1. Thread. This is a topic that I, @hugoreasoning and Melissa Schwartzberg are working on, in a project we are calling "No Bullshit Democracy." Short version - the libertarian critique of democracy rests on very shaky ground.
2. There _is_ plenty of evidence that voters tend often to be relatively poorly informed, and often subject to a wide variety of cognitive biases. See passim Achen and Bartels (who present a 'realist' account of democracy, but are notably not anti-democratic themselves).
3. This presents an important challenge to people who are not profound skeptics of democracy - to figure out how _and_ when democracy still works, despite these problems. On these questions: more when we have finished writing (nb - blame me, not co-authors for these tweets).
4. But even leaving these problems aside, there are still some very big issues with the libertarian critique. The three major skeptical books are by Jason Brennan, Bryan Caplan and Ilya Somin (Somin's is by some distance the best and most sophisticated of them imo).
5. Each has a similar format. 1 - data suggesting individuals are badly fitted for democracy. 2 - vehement criticism of the idealistic claims of democracy theorists and how they are at odds with sordid realities. 3 - a proposal that we should prefer some other scheme to democracy
6. The books prefer different alternatives. Brennan wants 'epistocracy' (where ill-informed and stupid people would have fewer votes or no votes at all). Caplan wants markets all the way baby (we should be mainlining Chicago). Somin wants a combination of 'exit' and markets.
7. But what is notable is that each of them has a strong whiff of 'four legs good. two legs bad.' Each combines excoriating skepticism about the damning flaws of democracy with a generous and avuncular indulgence towards the purportedly minor flaws of their preferred alternative.
8. Thus, for example, both Caplan and Somin deal with the very extensive literature on the pervasiveness of cognitive bias in market type situations in a cursory and dismissive fashion. They aren't so much interested in comparison as condemnation.
9. Caplan - whom I take to be a genuinely sincere (and from all I have heard, personally extremely decent) individual, is quasi-religious in his devotion to the Chicago project of extending markets everywhere. When he claims e.g.:
10. "You do not have to be dogmatic to take a staunchly promarket position. You just have to notice that the “sophisticated” emphasis on the benefits of intervention mistakes theoretical possibility for empirical likelihood" he has clearly never contemplated the reverse critique
11. that people might reasonably be skeptical of how his own pro-market approach blurs "theoretical possibility" and "empirical likelihood" in exactly that way. The Chicago approach is notoriously dogmatic (Angus Burgin is very good on e.g. Friedman's circular reasoning).
12. Jason Brennan is keen to tell us that the fact that he's a "named professor of strategy, economics, ethics and public policy at an elite research university, with a Ph.D. from the top-ranked political philosophy program in the English speaking-world" justifies
13. the claim that he, Brennan, has superior political judgment on many topics. I'm reminded of @kjhealy old crack that Mensa was the society for "highly intelligent people who are nevertheless not quite intelligent enough not to belong to it." Brennan cites research of
14. @hugoreasoning and Sperber at second hand, without realizing that their argument about the flaws of reasoning both (a) apply in spades to named professors with Ph.D.s from top-ranked blah-blah-blah and (b) can be harnessed to collectively beneficial ends. (This
15. is much of the point of their joint work, and the start for some of my and Melissa's work with Hugo). Brennan thinks that some people (presumably himself included) can approach the state of being a calm, rational, intellectual "Vulcan," well equipped to make judgments, but
16. Mercier-Sperber point is that reasoning is a _social_ faculty, which suggests that we should look to group structure more than self-assessed cognitivte superiority for better decision making. This actually ties in well with Achen Bartels argument for group-based approaches
17. to democracy. Here, the recent book by Neblo, Esterling and @davidlazer, is really well worth reading - washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca… - it suggests on the basis of institutional experiments that alternative deliberative structures can actually have real benefits in US context.
18. (I worry that there is some selection effect in that the Congresspeople inclined to engage in these experiments were more likely to be interested in substantive discussion than others- but still, some powerful findings). Also, the new article by Samuel Bagg in APSR points out
19. that democracy, notwithstanding libertarian critiques, is plausibly far less vulnerable to capture than other forms of governance cambridge.org/core/journals/… . See also, Melissa Schwartzberg's Annual Review piece on epistemic democracy. annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…
20. It is notable that the recent break to liberaltarianism around @NiskanenCenter involves a number of people - @lindsey_brink @jtlevy @willwilkinson Steve Teles and others who are explicitly not allergic to democracy (and look to be trying to build a case for democracy
21. on Smithian lines). This is not necessarily a leftwing project, but it is also not an antidemocratic project either. So, as Matt says, it is disturbing that B-C-S beliefs are held by intelligent people - but that is not to say that they are intellectually well grounded. Finis
