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A Flawed Attack on "Libertarian Elitism" About Voter Ignorance
The authors raise some reasonable issues. But they misunderstand both the libertarians they critique and the problem of political ignorance itself.
When I first started writing about political ignorance in the late 1990s, many academics and political commentators were inclined to dismiss the problem. Even if voters knew little about government and public policy, it was often argued, they could still be relied upon to make good decisions through a combination of information shortcuts and "miracles of aggregation." Since the rise of Donald Trump and similar right-wing politicians in many European nations, such complacency has diminished. The same recent history has given new credence to libertarian critics, such as Bryan Caplan, Jason Brennan, and myself, who argue that voter ignorance is a fundamental structural flaw of democratic processes, one that can only be effectively ameliorated through various types of constraints on the power of democratic majorities.
In two recent articles—an academic paper in the American Political Science Review and a popular piece in Democracy, political scientists Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier, and Melissa Schwartzberg (FMS) try to push back against those they label as the "new libertarian elitists" (primarily Brennan, Caplan, and—possibly—me). Unlike more traditional academic defenders of the wisdom of democratic decision-making, FMS properly recognize that voter ignorance is a serious problem and that—at least in many situations—it is not likely to be overcome through simple information shortcuts or "aggregation" mechanisms in which voters' errors conveniently offset each other. But they still attack what they call libertarian critics' "elitist" approach, and also argue that democratic decision-making can be reformed to greatly alleviate the challenges of ignorance.
Unfortunately, they misconceive key elements of the libertarians' position, and underestimate the scale of the problem of voter ignorance. Let's start with the charge of "elitism." Almost by definition, a true political elitist wants to concentrate power in the hands of a small group—the elite! This is pretty much the opposite of what Caplan and I propose. As we explain in our respective works on political ignorance, we advocate limiting the power of government such that more decisions can be made in the market and civil society. I also contend that some of the same benefits can be achieved by decentralizing many functions of government to the state and local level, thereby enabling people to make more decisions by "voting with their feet," rather than at the ballot box.
How does this address the problem of political ignorance? By changing incentives. The infinitesimal chance of any one vote making a difference in an election leads most voters to be both "rationally ignorant" about political issues, and severely biased in their assessment of the information they do learn. By contrast, when people vote with their feet, that's a decision that is highly likely to make a difference by actually determining what goods or services they get or (in the case of interjurisdictional foot voting) what government policies they get to live under. For this reason, foot voters are generally better-informed than ballot box voters and less biased in their evaluation of information.
Empowering ordinary people to "vote with their feet" is the very opposite of elitism. It actually reduces the power of political elites rather than increases it. In the status quo, where national governments exercise power over a vast range of activities, and the electorate is highly ignorant, political elites (such as politicians and bureaucrats) get to control many aspects of our lives with little or no supervision by ordinary people. The latter are often either unaware of the existence of these policies or have little understanding of their effects.
Expanded foot voting can significantly reduce that power. In addition, foot voting can empower ordinary individual citizens to make decisions that actually have a decisive effect on their lives, while ballot-box voting—even in the best case scenario—only gives them a tiny chance (e.g.—about 1 in 60 million in a US presidential election) of affecting the outcome.
Caplan and I have proposed a variety of measures to expand foot-voting opportunities, such as ending exclusionary zoning and breaking down barriers to international migration. In addition to their other advantages, these reforms would also reduce the power of political elites over ordinary people, by enabling more of the latter to reject policies they oppose—including those enacted by elites.
Perhaps there is some elitism in the mere notion that political knowledge matters, and therefore people with greater knowledge can make better decisions than others. FMS take Brennan and Caplan to task for believing that experts are likely to make better decisions on public policy than laypeople. But, if so, FMS are themselves guilty of the same sin, in so far as they recognize that knowledge matters and that some people may be more biased in their evaluation of political information than others.
FMS are right to emphasize that experts (and other relatively more informed people) suffer from biases of their own (I have made similar points myself). But they overlook the fact that Caplan (including in a study coauthored with me and others) has tried to correct for this by controlling for various sources of bias, such as ideology, partisanship, income, race, gender, and more. Even after such controls, there are still large gaps between experts' views on many issues, and those of the general public, which suggests that the superior knowledge of the former does matter. Similar results arise in many studies that compare more knowledgeable members of the general public with less-knowledgeable ones (while also controlling for likely sources of bias), such as the work of political scientist Scott Althaus.
In any event, Caplan and I do not claim that political power should be transferred to experts or even to some subset of more knowledgeable voters. Rather, we contend that the big difference in views between more and less knowledgeable people is one of several indicators that political ignorance is a serious problem, one that should be addressed not by giving more power to a small elite, but by limiting government power (and, in my case, also decentralizing it).
Jason Brennan is a more complicated case, as he advocates "epistocracy"—the idea that decision-making authority should be in the hands of the "knowers." But, as he explains in some detail in his book Against Democracy, and other works, that does not necessarily require giving power to a small elite. Rather, he proposes a variety of strategies for empowering more knowledgeable voters while still maintaining a large, diverse electorate.
I am very skeptical that these ideas can actually work. But they are not inherently elitist, unless you conclude that any knowledge or competence-based limitations on access to political power qualify as such. If so, you must also condemn the many competence-based restrictions on the franchise that already exist, such as the exclusion of children and many of the mentally ill, and the requirement that immigrants must pass a civics test that most native-born Americans would fail (at least if they had to take it without studying).
In fairness, FMS are not entirely clear on the issue of whether I come within the scope of their condemnation of "libertarian elitists" or not. In the APSR article, they seem to count me in the same category as Brennan and Caplan. In the Democracy piece, by contrast, they differentiate me from them, as "more willing than Brennan or Caplan to acknowledge limits to [his] claims and to entertain possible doubts." Either way, I think the key point is that advocating limitation and decentralization of government power as a response to the problem of political ignorance is not elitist, but the very opposite. In addition, FMS fail to consider the reasons why Caplan and I conclude that foot voters and market participants are likely to make better-informed decisions than ballot box voters, and overlook most of the supporting evidence we cite.
