b) encourages decisions to be made on some kind of ‘expert’ basis that is independent of the dictator’s will. Even brainstorming in public about such a system could be dangerous to the dictator’s continued enjoyment of the perks of power; once people start repeatedly applying the concept of “objectively right no matter what our Fearless Leader says,” they’re less likely to support the Fearless Leader.
I read Lee Kuan Yew’s book on the development of Singapore From Third World to First some time ago and recall it being startlingly rational and scarily pragmatic. (Detractors would probably say revisionist and self-congratulatory but, even if that is true, most Western leaders wouldn’t even try to portray themselves as detached, rational and pragmatic.) I’m sure if there were a more rational means of statecraft (say, large-scale computer simulations) such a one-party state would be able to take greater advantage of it providing they’re not compromised by some other ideology (religion or communism).
The job of government is to enrich itself while limiting the actions of its people, with the side-effect of having a monopoly on the initiation of violence. I would rather live in a place where people in government are terrible at their jobs. Preferably a place where the government is divided into separate groups that are divided against each other so it can hardly do anything at all.
As Mal Reynolds would say, “that’s what a government’s for—getting in a man’s way”