How Will Young People Respond to Their Unhappiness?
by Benjamin Studebaker
I recently ran across a piece by one Ron Fournier. Fournier attempts to predict what the young generation might do politically in the face of shrinking economic opportunities. My thoughts on this have provided me with an opportunity to follow up on my unexpectedly popular piece, “Why are Young People Unhappy?”. In that piece, I argued that young people have diminished economic opportunities relative to past generations and as a result are less able to pursue their conceptions of happiness. In recent days, I have run across a variety of views about how young people might respond to this (including Fournier’s), and I’d like to discuss the question further.
Fournier points to evidence indicating that young people have developed a rather cynical attitude toward the government as a result of its failure to secure for them the economic opportunity their parents confidently promised them:
- Young people’s trust in America’s political institutions has fallen by 5 percentage points or more in the last 3 years for the supreme court, the president, the UN, the federal government, and congress. None of these institutions have the trust of a majority of young people. Trust in the media and in Wall Street does not even make it into the teens.
- 59% of young people agree strongly or somewhat that elected officials are motivated by selfish reasons, 5 points higher than in 2010
- 56% believe that elected officials do not share their priorities, 5 points higher than in 2010
- 48% object to the partisanship in American politics, 2 points higher than in 2010
- 28% believe that political involvement does not produce tangible results, 5 points higher than in 2010
- 47% believe that our political system is no longer able to solve our problems, with 36% undecided and a mere 16% disagreeing
That said, the data is not indicative of apathy. The study also shows that young people have the highest volunteering rates of all age groups, with 53% volunteering in the last year. Fournier takes all of this together and arrives at the conclusion that young people care deeply about the state of their communities but do not believe that traditional electoral political activity is an efficacious method of pursuing their political goals. This is indeed alarming–young people have political goals, but think that the political system is not the right way to pursue those goals.
Fournier tells a narrative tale about how young people have come to arrive at this position. Young people were excited about the possibilities for “hope” and “change” in 2008. There was a belief that the Obama administration could do for this country what the Roosevelt administration did for it in the 30’s and 40’s–radically reform the economic system and restore prosperity and opportunity. Of course, recent years have seen this hope dashed. Outside of the Affordable Care Act (which, we must remember, was scaled down–it was originally meant to include a public option), the Obama administration has produced no major legislative achievements. College costs have continued to rise, employment rates remain depressed, wages remain stagnant, and opportunities remain slim. Fournier envisions a generation alienated from our political system by these failures. He believes that socially conscious young people will instead choose one of two paths:
- Young people will pursue non-governmental solutions to problems through charities, the private sector, grassroots bottom-up local solutions.
- Young people will radically change and/or replace the political system.
I don’t have quantitative data indicative of which way the majority of young people are leaning. I can, however, offer my own anecdotal case–I am a 21-year old whose life focus is on the political. I can report for myself that I have indeed been deeply affected and influenced by the events that have transpired since 2008. I backed Obama in that year and went so far as to do some phone-calling for the campaign, though I was too young to vote. I was not satisfied with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or the Affordable Care Act. Even with control of both houses of congress and the presidency, the democrats were unable to do much. This surprised me at the time, and throttled what had been a childhood goal of pursuing elected office democratically–instead, I resolved to go into academia. Nonetheless, the Democrats got my vote in the 2010 midterms, the first and last time I have voted. Then the Tea Party swept into congress, created a debt ceiling crisis, and successfully coerced the administration into signing the Budget Control Act of 2011. It was in the midst of all of these things that my confidence in the political system was finished off. In 2010, the right was able to successfully convince the public that policies that got us into the economic crisis were themselves the answer to that crisis. It had not occurred to me that the public was capable of making a mistake of that scale. Furthermore, the administration ultimately went along with this change in attitude and direction and indeed contributed to it. This illustrated to me that the Obama administration was not committed to serious reform or capable of pushing it through.
