Tim Sommers writes in 3 Quarks
Why have a democracy?
Speaking generally, a territory is ruled in the only way it can be and has been ruled. It may deviate from this trajectory briefly, but if it was an autocracy, it will soon revert to being an autocracy- though under a Commissar rather than a Tzar. If it featured the paramountcy of a Dynasty, dynasticism may remain though the House of Nehru supplants the House of Windsor.
Because democracy is always right.
No one has said anything so foolish. The Condorcet Jury theorem is a separate matter. But it doesn't reply to representative democracy with 'checks and balances'.
There are two kinds of arguments in favor of democracy:
shit ones and shittier ones
intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic arguments try to show that democracy is good in-and-of-itself – and not as simply a means to some other end or ends.
This is a claim, it is an ipse dixit assertion. But anyone such assertions can be made about the Divine Right of Kings or the historical inevitability of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or whatever.
Instrumental arguments try to show that democracy is good because it leads to some good.
It is enough to ask- what is the alternative? How many people would you need to kill to establish that alternative? How do you know you might not end up being killed yourself. A Revolution is a sow which eats its own farrow.
There are two main kinds of intrinsic arguments: those based on liberty and those based on equality.
In other words, both are obviously false. Democracies put people in jail and are highly unequal.
The most straight-forward kind of liberty argument says that we should be free, but to be free means not only to govern ourselves, but to have some control of our larger social and material environment.
Just like chimpanzees in the the jungle. Giraffes too have some control over their larger social and material environment more particularly with respect to the leaves atop trees.
Democracy gives us that control.
It gives us a vote. We get to chose between one lying bastard and another lying bastard.
The trouble is that in actually existing democracies very, very few people are able to exert any real influence on society or their material conditions via the political process.
But some of those people need to get re-elected and this may constrain their cupidity, stupidity or criminal tendencies.
Democracy does not make most of us free, at least in this way.
Here’s a different kind of liberty argument. We all have certain basic rights.
Nope. Some have reliable (incentive compatible) remedies for violations of their rights. Others don't.
Among the basic rights, liberties, and freedoms we possess in a liberal democracy – freedom of religion,
unless Muslims keep stabbing you as you exit the synagogue
free speech,
unless Muslims keep stabbing you when you say 'Shalom'.
the right to the rule of law, etc.
unless politicians and policemen are afraid of getting stabbed. Did you know that Pakistan is a democracy? Why not open a synagogue there?
– there are also rights of political participation – political speech, a right to free assembly, etc.
The Dems weren't able to jail Trump. They blame Merrick Garland.
What does this kind of pro forma right to some kind of political participation really amount to, though?
Rights are meaningless unless they are linked to effective remedies under a bond of law.
There’s no right to vote in the US Constitution. And Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem shows there is no way of counting votes that can satisfy all of the seemingly simple and reasonable conditions voting must bear.
No it shows that if you define a Dictator as a guy who is not a fucking Dictator then, by ex falso quodlibet, you prove that all dogs are cats.
Gibbard-Satterthwaite says that there is no strategy proof voting system and Chichilnisky-Heal says that democracy, or markets, will only exist if a Goldilocks condition re. preference and endowment diversity is met. Even so, by the McKelvey chaos theorem, if the decision space is made multi-dimensional, then there will be an agenda control problem and any outcome whatsoever becomes feasible. But all this was common knowledge to actual politicians.
To oversimplify a bit, there is no way of voting that always gives us an answer, always depends on the input of more than one person, gives a way of deciding between candidates based on voting (and nothing else), and insures that the choice between any two candidates is independent of how the voter feels about other candidates.
These are undesirable conditions. If there is a benevolent omniscient sage then everybody will want to vote the way he tells them to. This aint Dictatorship. Voting shouldn't be the only thing which matters, there should be 'transferable utility'- i.e. side-deals in smoke filled rooms. How we feel about third parties should affect how we feel about any two people. Thus suppose I have to choose between a Tamil man like me and a Punjabi bloke, I choose the Tamil till I notice that there is Bengali lady who is running who is saying sensible stuff which, truth be told, the Punjabi but not the Tamil exemplifies. I vote for the Punjabi because though he isn't good at articulating his position, what he stands for is good for me and good for the country. I don't vote for the Bengali lady because I believe a Bengali is unelectable by reason of its marked socio-economic decline relative to Punjab, Gujarat or Tamil Nadu.
Fortunately, there are also equality-based arguments for democracy.
There were. At one time academics thought voters cared about relative inequality rather than their absolute material standard of living. They were wrong.
Many political philosophers have argued that democracy is a way of treating people equally.
If all are equally subject to the Absolute Monarch then, arguably, they are treated equally. The Sun King got Dukes and Marquesses to help him bathe and wipe his bum.
But lotteries treat people equally too.
No they don't. You have to buy a ticket. You don't have to buy a piece of ballot paper.
Here’s an instrumental argument for democracy from Thomas Christiano:
a cretin
“The modern democratic societies of Europe, North America, and East Asia have actually been quite successful…
successful countries have actually been quite successful. Maybe not as successful as China or the UAE but still...
Democracies do not go to war with one another
They have done twice in the Twentieth Century. In America there was a big Civil war in the nineteenth century.
and respect the rules of war better than other societies.
