From: Alexander Chislenko (alexc@firefly.net)
Date: Thu Dec 26 1996 - 17:28:04 MST
At 03:20 PM 12/26/96 -0800, Robin Hanson wrote:
>James Rogers writes:
>>A lot of actions that people have deemed to be the "stupidity of the masses"
>>are usually stupid only in the larger context. If you evaluate the
>>individual decision of the individual person in the masses, the majority of
>>people make an intelligent decision most of the time.
>
>I agree with James. When you see behavior you don't understand,
>you're first reaction shouldn't be to assume stupidity -- it is more
>likely that your understanding of the social context is lacking.
>
What if I see the behaviour I do not *agree* with?
For example, the populace that votes for somebody who promised them no
taxes and lots of free booze. This may look like a good idea to every
particular person, but politically it may be disastrous.
Nobody says that representatives of the masses can't make babies or
fix cars - in these everyday actions people's skills may be roughly
equal or at least independent of their societal talents. There are
different areas of competence, and people who excel in one may not
excel in another (though most of them probably correlate). The word
"masses" is usually used in relation to making large-scale social
decisions. Somehow, the U.S. society that recognizes plumbers as uniquely
skilled professionals that are solely qualified to fix your toilet,
at the same time requires no qualification for taking part in the
political decision-making process. No wonder political structures
in this country stink more than toilets. This is quite useful for
the power structures who under the guise of "empowering" everybody
by including them into making decisions in the areas they may not
understand, assure themselves a much easier manipulable political
substrate. If people were trusted only with the jobs they can do,
whether it's plumbing or voting, and would delegate other jobs to
somebody who *they* think could do it better - and be *personally
accountable* for the decisions (the [political] toilet you helped
design exploded - *you* cleanup and compensate those who suffered
because of you), things could look very much different.
Most normal people seem quite good at understanding what they are
competent in, when they have appropriate incentives and are accountable.
The voting process oversimplifies the issues to create an illusion
that everybody can understand international politics and economic and
military strategies - and then tells people that those who vote for the
wrong side pay no more for the consequences than those who begged them
not to do it.
If you deliberately remove all incentives for competent and accountable
decision-making, the results may be expected to look stupid.
Put these incentives in - and the same "masses" would produce
results much more suitable for any purpose. Except supporting
a monolithic bureaucracy.
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Alexander Chislenko Home page: <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
Firefly Website recommendations: <http://my.yahoo.com> ---> "Firefly"
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