So where has this left me? I have resisted the emotional urge to blame the administration and/or the congress for our present troubles. Instead I have become a vocal critic of the structure of the political system, the various forces that cause individual office-holders to behave as they do. I have become a proponent of replacing these defective structures with ones that correct the problems I have observed. I have become the sophiarchist–I want to replace our democracy with an entirely alternative system, which you can read about here. For our purposes in this piece, I am firmly in the second camp, those who want to radically change and/or replace the system. I am not anti-hierarchy or anti-institutions. I believe that well-designed political structures are still the best way to pursue political objectives, that those who imagine otherwise are in the grips of an optimistic delusion.
What about those in that first camp? These people believe that they can bring about meaningful change and progress without altering the political structure. They are often inclined to oppose radical structural reforms like my own on the grounds that such reforms are high risk and would perpetuate new hierarchies that they wish torn down. I have an answer for them.
If you believe that the best way to pursue political objectives lays outside the present political system (as these individuals do), then it follows from there that there is something wrong with the political system. It is clearly not fit for purpose. It’s not the best means of accomplishing the very tasks it was created to accomplish. If it were, you would want to work within it, not around it. Furthermore, the political system is not a neutral entity–if it is not helping to bring about improvements, it is at the very least perpetuating a damaging status quo. It may even be actively contributing to the worsening of affairs. We cannot ignore the political structure. If we do, it will continue to act in a way that undermines whatever efforts we make elsewhere. While it is frightening and anxiety-producing to seriously contemplate big-time structural changes, these changes must be made. Ignoring a flawed political system does not make it go away. It may well be a good thing to pursue positive ends through charities, the private sector, grassroots, and so on, but it is not sufficient to do so. The flaws in the political system must be addressed.
Other authors often content themselves to dismiss coming structural change by arguing that young people are no more dissatisfied with the politics of the day than the hippy generation was in the late 60’s and early 70’s. But I would offer this counterpoint–the hippies got excited about the McGovern campaign. At least for my part, there is no candidate among any of the parties who could run for president and restore my confidence in this political system. For myself, and for I believe many young people today, the crisis of confidence is not in the policies of the current government, but in the structure of this system and the kinds of behaviors it entails and encourages. Increasingly, we no longer believe that we could get someone elected through the present system in such a way that it would make a substantive difference. We lack confidence not merely in republicans and democrats, but in the political class as a group, in congress, in the institutions and the way they function. It may not yet be widely recognized, but these are all nascent forms of a larger trend, still in its infancy–the loss of confidence in the democratic system itself.
Benjamin Studebaker 
It shall be unto the great grandchildren of the “Greatest Generation” to finally stem the decay and restore this Republic. No Left nor Right.
As the saying goes we get the government we deserve. The shift in 2010 happened not largely due to Americans being duped, but rather the apathy of all those who failed to participate in the voting process. Election participation levels dropped dramatically from the 2008 election year.
As a result, it became a contest of who is more motivated, and that went clearly to the Tea Party.
Americans are now learning the painful lesson that elections have consequences.
“Nonetheless, the Democrats got my vote in the 2010 midterms, the first and last time I have voted.”
This is an unfortunate attribute many people have, especially the younger generations when they experience the stupidity and corruption of government in action, or rather “inaction”.
The solution isn’t to walk away in disgust, but to continue to vote responsibly, and motivate others to do the same.
The radicals can only be elected to office if the mainstream doesn’t exercise their will and right to make their voices heard.
That’s the thing, I don’t think we deserve this kind of government. I don’t think it’s the job of every citizen to hold a full time job while simultaneously being a professional statesman. Keeping up with politics to the extent that I do is a full-time job. Not only must I stay well on top of current events, but I have to read, comprehend, and critically analyze complex philosophy, economics, and international relations to do an adequate job of arriving at justifiable conclusions about what the state should do. It is wholly impractical and unreasonable to expect all citizens to do this while simultaneously holding other jobs.
The solution is not to continue voting and hoping in vain that everyone will come to hold the same interest in politics that I hold (indeed, if people were to do that, they wouldn’t have time to do their day jobs and we’d likely end up with a famine). The solution is to find a new system of government that does not require an unrealistic level of universal political engagement.