Along with misunderstanding libertarian thinkers, FMS also understate the scope and severity of the problem of political ignorance itself. Decades of survey data show that most voters often don't know even such basic things as which party controls which house of Congress, which branches and levels of government are responsible for which policies, how the federal government spends its money, and much else. On top of that, they also routinely reward and punish incumbents for things they didn't cause (such as short terms economic trends, droughts, and even local sports team victories) while ignoring more subtle, long-term impacts of government policy. Voters also tend to be highly biased in seeking out and evaluating political information, often only using sources that align with their preexisting views (such as conservatives who only rely on Fox News, or liberals who watch MSNBC), and rejecting or downplaying information that contradicts them. Committed partisans are also prone to accepting delusions and conspiracy theories that fit their preexisting biases. The belief of many Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump is just one particularly egregious example of that tendency. Such widespread ignorance and bias are not limited to Trump supporters, or to any one side of the political spectrum. I cover all this in much greater detail in my book Democracy and Political Ignorance, which is just one part of a vast literature documenting these phenomena, most of it by non-libertarian scholars.
The problem of ignorance is exacerbated by the enormous size and scope of modern government. In most developed advanced democracies, government spending consumes one third or more of GDP. In addition, the government extensively regulates almost every type of human activity. Effectively monitoring a government of this size and scope requires either extensive knowledge, truly amazing information shortcuts, or a combination of both.
Any solution to the problem of political ignorance must take account of both the vast depth of the ignorance itself and the enormous complexity of the government rationally ignorant voters are expected to monitor.
The evidence FMS cite falls well short of this challenge. They are right to point out that, in some situations, survey respondents in experimental settings are willing to adjust their views in the face of new evidence. That's good news! But, to significantly undermine the critiques offered by Brennan, Caplan, and others, it has to apply to a vast range of issues, and to deal with the reality that real-world voters rarely make much effort to seek out opposing views at all.
If you want to seriously address the problem of voter ignorance, while avoiding both "elitist" solutions (such as giving more power to experts) and imposing much tighter constraints on government, you have to find ways to increase voter competence across a vast range of issues. If such increases are impossible or unlikely to occur anytime soon, then elitist and libertarian solutions are likely to be your only realistic options. Expanding the domain of foot voting can transfer more decisions to a sphere where people have better incentives to be informed. Reducing the size and scope of government can help reduce the knowledge burden on voters. If the state had only a few relatively simple functions, a small amount of voter knowledge might be enough!
I don't completely rule out the possibility that we can achieve significant increases in voter knowledge, at least in some respects. While I think some combination of expanding foot voting and cutting back on government power is by far the most promising strategy for addressing the dangers of voter ignorance, I do not suggest it is the only thing that can be done or that it can fix the entire problem by itself. In my book and elsewhere, I have suggested (to little avail!) that the idea of simply paying voters to increase their knowledge levels deserves greater consideration. Perhaps others will have more success in developing this idea than I have. I also recognize—and have repeatedly stressed in various works—that the problem of political ignorance isn't the only factor that must be considered in assessing the appropriate size and scope of government, and in determining the relative value of foot voting and ballot box voting.
Neither FMS' articles nor this post are likely to resolve the longstanding debate over political ignorance. But the discussion will be better if participants take due account of the enormous scope of the problem, and properly distinguish between "elitist" proposed solutions and those that are not.
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The best way to overcome voter ignorance is to let the democrats cast our votes for us instead of just count them.
Remember when you voted for George W Bush in 2004 because you believed Islam gave terrorists superpowers and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims got your dick hard?? I will never forget. 😉
Nope, voted for “W” because “Lurch ” was (and is) such a fucking tool. Love his explanation on how the jets he flies on don’t add to “Climate Change”
Frank
it’s not quite as good as “I was for the war before I was against the war” but it’s close
“It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” said Kerry, who, at the time, was not working for the government. He further reasoned that “the time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with people, and get things done.”
You remember, that was in 2019 when John Kerry took his private get to Iceland to accept an Environmental award (and to see a total eclipse of the sun)
Frank
The best part of the Bush Library on the SMU campus is the section about how Kerry’s vote on the Iraq Authorization of Force was the definitive factor in Bush invading Iraq and thus the Bush presidency. In fact I’ve heard Condi Rice say that the library should probably be called the Kerry Library because he was by far the most important individual in the federal government from 2001-2008. In fact she also says Barney Frank was the second most important person and Bush was fairly inconsequential other than appointing Roberts as McConnell appointed Alito.
You “remember” this like you “remember” slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims getting my dick hard. It’s all fantasy and projection.
Nobody can slaughter “innocent” Moose-lums like other Moose-lums, one of Ronaldus Maximus’s biggest Screw ups (besides picking GHWB as VP) was not keeping the Ear-Rock/Ear-Ron Wah going (A CIA worth it’s budget and the wah would still be going on, like those thunderstorms on Jupiter)
And was it only “Hundreds of Thousands”?? Heck we did that in a few minutes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they were at least as “Innocent” as your Moose-lums
Frank “Allah-ta Bullshit”
Exactly, so there was no need to sacrifice 7000 of our best and brightest to do something the Muslims will do on their own—slaughter each other. Trump figured that out which is why he surrendered to the Taliban.
Barney Frank assraped Bush/Cheney for 8 years…he is the benchmark for the modern red blooded American male!
Kerry … further reasoned that “the time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with people, and get things done.”
Had he not heard of commercial air travel, which uses much less fuel and generates much less CO2 per passenger-mile than his private jet? Or is it inconceivable for him to bump elbows with the ordinary rich in first class?
“Or is it inconceivable for him to bump elbows with the ordinary rich in first class?”
Well, those aren’t the type of people he wants to meet when he said “”I have to fly, meet with people, and get things done.” Those are lesser people.
