As unusually highly attentive readers might be aware, I am now a grad student at the University of Chicago. By reputation, Chicago is often thought a comparatively dangerous, unsafe place, and this was the impression most are under upon arrival there. If, however, we actually look at crime statistics, we find that the extent to which people in this area fear crime and perceive it to be an endemic threat is unjustifiable. In this piece, I will establish that claim, and then consider how it has come to pass that the average citizen overestimates the amount of danger he is in so thoroughly and consistently.
Tag: Democracy
A Morality for Sociopaths
Most moral theories attempt to determine how people ought to behave without considering whether or not people are capable of behaving in the ways they describe. Those that do consider whether or not their moral theories are too demanding do so only in minor ways. They consider perhaps whether or not the average person is capable of acting in the way they describe, or whether or not the average person could one day be capable, but they do not commit themselves to designing a moral theory that is universally feasible. What about morally abnormal individuals, who do not have the altruistic and social impulses many moral theories assume? Can they be incorporated into a moral theory? I not only think we can incorporate these individuals, but that we must do so, because if we do not, these individuals will act in harmful ways that our moral theories fail to anticipate. Our popular morality allows these individuals to gain by being immoral, to take advantage of those who do subscribe to the common morality. Only moral theories that expect the worst can be prepared to deal with the worst. Today I’d like to discuss how we ought to assimilate these people into a common moral theory, one that anticipates their inclinations and adjusts itself accordingly.
How Will Young People Respond to Their Unhappiness?
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.
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Citizens Using State Programs Unaware that they Use State Programs
One of the things I’m fond of doing on this blog is chronicling just how much the general public doesn’t know about statecraft and speculating how that public ignorance might debilitate the quality of our governance. Today, I ran across a study from Cornell’s Suzanne Mettler detailing a curious phenomenon–many (and in some cases, most) of the beneficiaries of government programs are completely unaware that they themselves benefit from government programs.
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Only 6% of Voters Know Anything
I am often told that I take too negative a view of the average voter, that people do not need to be experts to vote well or to have good political instincts. I am not the least bit troubled by these critiques. Why? Because I continue to stumble upon utterly depressing statistics. These statistics show that contrary to our optimistic inclinations or general idealistic hopefulness, the average voter is well and truly spectacularly ignorant. The one I wish to discuss today certainly blew my mind–perhaps it will blow yours.