The sad truth is the majority of Americans are hardly in any danger of spending too much time keeping up with politics, but in fact it’s just the opposite. Folks would rather rely on a 15 second commercial or their favorite pundits opinions that evokes an emotional response rather then take any time at all to research the true issues at hand.
It’s why folks can go on record as hating “Obamacare” but liking the “ACA”, which is one and the same. It’s also why they wind up voting against their better interests time and time again- with a non voting majority that allows this to happen.
For democracy to work as it should, the majority has to make a reasonable effort to participate. At a minimum, they should hold their local elected congressmen accountable for their actions on what they are doing to help their constituents instead of themselves.
Democracy and the American Experiment is chock full of problems such as what we are now experiencing, but it’s the most desired government on this planet by the people globally compared to all other current alternatives.
It’s a sad indictment on America and people in general that they know more about the latest Hollywood scandal instead of what’s going in in their own backyard politically. Most folks can’t even name who their local elected officials are.
American citizens have an obligation to take a portion of their time dedicated to i-whatevers and all the local star gossip to actually perform due diligence to vet the people they elect and understanding the basics. We owe it all those who gave their lives giving is the right to do so.
I’m not arguing that people are in any danger of paying too much attention. I’m arguing that if they were to pay a sufficient amount of attention, it would necessitate them paying too much. Furthermore, I’m arguing that they will never pay a sufficient amount of attention, and to argue that they should, can, or will is mistaken.
You’re right that they would need to pay quite a bit more attention for democracy to work as designed, and that is precisely why democracy can never work as designed. You’re also right that the other systems that have been tried are horrible, so this means we need to get creative and come up with better alternative political arrangements that suit the people we have as they are. That’s the principal project of this blog and of sophiarchism.
Between the extremes of not spending any time at all participating in their obligations for democracy, and spending too much time lies a happy medium. Our Government would be much better than what it is today if people would take just a fraction of their time that is normally frittered away on the mundane and trivial to figure out who they are really voting for and how their elected officials have actually performed based on what they stated they would do versus real results.
For your point to be made about Democracy requiring too much time, Americans would have to at least be making a concerted effort to understand and participate. That is far from what we have today for a huge percentage of people, which is my point. This is not an issue of there not being enough time available- it’s about people leaving it up to others to do anything rather than taking any time at all to try to contribute to the process.
How would you go about changing the current system democratic system unless you had a consensus of the majority of the people people? To say democracy no longer works, but the majority should agree to accept a new style of government that precludes it represents a conundrum, doesn’t it?
How would you convince the majority of people to give up governing themselves in favor of others telling them what’s best? The problems we have today is that a group of people refuse to accept the will of the majority- that problem wouldn’t disappear and would only get worse if now a minority of people were making all the decisions.
Whenever power is consolidated into the hands of the few rather than the many, the potential of corruption and abuse rises proportionately. The “system” of democracy isn’t as much the problem as it is the worst behavior of “humans” running it, and that problem will still be present no matter what system is used.
I contest the idea that there is a happy medium. The idea of the happy medium presupposes that statecraft is not a full-time job, that it doesn’t require a high level of expertise. This is a mistaken notion. Statecraft is incredibly difficult, time-consuming and inaccessible to the average person.
The fact that people don’t make an effort only further strengthens my point. Most people can’t, won’t and shouldn’t spend most of their time thinking, reading, and writing about statecraft. There’s no way to get them to do so that isn’t totalitarian and wouldn’t have catastrophic consequences.
Changing the system of government requires a widespread loss of confidence in the effectiveness of the government and some level of confidence in an alternative. Right now, there is significant disgust with the current system, but insufficient confidence in alternatives. The first step is to find alternatives and generate confidence in them.
Corruption and abuse are problems in any and all systems of government. They require checks and balances and structural stops. Democratic governments do not have monopolies on these kinds of solutions. The only structure democracies have a monopoly on is the universal vote, and this plays a small role in undercutting corruption and abuse. Judicial review and structural checks and balances are doing the work, and these policies could be applied in non-democratic models to the same effect.
“The idea of the happy medium presupposes that statecraft is not a full-time job, that it doesn’t require a high level of expertise. This is a mistaken notion. Statecraft is incredibly difficult, time-consuming and inaccessible to the average person.”