Kerry voted for the Iraq War.
before he voted against it. as Lurch himself Man-splained’ it
ON TODAY’S Good Morning America, John Kerry defended his “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it,” comment: “It just was a very inarticulate way of saying something, and I had one of those inarticulate moments late in the evening when I was dead tired in the primaries and I didn’t say something very clearly.”
Frank “Good for Sleepy there will be no (contested) primaries in 0-24
Yes, all of those WW2 movies focus on a random senator that rallied the country to win the war for us. Wow you people keep getting dumber as the years go by.
Why are you saying “you people” while looking in the mirror?
You say “You People” where I come from and you be picking up “You Teeth”
Barney Frank bitchslapped Bush like the Celtics are bitchslapping the Sixers. 😉
Nope. I don’t remember that at all. I remember voting for him because the other candidate at the time was a do-nothing, enviro-nut draft dodger who wanted to turn the country socialist.
Got any more stupid straw men you’d like torched?
It all worked out—Obama was elected with 60 senators and they crafted Obamacare…too bad we had to sacrifice 7000 of our best and brightest for something that was inconsequential other than the great costs we incurred. Oh, you got Roe overturned and Heller/McDonald…but only because McConnell stood up to Bush one time in 8 years. What’s hilarious is DeSoros thinks life begins at 5 weeks and 6 days…and he tortured innocent Muslims at Gitmo. And he peed his panties when Tucker Carlson asked him about Ukraine!! Have fun continuing to lose, loser! 😉
I remember voting for him because the other candidate at the time was a do-nothing, enviro-nut draft dodger who wanted to turn the country socialist.
That sounds like a nice example of voter ignorance. Thanks!
Speaking of voting—-Republicans are big winners from the pandemic fueled round of mass migration because all of the Cubans admitted will be able to vote next year. ..I wonder why Congress refuses to reform our broken immigration system?? 😉
Broken?? more than a million managed to immigrate legally in 2022, and it’s a good thing! Have you been to a Dialysis Clinic lately? you can’t go into one without having a slight Indian accent (HT Senescent Joe’s comments on Convenience stores)
Why hasn’t Congress “reformed” the “broken” system?? maybe because undocumented Prostitutes are much cheaper and less likely to “cause trouble” than documented Prostitutes (see Carrol, E.J)
OK, sounds like a goof, but that’s largely it.
Frank
Actually, the pandemic made Republicans the big losers. Last week, after 3 years and 1.1 million dead Americans, the NY Times closed its COVID tracker. The final map should surprise no one.
Every red state had 5-7 times greater mortality rates than other states. That’s a whole helluva lot of dead mask-hating, Republican-voting patriot hillbillies.
Surprisingly, the state that beat all – including blues states – was red Utah. Either they have a more healthy lifestyle or a sense of community to protect for the sake of others. I honestly don’t know.
Every red state had 5-7 times greater mortality rates than other states. That’s a whole helluva lot of dead mask-hating, Republican-voting patriot hillbillies.
Utter and complete horseshit from top to bottom.
Yeah, that’s an amazingly blatant utter lie, one so stupid it doesn’t even make sense. Even the briefest glance at the NYT’s charts (which don’t match the CDC’s for some reason) shows that he’s lying.
The divergence happened after the availability of the vaccines when white trash Trump supporters started throwing tantrums because their Orange Jesus allowed Biden to steal the election. What’s your theory of why Arizona has the highest Covid death rate and it just happened to be the biggest state with the fewest mitigation measures in 2020?? I bet it’s the sun and mild winters that led to those Covid deaths?? Have fun continuing to lose, loser! 😉
The Time’s database keys to John Hopkins ‘, not the CDC’s’. I’d gift the article to this group of modest-means lawyers, but despite all it’s pretty colors, jaws here would still slacken
All things being equal % below poverty level is the biggest factor in Covid death rate for a population in America. The next biggest factors are:
1. Initial wave (by far NY’s highest Covid death days happened from spread before mitigation measures were implemented)
2. Travel restrictions (Hawaii had actual travel restrictions while peripheral states like Vermont had effective travel bans)
3. White trash Trump populations fared significantly worse after the availability of the vaccines while wealthy Republican populations had high vaccination rates.
4. Young and fit populations are anomalies in America and those few populations have relatively low Covid death rates.
The NYT’s page is still available online, I looked at it, and you are lying your ass off. Incidentally, John Hopkins still has their page online, too, and it doesn’t support your claims either.
I’d also question why you seem to think the Hopkins count of deaths is better than the official CDC count that comes directly from the state governments – you know, the people that actually handle and tabulate the data? Further, the CDC counts do match the state counts for the few states I spot-checked, indicating that it is unlikely that there are any transcription or publication errors.
You can see it as the county level in red states—wealthy Republican counties and the major urban Democratic counties in red states have significantly lower Covid death rates than white trash Trump counties.
Denial is one of the first stages of grief
The most amazing thing about the “stages of grief” concept is that idiots actually believe it.
Even the woman that proposed it did not intend for anyone to treat it as a literal map of the dying (not grieving) process. The decades of research since then that have shown it isn’t true, was never true, and doesn’t even make sense internally, tend to get ignored in favor of pop-psych fiction, though.
But I’m sure you’ll deny that, anyway.
Toranth, you should start a newspaper: you’re plum full of information
For a population age was a huge factor on the low end but not so much on the high end because we transformed society to protect the elderly. So DC, Travis County and Utah all had relatively low death rates because those young populations are anomalies.
It’s broken because the Dems broke it. They had 2 years to fix it and did nothing. Why is it the Republicans’ job to “fix” it?
Because Democrats don’t care one way or the other. Most people believe Democrats are fine with the status quo because they believe Texas will eventually turn blue. But in the short term the status quo definitely helps Republicans because the only asylum seekers that will definitely become citizens are Cubans.
…or perhaps identify the “information shortcuts” (evidently the same thing as Gigerenzer’s “simple heuristics” that are genuinely the most effective, and promote them.
