Jeffrey Friedman on Voter Ignorance

He writes,

the libertarian conclusion does not follow from the rational ignorance premise. Rational ignorance theory blames public ignorance on the low incentive to become a well-informed voter. Raise the incentives and you solve the problem. One way to raise the incentives would be to make government far more powerful than it now is, so that everyone had a much higher stake in electoral outcomes. Another solution would be to turn state power over to highly knowledgeable experts who would be fired or even fined if their policies didn’t work.

Yet another solution was suggested by Bryan Caplan: pay voters to become informed.

While voter ignorance is a problem for fans of democracy, it is not an insurmountable problem. Elite hubris is the killer. Yes, voters think they know more than they do about public policy. But elites also think that they know more than they do. And it is the elites who end up more dangerous. Read Jeffrey Friedman’s whole essay.

7 thoughts on “Jeffrey Friedman on Voter Ignorance

  1. “Rational ignorance theory blames public ignorance on the low incentive to become a well-informed voter. Raise the incentives and you solve the problem”

    The low incentive to become informed is based on the low ability of any one voter to affect policy, not on the impact of policy. The importance of policy isn’t the problem.

    To raise the incentive of the average voter, you have to decrease the total number of voters.

    • “To raise the incentive of the average voter, you have to decrease the total number of voters.”

      For the effect to be noticeable, you’d probably have to disenfranchise such a large portion of the populace that I doubt you could call it a democracy by modern definitions.

  2. One of the standard pro-market arguments I truly appreciate is that prices coordinate the relative interests of people who have no contact with each other. I have heard it suggested that selling votes should be allowed. Could this have a similar information-transmission effect? Irrational voters would simply pick the highest bidder for their votes, coordinating the diverse interests of the rent-seekers and maximizing the value returned to the voter

  3. in athenian democracy they demarchy for representative/assembly positions. While it’s hard to ever imagine this happening in the US because of the size of the change (and that no nations today use a demarchy to my knowledge), randomly selecting voters to serve in the assembly would :

    0) retain our representative system
    1) increase the incentive the average voter has to pay attention (since their possibility of receiving some congressional salary/benefits would be non zero)
    2) decrease the ability of special interests to influence elections

    If implemented everywhere it could eliminate elections altogether, which would tackle the explotation of the irrational voter theorum ontop of the incentive problem. (Or you could just implement in the HOR).

    somebody on eric schmidt’s g+ page was promoting this idea which like bryan caplan’s paying-for-civics test idea I think is a long shot, but worth including on the pile.

  4. Libertarians are not (generally) team players. Caplan et al. are not (generally) team players. Voting is a team sport. Voting for your team counts.
    It counts because you share the values (however “irrational”) your team and its leaders represent or, perhaps more often, you dissent from the values of the other team. Thus one need not understand the ins and outs of every issue one’s team supports to behave “rationally”. Culture is, by and large, an economical substitute for thought (rationality?); religion and political and affiliation too. Win or lose, my vote counts — unless, of course, I eschew team sports altogether. But then I’m on Bryan’s team, aren’t I?

  5. Read the comment by Counsellor to Friedman’s essay.

    Keep in mind the question is framed around “Democracy” and “ignorance” (lack of information or “knowledge”?) of particular aspects of governmental functions as related to “Society.”

    Perhaps the frame of the question needs be examined.

  6. In what possible societal arrangement are there not powerful elites? If they are the problem they aren’t the problem with democracy, they are the problem with humanity.

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