I challenge your thoughts on this. Who is making the declaration that participating in the democratic system is too difficult? Where is your proof to back your claims?
As for my assertion that there is indeed a happy medium, the proof lies in the fact that despite its weaknesses and flaws, our system has survived the test of time for well over 200 years since its inception. Its continued existence is proof that the system works.
Your argument that people are incapable of self governance and participating properly in our current system goes against your overall premise that these same people would be willing and able to participate in forming a new governing system.
The problem with our current system is many people feel no obligation to participate in voting responsibly, unless they have a specific issue or grievance to address. The majority of these people do not wish to be told what to do and also wish to retain their right to vote despite their failure to do so consistently.
The other group of folks who do actively participate is also certainly not likely to yield their powers of voting to a system where someone else makes decisions for them without their approval.
Both these groups will earnestly reject any alternative government, especially those where individual rights and control are reduced or eliminated.
To walk away from the current system will only serve to make it easier for well funded and motivated interest groups to have their way. You say you don’t deserve our current dysfunctional government, but if you refuse to participate and try to make things better, then who is to blame for the collective results of this non participation?
Ironically, it’s the status quo in charge who would actually champion your ideas, as they would like nothing better than to consolidate their power at the expense of the majority.
They would be happy to set up their own “brand” of judges and “experts” to further their goals.
I know you’re 21 and an idealist, but it pays to remember the words of Plato:
“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
That our system has survived is not proof that it works. There is immense difference between surviving and thriving. The Roman Empire’s principate and dominate survived for over 400 years–much longer than our system–but neither you nor I would call for the United States to copy that system and be ruled by hereditary emperors.
There are many ways to establish that our system is not thriving. There’s the rate at which the economy grows, which has fallen on average precipitously since the 50’s and 60’s. There’s various persistent injustices, which go uncorrected and which the government does not attempt to correct. There’s stagnant wages. There’s the government’s decreased ability to successfully pass legislation as exemplified by falling legislative output in congressional sessions, There are many other things one could point to.
Any alternative system must acknowledge the people’s capacity to participate–both in quantity and quality–and adjust accordingly. Any alternative system must not rely on universal high levels of high-quality participation.
Making people feel obliged to participate would not be helpful. Participation that is of poor quality is detrimental to outcomes. Public contribution is not good in and of itself. It must be constructive rather than destructive. In order to participate in a positive way, citizens would need to spend an inordinate amount of time on politics, to the detriment of their own goals and objectives. Only a small subset of the population is willing and capable of participating both extensively and effectively.
I’m not proposing a reduction in our basic liberties. Free speech, religion, expression, assembly, and so on give citizens means of contributing and expressing themselves in ways that are rarely harmful. The vote, however, is different, because the result of that participation is binding on the state.
Do not blame citizens for not participating extensively and effectively, blame the system for relying on citizens to behave in an unrealistic way.
Current elites are elected (or fund the elected) and are sustained and propped up by the status quo. It is for this reason that I am still toiling away in obscurity on a blog–if elites liked ideas such as mine, they’d put me on TV or something.
Seeing as you left me with a Plato quote, I’ll leave you one in return, as he’s one of my favorites:
“In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”
The current system may not be thriving based on some perspectives, but it really depends on how you look at it. In terms of granting people the power to elect their representatives and vote to approve on laws of governing the community, it is absolutely thriving. You may not like what the current “output” is, but that isn’t the fault of the system – it’s the fault of people who do not participate and those who make bad choices.
The economy may not be great for some, but it’s fantastic for others. The fact that people vote for things that are against their better interest isn’t the fault of the system, it’s the fault of the person making the choice. If you go to a restaurant and order a steak, and they prepare it well, and then you tell them you’re a vegan and hate meat, and really wanted a salad, is it the restaurant’s fault for giving you what you ordered?
The current system is doing exactly what it was meant to do, carrying through the will of the people.
It isn’t unrealistic to expect people to satisfy their obligations as citizens to participate in the democratic system. You are trying to make participation much harder than it really is. I’ve been voting many years and the time spent looking over the facts and details for each election represents a small fraction of my overall time, with plenty of time left for everything else.