Voter Knowledge? Maybe if they would release Senescent Joe’s most recent Brain MRI?? (Like Casey Stangel said of Yogi Berras Brain Scan after getting beaned, “it showed nothing”) Wouldn’t take Bored-Certified Radiologists to see the multi-infract dementia lesions, volume loss, widening of Gyri, Ventricles due to Alzheimers, and oh, look! Aneurysm clips!. Voters could make a more “Intelligent” decision, and I’m not saying that means “45” wins, just someone a little less demented, Like RFK Jr. or Mariane Williamson, or shudders, Bernie S.
Frank
Thank you for demonstrating the voter ignorance problem.
That you don’t understand anything I said?, like I said, even you would recognize the Swiss Cheese that’s supposedly Senescent Joe’s “Brain”
Let’s start with the charge of “elitism.” Almost by definition, a true political elitist wants to concentrate power in the hands of a small group—the elite!
Almost, but not quite by definition, and I don’t think that is the kind of elitism that they are criticizing. (Hard to say for sure, from this article, as Prof. Somin doesn’t give examples.) I think that the elitism that they are referring to is simply the level of certainty with which those libertarians are stating their views and proposed solutions without critically examining the limitations.
Among Prof. Somin’s views that I see that way are his continued arguments about how small the chance is that one person’s vote will swing an election and his confidence in foot voting as an alternative.
Focusing on the odds that an election will come down to one vote as a way to measure one voter’s impact on an election outcome is absurd, in my opinion. (Just like the premise to the 2008 Kevin Costner movie, Swing Vote) I can’t see how it is valuable to think of one person’s contribution to a massively collective endeavor that way. Of many analogies that come to mind, one would be the incentive for an individual soldier to fight in a war. If they aren’t going to fire the shot that “wins the war”, why fight? It also shows the vastly different levels of understanding each person in the war effort has of what is happening, yet they all can still contribute.
No analogy is perfect, of course, but point is that election outcomes are inherently uncertain. No voter can know with certainty whether their vote will be needed for their choice to win, so that should lead to the opposite rational choice of whether to be informed and vote than what Somin argues. The real situations where the incentives drop for individual voters is when the partisan gap is much larger than the uncertainty. (E.g., deep blue or deep red states like New York, CA, Alabama, and so on.) There, the incentive to vote is more like the college football fans that go watch a top 10 team play East Podunk State, and the real election was in the dominant party’s primary.
For foot voting, he doesn’t see the limitations on that as a valid method of encouraging better government.
First, I’ve not seen him address the obvious unequal opportunities to move for people of different socioeconomic classes. When such a large portion of Americans live paycheck to paycheck as it is, moving somewhere else is rarely going to be about wanting to live someplace with different politics. Even the idea on the right that people are abandoning blue states for red states could be largely influenced by economic and demographic forces that those states’ governments have little control over.
Second, people have an inherent right to participate in the government where they live. Even suggesting that they should move if they don’t like the local government is not respecting that right. I might even suggest that people have a duty to try and make where they are a better place for everyone to live for as long as they do choose to live there.
And that brings up my core criticism of libertarian political philosophy. It can be difficult to tell if libertarian faith in the “invisible hand” of the market is a sincere belief that it will lead to better outcomes than actively trying to fix problems. Sometimes it looks more like a preference not to have to make any personal sacrifices or contributions to solving that problem.
The success of democracy* always depends on the effort the people put into it collectively. That runs counter to the nature of libertarians that just want to be left alone, but very few people are so anti-social that they will resist engaging in collective problem solving when it would really benefit them to do that. Perhaps the problem of political ignorance really comes down to Americans not seeing the personal benefits of better government or having a sense of duty toward achieving it beyond whatever stirs their passions the most.
*As always, I use the word “democracy” in the broad “consent of the governed” sense. I will not respond to pedantic efforts to derail things with talk about how bad pure democracy is.
Forget it. Somin is ignorant of the comments here.
Yes, we can. We can know with 99.99999% certainty that our vote will not be needed for our choice to win. (In major elections; an, e.g., school board or town council election might be another story.)
It’s not about encouraging better government; it’s about getting better government. If you want, e.g., lower taxes or more protections for legal abortion, you have an infinitely better chance of securing those for yourself by moving to a new jurisdiction that already has lower taxes or fewer restrictions on abortion than you do by trying to vote for different candidates in your current jurisdiction who will enact new laws to give you what you want.
It’s not about encouraging better government; it’s about getting better government. If you want, e.g., lower taxes or more protections for legal abortion, you have an infinitely better chance of securing those for yourself by moving to a new jurisdiction that already has lower taxes or fewer restrictions on abortion than you do by trying to vote for different candidates in your current jurisdiction who will enact new laws to give you what you want.
Have you ever moved to someplace new because it had lower taxes? Or was whether it had a lower overall cost of living, better job opportunities, better weather, better entertainment options, is closer to extended family, and many other factors? And you also didn’t address my points that people might not be able to move, and that a person has a right, even a duty, to express their preferences for government and work to affect government policy where they live.
You certainly won’t be able to change the government policies where you live now if you don’t say that you want them changed.
Most of all, it isn’t an either/or choice. You can speak out, vote, show up at meetings, and then consider moving if it matters that much to you and none of those efforts work out.
Yes, we can. We can know with 99.99999% certainty that our vote will not be needed for our choice to win.
So why vote at all then? If you and Somin really think that the chance of an election coming down to one vote is meaningful, then I would assume neither of you bother to take even 15 minutes to cast a ballot. If you do anyway, then that information must not mean much to you, if anything.
(In major elections; an, e.g., school board or town council election might be another story.)
So, your chance of being the one ‘deciding’ vote in a local election might be 0.01% instead of 0.000001%. Is that really supposed to change your behavior?
