Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure about this notion of the 'good of society'.

If you believe that the 'good of society' is not what voters want, why bother with democracy at all?

(Slightly besides the point: I actually do agree that people behave like idiots at the ballot booth and don't know what is good for them in this context.

Luckily, people tend to be much more savvy when voting with their wallets or their feet. And as a society we would be well advised to encourage these latter two.

Eg by taking subsidiarity serious, and pushing as much decision making as possible to as local a unit as possible. Don't decide stuff at federal level, when the states can handle it. Don't let the states handle, what the counties can handle. Don't let counties handle, what the municipalities can handle. Don't let municipalities handle what people can do privately on their own.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

By pushing authority down the stack, you make the act of moving between states or even just cities so much more powerful and expressive.)

> Luckily, people tend to be much more savvy when voting with their wallets or their feet. And as a society we would be well advised to encourage these latter two.

The problem with voting with your dollars is that people with more dollars get more votes. The problem with voting with your feet is that only some people can afford to move.

If you want "just let the rich decide", why dress it up in fancy words?

As much as possible, people should decide what to do with their dollars.

> The problem with voting with your dollars is that people with more dollars get more votes.

Eh, the biggest and most successful companies on the planet cater to mass markets. The system seems to work fairly well for average people. (And we all suspect the most important politicians cater to tiny elites.) Also, using your dollars to vote means you lose those dollars. So rich people can vote each dollar only once, just like everyone else.

> As much as possible, people should decide what to do with their dollars.

This sounds very good until it is actually put in practice, when people realise that those who have all the dollars have all the power. Now you have an unaccountable oligarchy.

> Also, using your dollars to vote means you lose those dollars. So rich people can vote each dollar only once, just like everyone else.

That’s hilarious. As if those billionaires were not making the median yearly income in a week.

I’m not saying it’s not what voters want, I’m saying they’re not going to vote for it. There’s a difference.

The average voter has a fairly limited horizon in terms of what they see and understand about what’s good for society. And in a democracy you elect representatives because they’re supposed to have a wider horizon and more in depth knowledge, in part because they’re on average smarter than the average voter and in part because they get to dedicate all their time to that specific job.

This means that lawmakers will sometimes have to do th8ngs the voters don’t understand they want. It’s on them to explain it to the voters. And it’s on the voters to vote them out if they still don’t agree.

As for voting with their wallets, I would have agreed say 20 years ago. But marketing has become so all-encompassing and so much money and effort has been spent making marketing stick, that I don’t think most people can make truly independent decisions anymore about many many things.

And free stuff on the internet is definitely something that most people have trouble dealing rationally with. Just look at all the free trials that hook people into costly year long subscriptions, etc etc. Let alone when it’s free in the sense that the users never pays directly but through things as ads and privacy.

My view of this is very much influenced by my being a European and EU citizen, though. And if anything, the EU is a bit of a technocracy that likes to decide for the “good of society”. And that’s not something everyone will like every time.

Well, I was born in East Germany and grew up there. Later I decided to vote with my feet, and pay my taxes in Singapore instead. Much better value for my tax money here---both lower taxes and better government services.

Btw, I'm not saying people are perfectly rational when voting with their feet or wallet. Just that they are much, much more rational than at the ballot booth.

> Let alone when it’s free in the sense that the users never pays directly but through things as ads and privacy.

Well, can't argue about taste? Perhaps people prefer it that way?

> This means that lawmakers will sometimes have to do th8ngs the voters don’t understand they want. It’s on them to explain it to the voters. And it’s on the voters to vote them out if they still don’t agree.

I am basically agreeing with you: voting is a weak channel to transmit information. Almost no individual vote makes a difference. Neither in aggregate nor to the individual voting.

Voting with your feet or wallet does make an immediate difference to yourself, and has at least a clear marginal impact in aggregate. There are less weird threshold effects than in politics. A dollar more spend on iPhones is a dollar more spend on iPhones; but another vote for candidate A only makes a difference if it makes her have more votes than candidate B.

(And proportional representation only helps partially: in the end it's important which coalitions can form a majority in parliament, whether one party has one seat more or less doesn't make much of a difference usually.)

I'd like to give sortition a try to fill up parliament.

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