The collection of data summaries and info packets regarding the election and candidates make it easier than ever to come up to speed and vote intelligently in little time. Additional information is available via the internet. There has never been an easier time to do research on any particular subject of interest.
If you don’t require citizens to participate in choosing their leaders, then you must expect them to give up that right and let someone else lead them.
How do you convince people to give up their right to vote? That is, after all, what you are proposing if you’re rejecting the current system, right? You still haven’t explained how you would go about implementing a new system, and yet not requiring any major effort of participation by others..
And I repeat, for all its faults, democracy is the most desired government by the people, and your “proposed” system that does away with it would lose to the majority if you presented it out to people to choose between the two – at least at this current time.
Liberties and freedoms are subject to those who make the decisions, so without a democracy, it’s a near guarantee that liberties will be changing and limited to suit the desires of those who are in control. That’s a tenuous application of freedom at best. Any decision made is going to make one or more groups of people unhappy, and those people will have their freedoms in those areas curtailed.
You stated:
“Current elites are elected (or fund the elected) and are sustained and propped up by the status quo. It is for this reason that I am still toiling away in obscurity on a blog”
Okay, based on the fact that you said you are a youth of 21, still in school, and have to yet enter the workforce – this sounds “dangerously” close to proving the original author’s assertion about “Why the youth of today are unhappy”. 😉
The realities of life hold that very few people have done enough to achieve any type of widespread fame or notoriety at such a young age. To believe otherwise concurs with the authors premise that your expectations have been projected much higher than what could reasonably be expected.
The vast majority of folks in your age range are obscure and still have many years of “toiling” to do before that changes. =)
If you claim that to thrive is to be democratic, then you’ve rejected my argument on first principle. My premise is that whether or not democracy is a good system of government is dependent upon the outcomes it produces and whether or not we take those outcomes to be positive or negative. I do not think democracy itself entails a positive outcome or is inherently desirable independent of its outcomes. Giving the people the power to vote is not, on my view, an obvious or universal good.
It’s unreasonable to blame the voters for voting badly. Rather, we should anticipate that voters will vote badly and adjust the structure of our system such that even when citizens are of the opinions and temperaments such that they will vote badly if given the chance, a bad outcome is not generated. It is the structure that allows bad voting to have negative effects that is the problem. I hold bad voting to be itself endemic and incurable.
The primary difference between the state and a restaurant is that the decisions one makes at a restaurant do not violate Mill’s harm principle. If I order something that it turns out I do not want, no one else is harmed. If however I vote for something that harms me, it is overwhelmingly likely that the same policy that harms me also harms all others like me. The state should intervene to prevent people from harming others in this way, just as a restaurant ought to intervene if I not only order something bad, but I begin force-feeding it to my fellow patrons.
Your case as an individual voter is anecdotal and consequently problematic. Most citizens do not have your capacities or background knowledge–the same amount of effort made by them is not likely to produce the same results. For two, it may well be the case that, unbeknownst to you, you yourself vote poorly. You would not be able to know this by self-inspection, because, by definition, you believe that what you believe is true. For three, even if you are capable of accurately picking which of two options is better or worse than the other, it may still be the case that both (or all, in the multiparty case) of the options provide net detriments.
That there is true information on the internet that is available to people is undeniable, but there is also a much larger quantity of false and/or misleading information on the internet. Can a methodologically untrained citizen reliably differentiate between good and bad information, particularly given that the latter outweighs the former and that sources widely considered reliable often nonetheless dispense the latter? I’m doubtful.
Whether or not an alternative system of government can be feasibly implemented at this time is a distinct question from the question of whether we would be better off normatively under such a system. In order to persuade people that they should choose an alternative system, one needs to show both that the current system is harming them and that there is an alternative system that not only corrects these harms but does not introduce larger additional harms. That’s a tough assignment, but it’s the assignment I’m pursuing. Even if it is not achievable at this time, it may become achievable in the future if the harms of this system become more obvious. For instance, the recent government shutdown highlights the deficiencies of this system in a way that could not have been highlighted several months ago, and consequently strengthens the persuasive force of my position through example.