You aren’t seeing the core problem with thinking about it like this. It doesn’t make any sense at all to think of your vote as the deciding vote even if it was a 1 vote difference for the winning candidate that you picked. The other 1,000 to 1,000,000+ people that voted for that candidate could think the same thing. (considering local elections in small towns up to statewide races) Likewise, a similar number of people that might have preferred the other candidate, but didn’t vote, might be kicking themselves as being the one person that could have turned it into a tie, at least.
Most importantly, voting isn’t best seen as an individual act, but as a collective one. Each voter is making a small contribution toward a larger goal. It is an expression of your preferences. Your vote is your voice, so to speak. Even if you think you’re destined to be on the losing side, every vote the loser gets makes it less likely that the politician that does win will completely ignore those voters. When more people speak together, politicians are more likely to listen. That’s why I brought up the analogy of the individual soldier and his effect on a war, and I could make several other analogies that express this same idea. (Each firefighter working to put out large forest fire makes a small contribution, each employee at a massive company contributes a small amount to the company’s success, etc.)
“could be largely influenced by economic and demographic forces that those states’ governments have little control over.”
You mean such as having an 11% state income tax with a very low threshold for the highest marginal rate? A rate that is double the rate in Taxachusetts.
I have voted with my feet. I’d rather live in a 1.2-party state than a 1-party state.
Hope you are doing well Don Nico.
I have a personal plan to leave the People’s Republic of NJ for 186 days/year and live in a 0% tax location. The politics (and taxes) are detestable here; it is a one party state as well.
Why live there the other 187? The wonderful Joisey weather?? OK, the Pizza is pretty good, but it’s almost as good in FL, and in TX the Tex-Mex is way better than NJ-Mex (is there NJ-Mex?)
Oh, and in TX/FL (and while GA has an Income Tax it makes up for it with lower property/sales taxes) GA we have legal concealed carry without a permit,
Only bad thing is TX has those stupid front license plates, would ruin the look of my ZO6,
Oh, and Hurricanes, just run between the raindrops,
Frank
Florida pizza?
They “called” it pizza on the menu, but I didn’t know what I was eating.
It wasn’t pizza.
Why live there the other 187?
Sigh. My DW wants to keep our NJ home; I want Shalom Bayit.
Case closed, in lawyer-speak. 🙂
Good to hear from you, C_XY. The one problem with foot voting is that moving is a damned pain!
At some point, the money case cannot be ignored. Then you take the pain of moving. Or, buying a second place and buying all new shit. 🙂
My ability to foot-vote was much greater when I was poor than it is now that I am middle class.
Back then, I didn’t have a mortgage tying me to my current location.
Back then, I didn’t have specialized professional skills limiting the employment opportunities at my destination.
Back then, all the stuff I owned could fit into a small U-haul trailer.
And yes, I did do this in my mid-20s. My wife and I moved to a city where we had no friends, no family, no jobs lined up. Doing that kind of move now would be unthinkable.
I know that the libertarian ideal is to let the markets decide, but do we really want Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk dictate our lives. Who would want this?
Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk are not the market.
No one forces you to buy a Tesla, use Amazon, or be on Facebook.
Ironic, considering you are using Amazon right now.
That is my choice. There is no irony in that case.
But why do you think I am using amazon right now, because I am not.
You are free to do whatever you please.
Reason.com runs on AWS, Amazon web services, like half of the internet.
Its ironic in a post about voter ignorance and defering to the markets, there are a bunch of comments from a guy who is ignorant about the markets.
What is ironic is that you are such a self-satisfied, arrogant SOB.
You know NOTHING about my habits, interests and knowledge. AND they are none of you business.
Fuck off
Which is irrelevant if they’re big bloated monopolies run by people with obscene levels of accumulated wealth – they ought to get to decide, apparently.
Some sizable fraction of the ignorant might have less access to the resources required to vote with their feet. It’s not cheap to move. Unless one is willing to leave everything behind, start entirely over, and literally use their feet as the sole method of transport. Not as fun as it sounds. Especially if there are no connections to the new area, and no help to bridge the gap to new housing and employment. All of which requires background and/or credit checks and sometimes all kinds of deposits for housing and utilities.
How would this foot voting work in a democracy (or other system) that has less geographic area? In this country there might be something like 50 options to give your foot, but if it is just a handful, the difference might not be all that much.
My view is to let the ignorant have at it and do their bestest to vote if they so choose. Because discouraging or preventing voting is worse, or will give rise to worse once enough of the ignorant become enlightened enough to realize that they have no voice, just feet.
Some of the main contributors to reason deride “left governed” states all day long, yet they all live in them and don’t foot their way out of them to the wide open spaces of red land. Someone could like a lot about an area, and prefer to stay and try to change what they don’t like, rather than just jumping ship. Because no area will have it all, and plenty will have a lot less. For the average ignorant working person, probably any state will be more or less the same in terms of life experience, and they stay because of friends, family, or just because there is no place like home.
I realize that democracy has to go, because the right doesn’t like it. But this foot idea is just super smelly all the way around. It sounds good at first blush, but the notion of “just leave if you don’t like it”, and “leave the governing to the knowing”, is just all kinds of crass. Even if the government that the knowing have selected has less power. That assumes that less power is always the better option. But no wealthy area has a poorly funded or weak local government.
And yet millions of people from south of the border manage to do so.
Moving is very expensive if you have a lot. Poor people, of course, do not have a lot.
And yet millions of people from south of the border manage to do so.
You did see the part where he talked about being willing to leave with only what they can carry on literally their own feet, didn’t you? I don’t know, but it could be valuable for everyone to find out what these people are doing to get here and why they would be so desperate to do that with so little resources.
There’s some cognitive dissonance going on with David and Ilya here. Especially this statement. “Empowering ordinary people to “vote with their feet” is the very opposite of elitism.”
Moving is expensive. Not just in pure moving costs. But in several other respects as well. The cost of finding a new job, and potential drop in position. The cost of breaking the social networks that helped to support you and your family. The cost of finding new housing. The literal cost of travel.
