[lbo-talk] Re: poor, white and pisssed

[Michael Sims]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Miles:
> 
>>Given my passionate fetish for evidence and reason as the basis of
>>decisions, that really makes me wonder about the possibility of
>>effective democracy in our society.  If people don't have the
>>basic facts right, how can they make informed decisions?
>>
> 
> 
> Miles, I am afraid that what we are getting is democracy in its purest form
> - the mob rule.  As HL Mencken aptly observed in 1920:
> 
> "when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of
> sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact
> that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even comprehending any
> save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of
> emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread what they cannot understand.
> So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost."
> 
> While Mencken's comment may sound too acerbic or even misanthropic to some,
> I think they hit the nail right on the head.  People do not think
> rationally, in the sense of rationality being used in philosophy, logic or
> science.
> 
> There are many reasons for that - but the main one in my view is the
> transaction cost needed to acquire necessary information to make a fully
> informed decision.  It takes a lot of time, effort and research skill to
> obtain information needed to make a political decision.  Yet, the payoff of
> that decision to an individual voter is minuscule.  The election of this or
> that candidate has little impact on most people's everyday life - probably
> the most noticeable one is being pissed or happy that "their" man lost or
> won.  
> 
> Of course, this situation is not unique to this country or to politics.
> People have to make choices every day, and they have to make them quick, but
> usually they do not have enough information on hand to weigh their options
> or even to comprehend what options they have.  So they face another, much
> more fundamental choice - either do something based on the information they
> can obtain quickly or be paralyzed by inability to make any choice at all.  
> 
> To overcome that dilemma, most people employ what some sociologists call
> "stock knowledge" or ready made beliefs, perceptions, prejudices,
> stereotypes, and rules of judgment that are taken for granted in a
> particular culture of community - without any questioning of their validity.
> Because using stock knowledge is an integral part of everyday life - people
> do it routinely and do not even try to use different modes of rationality,
> such as those used by scientists.  The only thing that can change that is
> where "stock knowledge" does not work anymore and is producing results that
> are clearly and unambiguously false or against all expectations.
> 
> So the bottom line is that people will not make rational political
> decisions, not because they are incapable of making them, but because of the
> way human mind works to overcome the imperfect information problem.  This is
> why democracy almost certainly degenerates into a mob rule unless some
> mechanisms are put in place that (i) limit the choices people can make based
> on the "stock knowledge" AND (ii) implement an effective alternative to
> "stock knowledge" to provide adequate information.  
> 
> Wojtek
> 

Switzerland is the only real democracy in the world where citizens can 
vote on _isues_ rather than, as Lord Hailsham said, elect their dictator.

Where is the irrationality in Switzerland?

Where are the mobs?

Facts man! Not the proto-fascists ideas of the 1920's, later to be 
re-iterated by Adolf Hitler in his election speeches.

regards

Michael