I have no expectation that this blog will become widely known or that I will become famous. If, however, what you said was true, and my ideas served status quo elites well, then we could expect to see many elites holding my position. The absence of any elites holding my position entails one of two things:
1. I am some kind of unique, undiscovered genius that elites will embrace.
2. The ideas I’m advocating do not serve status quo elites well.
I am not arguing that #1 is true, I am arguing that #1 is preposterous, and that therefore #2 is true.
If I design a system that holds you to an unrealistic standard of conduct, the failure lies with me, not with you. The man who asks a fish to fly and condemns the fish for refusing to grow wings has missed the point.
To the extent that people regularly fail to meet expectations in other areas, the same reasoning should be applied–if I were to pass laws that real human beings were physically, psychologically, or otherwise incapable of following, I would be at fault as legislator.
To answer your car example, in the overwhelming majority of cases, human beings are capable of driving reasonably safely without significant specialized training. Voting well is much more difficult than driving in a minimally safe way. It’s reasonable to expect motorists to drive well, but it’s not reasonable to expect citizens to vote well.
In the restaurant case, the restaurant is not the author of the decision-making process and so cannot be blamed in any case (assuming of course that there are some good eating options there and that the restaurant is not broadly incompetent). In that case, the eaters are blamed not because they voted poorly, but because they agreed to a decision-making procedure that required a level of expertise on behalf of their fellows that was unrealistic given their lack of experience with the restaurant.
I do indeed reject democracy outright, but you’re too quick to jump to the conclusion that non-democracy automatically yields tyranny. Checks and balances can be implemented in non-democratic states. For a description of an alternative procedure I think superior, see this piece:
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2013/08/30/reintroduction-to-sophiarchism-2/
Your assertion that most humans are incapable of voting intelligently is based on your own opinions rather than hard facts. The fact that people vote against their better interests doesn’t automatically mean they are incapable of doing so, but it could also mean they haven’t been adequately trained to do so as well.
In the US a person turns 18, and is told they should vote with no standard training or requirement to show them how to discern or choose among the various issues or candidates. Resultant mediocre or poor voting shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is especially true in our current age of so much well crafted misinformation out there.
You take that resultant bad performance and declare the masses as unfit for voting. This is the same methodology that slave owners and proponents used against slaves as declaring them incapable of or unfit to be free and independent and using their current condition of being uneducated and ignorant of high societies laws and regulations as being intrinsic to the slaves rather than based on extrinsic circumstances.
The average citizen is not pushed to be a “good” citizen, nor taught what it entails, and then the end result of “lazy citizenship” is condemned.
You can’t make the argument that people are incapable of voting without first showing that they are incapable of being taught. The average citizen would be unable to pass the citizenship exam given to new immigrants. This has nothing to do with not being capable, but rather lack of trying.
One need only drive on the roads and highways a few times to see all kinds of blatant disregard of the rules and regulations of safe driving and endangering others in a frequency high enough to make the same argument that people are incapable of obeying traffic laws rather than willfully non compliant.
You state that voting is too complex for most to comprehend, but my point is most are not even operating at even reasonably agreed to minimum levels of competency to even make the case that it’s too complex. If someone can’t name who the Vice President is or who even their local representative is, that is hardly a condition of the system being too complex. You have to first show that a person adequately trained to operate on at least minimum agreed to standards of competencies is not capable of moving beyond that. A person who fails a citizenship test is far from operating at minimum levels, as proven by the immigrant who is required to and does pass the test.
In the restaurant case, the group that didn’t pick a unanimously accepted dish accepted the conditions for making the choice, which is also a decision besides the actual meal voting, for which they are also held accountable for. This means that blame can still be placed on those making poor decisions.
My views are based on the hardest of hard facts–that the political leaders elected by voters in recent decades have enacted policies that have slowed growth rates, increased inequities, reduced liberty, and in many other ways worsened the rate at which living standards improve. There is quantitative evidence for all of my claims in those regards.