Now for elites, such as Ilya, this isn’t a big deal. There are a dozen plus elite enclaves around the country for him to move to, and he probably has social connections in those half those enclaves already. He’s got the cash to make things easier, to make connections. He’ll have lined up his job ahead of time, or simply continue to work remotely. Flying to see family on a regular basis is easily within his budget. It’s literal elite/global culture.
But for someone else, a steelworker in Pittsburgh, it’s different. He grew up in a particular neighborhood in Pittsburgh. That’s where his family is. That’s where his friends are, where he can rely on June down the street to take care of the kids if he gets pulled in for an emergency night shift. And because he knows the manager, he knows he can be pulled in.
To ask someone like that to move is to break all those social connections. He can’t fly back to Pittsburgh from Oakland. He needs to find a job in Oakland once he’s there, and there’s no steel plants there. He can’t work remotely. The good paying industry jobs, like dockworkers, are locked up by the people who have been there for a while. And when the kids need to get taken care of, he needs to pay someone…he doesn’t have any friends out there. He probably ends up working at McDonalds for a while, at a sharp cut in pay.
The cost of “foot voting” for this sort of working class American is much much higher than it is for an elite. Failing to understand this is a problem.
The other side of that count is someone coming for economic reasons from a different country. In such a situation, the pay of the jobs in the US is so much much better than the home country, that it more than makes up for the drop in social connections.
Moving is expensive for elites, who have to sell homes, find a good-paying job in whatever niche field they have specialized in, and hire a huge moving truck for all their goods. The lower class can get jobs in any metro area, can leave whenever their rental lease expires, and can move all their worldly good in a small U-haul trailer.
Doing this kind of move when I was young and poor was a piece of cake. It would be unthinkable now that I’m comfortably middle class.
Empowering ordinary people to “vote with their feet” is the very opposite of elitism.
But indistinguishable from ethnic cleansing!
Or, “America, love it or leave it.”
Libertarian advocacy is not morally monstrous. What saves it is the fact that libertarians do not have any theory of government. That is the one saving grace which keeps Somin’s advocacy from being horrific.
Ethnic cleansing involves empowering ordinary people? I think you have a misunderstanding of the term.
I do understand that libertarianism is an induced delusion, aimed at dupes, to persuade them that ordinary people will be empowered by whatever rich people compel them to do. Of course the rich people in line for indoctrination aren’t there to be duped, they are there to be convinced they are ordinary.
That way, they keep a clear conscience while they get on with the idealistic business of using their wealth to compel others who are less well off. I will consider thinking otherwise when I see Somin step up against right to work laws, and in favor of transaction taxes in securities markets.
I do understand that libertarianism is an induced delusion, aimed at dupes, to persuade them that ordinary people will be empowered by whatever rich people compel them to do.
Boy, talk abut delusional.
What you describe above is the OPPOSITE of libertarianism. And for the record, I’m not a libertarian. All libertarianism reflects is that the individual has agency over him/herself, and that groups of others have no power over that individual.
You have a very twisted thought on libertarians when you, as a liberal, should see that liberals exist solely to have power over others.
All libertarianism reflects is that the individual has agency over him/herself, and that groups of others have no power over that individual.
That is a conjecture, not a reflection. It is an unusually bad conjecture, refuted by everyday life and historical experience.
Callahan, governments exist to have power over others, but not solely for that purpose. There is also the purpose to avoid this, “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
“whatever rich people compel them to do”
What did Zuck (or Musk or whoever) compel you to do? Please be specific.
Interesting thought…the ‘ethnic cleansing’
“Decades of survey data show that most voters often don’t know even such basic things as which party controls which house of Congress, which branches and levels of government are responsible for which policies, how the federal government spends its money, and much else.”
To be fair, look what happens when the voters support unapproved policies or candidates. The governing classes go ahead and do what they want anyway.
Why should voters memorize what to them is useless and irrelevant information about things such as whether Tweedledum or Tweedledee controls Congress, or which specific overpaid clowns are hogging the public teat?
The parties are approaching interchangability, who *knows* which levels of government are responsbible for what, and the federal government will spend excessively until they run out of money and credit.
“If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it” (attributed to various famous people, but probably originated by someone undeservedly obscure).
These guys have completely ignored massive political bias on the part of the so-called experts. Our “experts” setting policy today are hyper partisan people chosen by political actors for political reasons, frequently with zero education or experience within the area in which they are making expert decisions. And frequently the decisions are made primarily to make some small set of political supporters happy.
And most of our elites and experts, including the people that are the subjects of this article, have completely lost touch with the actual life experience of the masses.
So they create very public polliticalky-driven policies that frequently make life worse for the general population. And they lie and spin about the policies in obvious manner.
The experts have created a mess, and people in the western democracies know it because they’re experiencing it. You can lie about the policy effectively, but when they lie about the outcome it doesn’t take because it contradicts the experience of the “unexpertised”.
People aren’t voting against the recommendations of the experts because of an expertise gap. They’re voting against the recommendation of the experts because the experts have completely fucked things up – with no recognition that they’ve done so – and people are angry and frustrated.
An empty populist rant as any written from the time of Rome you’ll today. Like a formula. And utterly ignorant.
Western Democracies are doing just fine.
Individuals rarely make decisions.
Pure politics over public service is evident when it happens, that’s why DeSantis stands out so much.
Civil servants are as much the people as any poster here, and a lot less partisan in how they do their jobs.
You, and energy policy, for instance. High-handed, outcome oriented, accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being partisan but not you. That is more like the elites you have contoured than most government civilians.
Freedom is more important than Ivy League aims for our republic. Concentration of power leads to concentrated benefits for a few and diffuse costs for the many. Calling government employees civil servants is an example of the war of progressives against honest language. Permitting government employees at any level to unionize is folly, as even FDR said. Allowing bureaucrats to create policies in league with corporate interests (e.g., the proposed emissions regulations on coal and natural gas electrical generation that will drive those plants out of service) is not an example of Western democracies doing just fine. And politicians practice the world’s second oldest profession by the same rules as practitioners of the oldest one: for rent, not for sale.
