Democracy ain’t all that.
That must be what Reince Priebus has been thinking this year. The possibility has been on the mind also of
author and professor Jason Brennan, of Georgetown University. Brennan is touring New England this week to
talk about his new book, Against Democracy. I knew of Brennan from one of his earlier
works touting my faith, Libertarianism:
What Everyone Needs to Know. This
week I had the good fortune to meet him in Providence, thanks to the Rhode
Island Federalist Society. On my commute
this morning, I heard that he’ll be on WGBH’s excellent Innovation Hub this week.
Brennan’s thesis in short is that when we talk about how
best to select our leaders in human society, democracy might not be the
endpoint and high point of human achievement.
He offered a simple thought experiment:
Imagine a professor instructs students that instead of grading exams on
the usual A-F merit system, each person in the class will get the same grade,
an average of everyone’s performance. No
surprise, students don’t study and perform poorly. The incentive for each individual to do well
is diminished along with the risk that poor preparation will be reflected in
any one person’s grade.
Brennan explains that the same dynamic is at work in
democracy. If any one person’s vote is
vastly unlikely to have an impact on the general election, then the individual
has only weak, and largely symbolic or emotional, incentives to become informed
and vote intelligently. Surveys of how
well informed voters are sadly support this thesis, with voters performing only
about as well as chance would predict in answering simple multiple choice
questions about politics.
What’s better than democracy? Brennan isn’t shilling for any model, but provided
a compelling and fair tour of the possibilities. He pointed out for one example that simple gambling—imagine
betting on the next President of the United States, if the model could be
translated into politics—is a rather good predictor of outcome. The gambler has skin in the game the way a
voter does not, so has a proportionate incentive to be well informed. Other potential models would jettison one
person, one vote in ways that would reward better informed voters with greater
influence. I was reminded of my “oligarchy
of the intelligentsia” phase when I studied politics at university.
A model I found enchanting, maybe because of its cool name,
is “the Simulated Oracle.” Imagine that
along with a person’s vote, we collect also some basic demographic data and
even administer a short quiz on political know-how. With large enough data sets, we could employ
the magic of statistics to control variables and correct for self-serving biases. Factors such as race and gender, the community
I live in, and my wealth can be predicted to evidence self-serving biases in my
voting behavior, not necessarily the vote that a more altruistic me might
cast. The Simulated Oracle can control
variables and correct for irrational or unfair biases, transforming my vote
into a hypothetical ideal, the vote my better self would cast. Weight everyone’s votes accordingly, and we
might get a result that compensates for individual rent-seeking.
The mythology of democracy is emotively powerful in our
society today, shaping how we define ourselves and our ideals. But the U.S. Constitution—in, for examples, life
tenure in the Article III courts, a republican representation system, and the
original method of selecting senators—was designed to temper the risky excesses
of pure democracy. Moreover, the framers
intended the Constitution to be amended.
There is no reason to think that progress means evolution toward pure direct
democracy. Remember Ross Perot
suggesting instant home voting on contemporary issues? Today that sounds like a good way to run Dancing with the Stars, and not so good a
way to make foreign policy, tax policy, or really to do anything important.
Rather, we are engaged, or should be engaged, in an ongoing
process of perfecting the organization of human society. It’s not so strange to imagine that democracy
as we know it now is just one stop on our journey.
Brennan is awash with fascinating data about the American
electorate, and I’ll share just one item.
Turns out that people who self-identify with political third parties, such
as libertarianism, are among our most informed voters.
Am I blushing?
