Name: Against Democracy
ISBN: 9780691162607

Against Democracy

"Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us - it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results - and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse - more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government - epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable, may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out"--Jacket sleeve.

What Hacker News says

numtelAug 2022

Governed by "equitism?"

Get this guy a copy of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy where he argues that a more competent government could be achieved by having policy decisions made by trained professionals in the same way cities are designed by city planners.

You wouldn't want an untrained surgeon but we're ok with electing someone who has no experience with writing policies that have major consequences for people's lives?

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nickffOct 2016

Intelligence agencies usually rely on many unreliable sources, a few reliable ones, and interpretation of publicly available data; the interesting part is how they evaluate and interpret information from these different sources, which is one of the things Tetlock addresses.

I am not sure that people actually want to know what is the truth; maybe one or two percent of the voters want to know the truth, but I very much doubt the number is much higher than that. People probably want to be told that what they believe is the truth when they go to these websites. There is a great deal of work on the subject of political ignorance (and self-deception), but I recommend the recent (and very readable) book "Against Democracy" by Jason Brennan for its summary of current evidence, and a proposed solution.

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avgcorrectionFeb 2022

> For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on.

Jason Brennan (another libertarian) wrote the book Against Democracy. So these two books should be policy companions.

Which also goes to show how nefarious this assertion of yours is: all people have to do in order to suppress people’s right to participate in a democracy is to defund education and the civil square. Then people become “not informed enough” to process “complex information” (as if our elected representatives seem capable of that… but whatever).

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