I mean that is the sophomore libertarian take.
History tells us that maximum federalization of power can be quit unfree. It also tellls us those inveighing agains the elites are generally elites themselves, with a more open authoritative agenda that those they train their followers against.
The balance between populism and elitism is hard. Out Founders knew that. If you think it is easy you are fooling yourself.
History tells us that maximum federalization of power
You start with a strawman. Where is it that libertarians want a “maximum federalization of power”? If anything, they want a minimum one.
I meant maximally devolved, as in a confederation. It does appear I used the wrong word. Hope this clears it up.
“those inveighing against the elites are generally elites themselves”
I suspect that you are engaging in a bit of sophistry here using “elites” with different means twice in the same sentence
I understand the concern, but in this case I don’t believe I am, based on the definition used in bevis’ comment I am replying to.
You’re the problem. It’s very demonstrative that you bring up bogeyman DeSantis when incompetents like Granholm and Mayor Pete are serving as experts.
I’m not going to discuss energy anymore because you simply don’t want to know anything. You’ve got your dogma to repeat and that’s all you need. But it’s remarkable that you – through your comments over time – find characteristics like objectivity and knowledge and caring about outcomes to be worthy of scorn. Says a lot about how you think.
Away from your quiet little government office out where the normies are, people are pissed. Much of government and business have lost touch of regular folks, but they’re getting fed up. Look at the popularity ratings for congress and Biden and Trump and the media. Both major political parties. All in the tank.
And it’s not just here in America. Brexit. The Dutch farmers. The French truckers. The Canadian truckers.
People are pissed off everywhere and your glib sophistry proves you just don’t get it. The people in the western democracies don’t agree with you. I know we all think we’ve grown too sophisticated to suffer through repeats of the extreme things in history, but human nature is still the same. Enough people get angry enough and revolts and revolutions are not at all out of the range of possible outcomes. All of your baseless arrogant “we know better” attitude isn’t going to fix this. Someone somewhere needs to get their collective head out of their ass.
DeSantis was noted for standing out. Do you deny that he’s an outlier?
No, I don’t claim to speak for the people. Neither should you. Citing truckers and Brexit is a pretty incoherent populism. You yourself are not exactly a normie.
One thing I do know is generalizing about the Western People is reductive.
Next time come with more information and a better thesis than elites bad and you are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. It’s tired.
Yes. The American population never wanted hordes of worthless third worlders on our soil. It was forced upon us.
Obama was more of an outsider than Trump.
OK, I understand your framing better now. I agree that in a society where government commands so much of the economy, there is going to be a problem getting voters to pay attention to all the details of what that government is up to. I also agree that the solution is not to try and make every voter a policy wonk, but to reduce the footprint of government.
But I strongly object to calling that a problem of “voter ignorance”. That places the accent entirely on the wrong syllable. Better to call it a problem of ” government overreach”.
When government in the United States conformed to the Constitution our founders drafted, local voters decided local issues, state legislators appointed US senators, the share of the economy consumed by government at all levels was about one tenth of the share consumed today, freedom abounded, and hardly anyone believed that beggaring our grandchildren in exchange for a present boon was moral or permissible.
When parents governed the schools, the schools taught civics, math, language, and history. Students became informed voters, and hard work led them to husband their resources, guarding them from government usurpation.
The focus of our efforts, should we not be obliterated by Biden’s provocation of the Bear, by his insane green policies, or by the great replacement, must be to regain control over government and teaching children the truth.
“Political ignorance” is supposedly a characeristic of the hoipolloi rabble and “political knowledge” is supposedly the property of the hoitytoity elite. I call BS.
“Voters also tend to be highly biased in seeking out and evaluating political information, often only using sources that align with their preexisting views … and rejecting or downplaying information that contradicts them.”
That is more true about the politically “knowledgable” elite who act like they are above the real world than it is about the politically “ignorant” rabble who are more likely to hsve to deal with the real world as it is.
That is more true about the politically “knowledgable” elite who act like they are above the real world than it is about the politically “ignorant” rabble who are more likely to hsve to deal with the real world as it is.
Exactly. Having more information about how government works is not likely to decrease cognitive biases. How successful people are at correcting their cognitive biases comes down to their motivation to counter them, not having more information. It is certainly true that a lot of very intelligent and knowledgeable people are still deeply partisan and let their partisanship steer their thinking rather than use their intellect and knowledge first.
I think the biggest problem we have in politics is the lack of choice. The power of incumbency and partisan gerrymandering leaves too many voters with too little choice. What is worse is that the choices seem to narrow as time goes on. The 2024 Presidential election is looking to be a repeat of 2020 that no one wants. The only solution I see is to return the power to people by creating more competitive races. I see non-partisan redistricting and rank choice voting as the most viable options to do this.
“too many voters with too little choice”
Ah yes, if only we had the multi-party parliamentary systems all the best countries have. You still end up with a majority party (or coalition) and an opposition. You end up with just as much if not more political bargaining between those parties – which means your views (as expressed in voting for some minor party) is diluted, just like here.
When I say choice, I am not really suggesting a parliamentary system but speaking back to a time when Republicans and Democrats held wider range of views. With so few competitive seats the wide range of views get filtered out as candidates are mostly answerable to the extremes in their party. Competition for the political seats is not at the election but rather at the primary. Candidates are not looking to appeal to the people of a district or state but rather to a small group that will affect their primary election.
Most people believe that competition improves, markets, school, sports teams and others, so why shun competition for political races?
Hmmm… what could be the connection between voter ignorance and our current state of affairs in which our government has grown to an enormous size and scope?
Could it be political and economic ignorance?
Despite the failures of Communism and Fascism, demagogues have convinced a large portion of the world’s population that ever bigger government is the answer. Libertarians and others who believe in smaller government and greater individual freedom have their work cut out for them, but foot voting and ignorance are the wrong tools for the job. We should focus on education.
