|
As far as I understand things - "professional" politicians, who are wealthy, well educated, (to an extent) well informed, or at least capable of quickly getting the necessary information about any subject, are by definition better at making any and all policy decisions than the general public. The problem is that any political "class" will - again, by definition - worry more about its own interests than about the interests of the public at large. Democracy is just a means of "kicking the bums out" should that happen - making sure that every politician has to keep in mind the public interest (or at least the appearance thereof). Any democratic institution that tries to have "more democracy" than that - having the general public actively making decisions they are incapable of understanding - is "too much".
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 16:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 19:11 |
|
|
Gantolandon posted:It's one of the things that baffles me most when it comes to criticism of democracy - the assumption that the average decision maker is more informed and enlightened than the members of the public. Like they were a different species, more capable of logical reasoning than the average voter. This relies on assumption that having a successful society is the matter of letting the most virtuous and reasonable people lead. This comes straight from the era of Enlightenment - that you can just deduce your way to the Plato's Republic and the public is only there to ensure they are not screwed. I am better than you at doing my job simply by virtue of the fact that it's my job, not yours. No more, no less. Politics are the job / career of the politician and... etc, you got my point. You don't need "virtuous" politicians any more than you need "virtuous" plumbers, or firemen. You just need a control mechanism that will allow you to fire politicians that don't do their job correctly - democracy. quote:Also, an average politician is not better informed than the rest of society - there are plenty of examples of politicians who made stupid decisions because they were completely out of touch with reality. Consider, for example, Greek ubermenschen accidentally banning video games. Generally, the members of the elite have the means to avoid the consequences of their decisions. They also tend not to mingle with hoi polloi, so they are rarely aware of the problems that concern the commons. Helsing posted:It's absolutely not the case that professional politicians are always "capable of quickly getting the necessary information about any subject". This is true for some types of information but it certainly isn't true for all or even most types of information. As to the forest making example - I hope that's just a pet issue of yours, because I'm not sure how it was relevant to anything. Helsing posted:Fetishizing elite decision making as some kind of universally superior system is just intellectual laziness. Without specifying what domain of policy we're talking about its meaningless to claim that elites are better or worse at making decisions.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 19:47
|
|