Citizens do not wish to undertake the necessary training for good voting, nor is it a productive use of their time for them to do so. Becoming a good voter requires years of dedication at the collegiate level–most citizens would rather study something else, or nothing at all, and I do not begrudge them this. It is well that we have doctors, engineers, farmers, all manner of skilled, productive workers who are not trained in the political arts but are instead good at their respective tasks. To deny that this is how it should be is to deny the value of the division of labor itself.
The citizenship exam given to immigrants is a test of memorized facts and is of no use in determining suitability for voting. Even if overnight we were to bestow on every citizen the necessary basic facts needed to pass the citizenship test, the quality of voting would not rise. A good voter must both put the social interest first and know what the social interest entails. The former is done only by a rare variety of voters who actually have a personal interest in politics. The latter is done only by those who have invested time reading, writing, and thinking about how the state operates.
In the restaurant case, the same individuals are making two very different decisions:
1. What decision procedure to use.
2. How to vote within the confines of that procedure.
I blame them for #1, not for #2. This is consistent with the rest of my argument–their mistake was in their choice of procedure. They should have recognized that they lacked the necessary knowledge to engage in their chosen procedure effectively.
If a system relies on a kind of behavior that is absent and cannot be readily generated, that system is unrealistic, idealistic, and misguided. I levy all of those criticisms at our democratic system.
As I previously said, your facts are primarily based on you extrapolating an opinion from results without proving the root cause of those results.
You automatically attribute voters poor decision making and the results of their poor decisions on them not being inherently incapable of performing the task, of which you have no proof of that to back your claims. Show me a study where a cohort of individuals were taught how to make proper choices, but failed to learn no matter what methods of instruction were used. You’ll find none exist.
There are many possibilities why people vote poorly. Lack of instruction, being lazy, the allowance of the FCC to permit pundits to tell outright lies on the air with no repercussions, and there are many ways to correct the problem that don’t include ending suffrage. It is you who are choosing the path that says people intrinsically lack the capacity to vote without showing proof that this is a valid cause compared to other possibilities.
Again, in order to have any validity in making the claim that the masses are incapable of voting, you have to prove that valid attempts were made to training people and hold them responsible to trying to make balanced judgments before proclaiming that it’s not possible.
To say that those in other occupations besides academia are incapable of making good political decisions by virtue of being too busy is not only insulting to everyone outside of academia, but only further proves my case that some of those in academia are living in their own bubble of reality and are no better than any other faction or group that see things through their own perspective bias that benefits an exclusive group as opposed to the majority. The vast majority of people you are claiming are too busy to be good political decision makers would vigorously disagree with your assertion.
I could very well argue the point that those in academia are inherently unfit to lead or hold any true authority and use current positions of power as proof of the fact that so little of them hold any power today- and of course I wouldn’t begrudge them that failing because they choose to pursue higher education. The fallacy of this argument is the same as yours – taking an end result (academians currently do not hold much power) and sticking it to a cause (because they are not capable of leading) without proof of this fact or disproving alternative possible causes.
“Even if overnight we were to bestow on every citizen the necessary basic facts needed to pass the citizenship test, the quality of voting would not rise.”
Again, your opinion, not proven by facts.
Lastly, you can not make the claim that the decision making process is too complex when people are falling to even make the simplest of good choices. You have to show an average person when adequately trained to at least know the basics of our political system and history, can’t progress any further. This citizenship test is a good example. You can dismiss it as just a memory test, but you have to start somewhere, and the first steps of training are committing things to memory, otherwise you can throw out most education as just one big memory test.
Using your logic, most folks should have a caretaker not just for political concerns, but for all areas of their life because if they are not capable of making beneficial decisions, then they are a danger not only to themselves but to others as well.
Incapacity is indicated by consistent poor performance without interruption. Do you deny that voters have consistently voted poorly, that despite many efforts to get them to vote better, they have not improved? The burden of proof is on you to show that there is some reasonable likelihood that voters will come to vote better. I see no evidence for that.
The few causes you offer and deem ephemeral and changeable are all rational and unavoidable:
Lack of education–it is irrational for the individual voter to go to great lengths to learn about a subject that he has little interest in and can gain little financially from (see Anthony Downs’ An Economic Theory of Democracy).