Nope. That was better done when war was still the 'sport of Kings'. Still, it is true that if Truman hadn't been an Absolute Monarch, there would have been no nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They are responsible for the creation of the international trade system,
which were created by the Kings of Portugal and Spain.
the international environmental law system,
Which is shit.
and the human rights regime.
See above. Still, it is true that Afghan women now enjoy the fundamental human right to fist themselves in public. Don't say the War on Terror was a complete waste of blood and treasure.
In fact, democracies do massively better on basic human rights than other societies,
That will be sweet music to the ears of Hindus in Pakistan.
and it appears to be more their majoritarian character that explains this
The majority did win the American Civil War. But there were 600,000 casualties- about two percent of the population at that time.
than their systems of checks and balances.
War is a great check on secession.
Democracies prevent famines and, since the onset of universal suffrage, have developed powerful welfare states that have been enormously productive, have greatly reduced poverty,
But it is China which has raised most, most quickly, out of poverty.
and have smoothed out the disastrous economic crises that occurred in their more free market ancestor societies.”
Those 'crises' drove innovation and changes in mores and life-styles.
But why?
Here’s a different kind of instrumental argument for democracy, one that may well explain all these good outcomes to boot.
This is like giving a better explanation for why garlic is fatal to vampires.
The epistemic – or the acquisition-of-knowledge-based – argument for the instrumental value of democracy is based on the claim that democracies are more epistemically efficaciously than the alternatives.
Nonsense! No one thinks India is 'epistemically efficacious'. China is a different matter. Smart peeps run away from India. They used to run away from China but then the Communist Party gave them lots of money and built them expensive labs so they could return and concentrate on their research without worrying about funding.
Which is just to say that, if we have to decide an issue, or choose a leader, doing it democratically will give us the best chance of getting the right answer.
It is just to say stupid shit. Still, it is true that anyone under the age of 70 is unfit to be POTUS.
Deliberative democratic theorists
are stupid wankers. That's why they
give a variety of epistemic arguments. But we need only one. And it’s just math.
The Marquis de Condorcet was a moderate democrat during the French Revolution. He advocated universal suffrage and was an early advocate of universal primary education. He went into hiding after voting against the death penalty for Louis XVI, but was captured and died in his cell nine months later. Ironically, his warders had lost track of who he was by the time he died and he was identified only by the copy of Horace’s “Epistles” he had been carrying when he was arrested.
Condorcet had studied voting and concluded that, under the right circumstances, it is an extremely effective procedure for getting right answers. This was a consequence of his famous “Jury Theorem”. On an issue with two alternatives, where the decision is made independently by each participant, where there is also an objectively right decision, and each decision-maker has a greater than 50% chance of making that right decision a group of 5 or more people have a high likelihood of making the correct decision, a group of 12 has a higher likelihood of giving the correct verdict, and a group of a 1000 or more is nearly certain – out to several decimal places certain – to make the right call.
Because, if you toss a coin, often enough the result will converge to its 'bias'.
In other words, if we think of a voting as a kind of procedure to determine the truth of a question, as long as we add competent voters the more the better.
This has no purchase in the real world because of Knightian Uncertainty. Still, the law of large numbers applies. Craziness cancels itself out as noise.
And the Jury Theorem is just math.
With no application to the choice of candidate under Knightian Uncertainty. If people voted for Trump, not Kamala, it is because they think he will react in a smarter and faster manner to unexpected contingencies.
It’s not an empirical claim.
It is an irrelevant claim. Why not say '2 plus 2 equals 4. This explains why Trump is a Fascist. That's not an empirical claim. It is simple arithmetic.'
Certain simple assumptions lead you inevitably to its conclusion: Democracy is always right.
Certain simpler assumptions lead you to the inevitable conclusion that you are Beyonce and everybody delights in your booty shake.
More than a hundred and fifty million people voted in the recent presidential election. That’s a staggering number from the point of Condorcet’s Theorem.
It is much smaller than the 640 million who voted in the Indian election.
That many people cannot possibly be wrong. It’s just math.
Well. There are a couple of caveats. I’ll just mention one. While it’s true that for each person that you add, with enough information and good judgment to vote for the better candidate even 50.00000000001% of the time, you increase the odds of electing the right person, but this cuts both ways.
The problem here is 'right candidate' is 'impredicative'. It depends on the bias of the voters. Supposed they think women are less capable than men. Then any woman you nominate is the 'wrong candidate' no matter how good she is.
For every person you add who has a slightly worse than average chance of picking the right person (even 49.999999999%), you decrease the odds of electing the right person. In fact, with too many incompetent people, it becomes a virtual certainty that the voting will give you the wrong answer, choose the wrong person. Virtually certain.
This is foolish. If an election matters, then it is worth finding out what traits voters like. Find a candidate with those traits. The other side will do the same thing unless they are virtue signaling cretins.
Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that. Right?
We don't have to worry about anything Sommers says because he is a cretin.
After the Columbia space shuttle explosion in 2003, astronaut Mark Kelly, classmate to all three of the astronauts who died, ended a conference call on the subject with a line that’s now a poster on a conference room wall at NASA’s Huston complex. It says, “None of us are as dumb as all of us.”
This is irrelevant. NASA was a hierarchical bureaucracy not an elective democracy.
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