About a month and a half ago I wrote a blog post called "Just Some Rationally Ignorant PPL" where I discussed how bringing up the justification of voter ignorance wouldn't go well in one of my classes (Law, Morality, and the State). Well, I was in a debate for that class on democracy, and I decided to rock their worlds by imparting some serious wisdom. I'm kidding, but I did bring it up.
I had to argue against Kevin Elliott's claims in Democracy for Busy People and defend mini-publics to become a mainstay of our democracy. Basically, I had to argue for groups of randomly selected citizens to act as our governing bodies rather than our current system of direct democracy. While this was a bit of a challenge, I drew from some of my economic knowledge.
One of my arguments relied on our little friend p*B + D - C ≥ 0. Elliott was concerned about participation in democracy, and thought demanding forms (like mini-publics) would hurt it. He wanted instead to make voting as easy as possible to discourage apathy. My argument was that since our p, the likelihood your vote matters, is so small in direct democracy, changing your costs makes virtually no difference so long as there is any cost at all. If we instead increase our p, which mini-publics will do significantly for those selected, citizens perviously apathetic to politics will have a strong reason to be participate. This reason to participate might even encourage a deeper level of understanding in policy which could increase B as citizens become more invested, further increasing their expected utility for voting.
I was never planning on discussing the role rational ignorance plays in politics with my classmates, but alas, their rational ignorance on rational ignorance was broken.
No comments:
Post a Comment