Laziness–this is no different from your first critique. Education is freely available, but people reject it because it is a waste of their time.
Lying on television–long before the cable news networks held sway, people voted poorly. The economic trends I point to all began in the age of the networks. In any case, while it would be beneficial (albeit far from sufficient) if people did not lie on television, there is too much dispute over what is true to regulate it in a non-tyrannical way.
There have been more efforts to educate voters or eradicate their apathy than can be cataloged here–“Vote or Die”, “Get out the Vote”, the option to study social science in college, the proliferation of the internet and the mass availability of major political works, many of which are out of copyright and are now free, etc.
It is not insulting to those outside academia to say that they have better things to do than invest years of their lives in learning how to vote well. Rather, it is insulting to those outside academia to trivialize the value of their work by demanding that they take on an additional profession without pay, the profession of the statesman.
That academics do not currently hold power is an indictment of the present system, insofar as I have shown that they are the group most likely to wield power responsibly and with skill.
My claims about the citizenship test cannot be empirically verified, but they are nonetheless rationally inescapable. The factual information contained on the citizenship test is not relevant to voting. I am as certain that it would be useless to voters as I am that knowledge of the answers to a test about the physiology of newts would be useless to voters. I can’t prove that knowledge of newts isn’t useful empirically because no one has ever given voters universal knowledge of newts, but nonetheless it’s undeniable that this would be a waste of time.
We do have what you call “caretakers” in most areas of life. We employ doctors, accountants, lawyers, scientists, financial advisers, skilled laborers, and so on down the line. In every field the average person acknowledges that he lacks specialized training and must rely on outside expertise except the political field. The division of labor pierces everywhere else.
What you are doing is judging the system by its results independent of the quality of the users involved. Your premise is the system of democracy can be heavily compromised by unintelligent voting or apathy, therefore, the system itself is bad.
You state that it’s unreasonable to hold the voters responsible for the quality of their vote, but I see no justification for that. We hold people accountable for their actions in many areas of society. We expect them to know the traffic laws prior to operating a vehicle and laws in general when interacting in society. We have social mores that hold people accountable for their manners at social events and with others in general. People are obligated to have a certain amount of knowledge and preparation in a myriad of facets of their lives, yet you would absolve them from one of the things that can ultimately affect their lives the most – choosing acceptable leaders to represent their interests and holding those already elected accountable for their actions.
If someone decides to drive a car and as a result of disregarding rules for proper use, ends up hurting himself or others, should they not be held accountable for their actions, or should we blame the car for not being able to circumvent the undesirable actions of the driver? Do we question the quality of the driver, or hold the car or the laws to be in defect instead?
Going back to the restaurant analogy, if there were a group lunch where everyone voted on what to eat, and the majority vote would be the main dish served, I hold that the restaurant is not responsible if the chosen dish is not liked by some in the group. The folks that reject what they’ve been served have no right to blame the restaurant for something that resulted from the actions of their peers.
I hold my case as an individual voter based on cause and effect. I am in general more pleased with subsequent legislative outcomes that impact my life when the people I voted for make it into office than when they do not. I hold the people I elect accountable for what they said they would do in office and their actions will determine whether I will continue to vote for them.
I agree there is much misinformation out there that can make it more of a challenge to get to the true facts, and this is one area that should be addressed. So called sources of information that are actually pumping out lies should face criminal charges and fines.
There isn’t a system in existence today or yet to be created that won’t have trouble if groups of people with power and resources attempt to sabotage it by gaming the data going in.
You state:
” I hold bad voting to be itself endemic and incurable.”
If you also hold that the majority of people are likely to vote badly, then you also reject the system of democracy outright and it raises the question of who then is capable of making the “right” decisions, which brings us back to rule by few, which ultimately leads to rule by one.
I know you are very busy but I think you might find the political structure in “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez interesting. It’s a good read, regardless.
Thanks for the suggestion–I don’t have lots of fiction reading time these days, but I’ll keep that one on my radar.
How about an update to this post for 2016, Mr. Studebaker?