The comment section of this blog is a masters class on political ignorance. Turley’s blog is worse.
Spoken like a true expert on political ignorance.
Anyone who disagrees with my position is just ignorant!
Turdley is always dropping…
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4003811-gop-lawmaker-dings-mccarthy-for-demonizing-illegal-immigrants/
Exactly why Hispanics don’t belong here. This Gonazales guy feels a kinship to any other mestizo who speaks Spanish. If he was truly an American, he’d want them demonized, as they’re ruining America.
This is simplistic at best, but also a perfect example of political ignorance pushed by the media.
Tony Gonzalez was picked to be on Face the Nation PRECISELY because he was in the GOP and didn’t agree with the overwhelming majority of the GOP on this issue. It was meant to frame the argument as some kind of infighting in the party; it was meant to make the House republicans look like the minority.
So the media lied by omission.
RE: “Almost by definition, a true political elitist wants to concentrate power in the hands of a small group—the elite! This is pretty much the opposite of what Caplan and I propose. As we explain in our respective works on political ignorance, we advocate limiting the power of government such that more decisions can be made in the market and civil society. I also contend that some of the same benefits can be achieved by decentralizing many functions of government to the state and local level, thereby enabling people to make more decisions by “voting with their feet,” rather than at the ballot box.”
“Almost by definition” means “I’m gonna indulge in the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy now.”
“Limiting the power of government so that more decisions can be made in the market and civil society” always results in people making decisions which are good for them in the short-term, but which over time tend to concentrate wealth into the hands of a very few. And then the few use their wealth to concentrate political power into their own hands.
“Vote with their feet” – that means if you aren’t doing well in place A (or don’t like the laws of Place A) because Place A has been invaded by a gang of loop-a-dupes (or by a pernicious loop-a-dupe ideology) you move to a different place (Place B where you can do better (or like the laws better), and hope that the pernicious loop-a-dupe ideology won’t follow you there, right? Well, most people can’t afford to move to another state. So “voting with your feet” incurs an intrinsic, built-in additional expense for those who want to vote with their feet. What you might call a podalic-poll-tax.
Everyone can afford to move to another state.
Sure. And everyone can afford to buy a car, or food, or clothes, or go to the movies. See how easy it is to do whatever you want?
If that seems unnecessarily sarcastic, then you could respond to the multiple posts above from myself and others that have challenged your on this point in detail before you just state your claim again with no justification.
“FMS also understate the scope and severity of the problem of political ignorance itself. Decades of survey data show that most voters often don’t know even such basic things as which party controls which house of Congress”
The real ignorance is believing someone ought to care about whether it’s the assailant’s right boot or the left crushing their neck.
There is a decades-old software category called business intelligence software. It was invented to keep people in the c-suite from being overwhelmed by data because past a certain point, ignorance in that situation violates their fiduciary duty and that has severe personal consequences for them.
There are world-class examples of the software that are open source and could be set up to handle the ignorance problem, I think. The problem is that there’s nobody saying how much data do people actually need to no longer be ignorant. Everyone recognizes the problem but nobody seems to be quantifying it.
If you could quantify it, then you could feed that requirement to any one of dozens of well-established companies to set up data warehouses and presentation tools specifically designed to provide that information within the 1-10 minute per day time constraints that your average voter is willing to devote to being an informed voter. They’ll take your money and they’ll deliver.
Nobody’s interested in doing this as a commercial project. Nobody’s interested in doing this as a non-profit. Business intelligence tools are well established, big business, but nobody wants to touch this particular instantiation.
I wonder why?
Interesting observation. One top line metric I’d love to see is spending vs primary objective. For example, spending on poverty vs. poverty rate, or spending on military vs engagements won.
“In the status quo, where national governments exercise power over a vast range of activities, … Expanded foot voting can significantly reduce that power.”
Foot voting only works this way when it’s between jurisdictions with DIFFERENT policies. For policies that are uniform across jurisdictions, foot voting is impossible.
“Caplan and I have proposed a variety of measures to expand foot-voting opportunities, such as ending exclusionary zoning”
IOW, you’ve proposed reducing the difference in policies between jurisdictions… Nobody would be permitted to foot vote their way into a jurisdiction WITH exclusionary zoning, for instance, because you wouldn’t, given the choice, allow any jurisdiction to have it. Likewise immigration restrictions.
This is the paradox of your position: You at the same time advocate people moving to find places where they like the rules, and also advocate taking away from those places the power to have different rules.
You tout foot voting at the same time as you desire to render it futile…
Pretty sure wanting one policy changed doesn’t mean they want all policies to be the same.
All all policies? No. But he’s pretty clear about wanting some rather important policies to be uniform regardless of what the people in those jurisdictions might want, and I don’t think he’s really addressed that conflict.
There is no contradiction then.
There would be a contradiction if they are advocating for foot voting to replace the use of voting as a general way of getting the government you want.
If they are just talking about foot voting being preferable for certain types of policies that are most susceptible to political ignorance, then there is no contradiction.
I get the impression that they are arguing the former but using the latter situations as examples to make their position seem stronger. I tend to agree with Brett that there is at least a bit of a contradiction in their position and how they argue it. (Time to buy a lottery ticket if I agree with Brett more than Sarcastr0 on something.)
Also, it doesn’t really work for federal politics at all. And state/local and national politics have the same parties, so…
There is nothing new under the sun.
The Greeks and Trojans debated this foot voting thing for many months. Having been soundly defeated and succumbing to unassailable logic, the Greeks departed, but left the Trojans a gift in appreciation of the lesson learned.
At least these days we have truthful alternative media, where those willing to listen can find out the truth even though the major media “news” has been nothing but lies for decades. Of course, any government supported scheme to “reduce voter ignorance” will be immediately corrupted into creating it by excluding alt-media, its producers and consumers from participating.