Episode 152: Against Democracy (with Jason Brennan)

[@kilpatrickkirksimmons5016]

Two years ago this talk would've driven me insane. But with the three biggest candidates of this cycle being Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton, I couldn't agree more. Populism is cancer. John Adams noted that democracies have a nasty habit of committing suicide, and we seem hell-bent on proving him right.

[@kredit787]

Democracy may be useful as a process to gauge public opinion, but not as a goal, because then it turns into mob rule. Because of people's natural biases, voting needs feedback of consequence and responsibility, just like in the market, prices relay information of cost, which is analogous to responsibility and consequence.

[@littleferrhis]

Personally I’ve really come to this conclusion when I thought about it in a less insulting way. The people of today aren’t stupid, (or retarded as Osho said) it’s just we’re much more specialized, and the fact that we’re much more specialized is why we can’t expect people to vote for smart and competent people. For example someone may be an expert on farming, and know way more than non-farmers on farming. It’s common sense. But for this farmer if he gets thrown into the realm of politics, which tends to be filled with unsolvable issues where it’s more a balancing act of who gets to be hurt the most, he’s not going to do a good job. I mean kings for example trained their whole lives for the task of ruling and making big decisions like these. People aren’t political experts, most are experts in other areas, but in a democratic system everyone is treated as if they political experts, which is why democracy turns into a popularity contest, and a contest in the electoral college.

[@andrieslouw3811]

Wrong analogy - farmers are generalists and practical persons and generally know more about government and hard decisions than lawyers. They have a daily job in deciding if something lives or if it dies or if it is curtailed. Ideology and ivory towers is the killer of civilisations. Because of progresive advancement. See Nisbit.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

I've been very sceptical of democracy since my mid-to-late teens, so it's not too surprising that I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Brennan says here, seeing as it reinforces a lot of my established beliefs. It was weird to hear him boast about his "populist" credentials in the last couple of minutes, though.

[@TheWayoftheSith]

Woah libertarians are not right on free trade and open borders, you only have to look at history to know that the latter leads to ruin, and the former is a fairly big problem due to it being heavily one sided which means alot of money will leave the economy. ie China/Mexico will accept lots of trade but they won't lower their economic barriers.

[@yurona5155]

The argument in favor of free trade and immigration is based on the assumption that it goes both ways. And in that regard it is pretty much universally agreed upon to be correct.

[@kmg501]

At about half way through he makes a blatantly contradictory argument that people vote altruistically. Women don't vote "altruistically", they vote themselves unearned wealth and benefits. All the demographic data supports that by a large margin.

[@Philosopheee]

I think you might be mistaken. The social science literature tells us that both parties vote because they view their policies in nationalistic and ethnocentric terms. This is seen when the voting population exceeds a threshold where the relative weight of any given vote is rather miniscule. When people believe their vote won't really make an impact on them, they will vote in what they see as best for their collective. A conservative genuinely believes their policies preventing the deconstruction of American culture help the collective. In the same sense the Bernie Sanders young socialist voter really holds that their stance on healthcare or universal college education would genuinely help the collective. Brennan talks about this in his C-SPAN Q&A where he addresses the notion that the Koch brothers really are just self-interested in their donations. He posits that maybe the Koch brothers pour hundreds of millions into elections because they truly want tax breaks. If so, Brennan argues, they are spending more pushing an ideology into the mainstream media than they would reap from the tax breaks themselves. So obviously there must be something more behind their actions, and the consensus on the political science literature is that people vote with what they view as the best. They generally don't vote on what best serves them. However, artificial people (as opposed to natural people) donate to campaigns based on what serves them, such as unions or lobbying corporations. But natural people, rather than artificial people, usually vote in favor of the collective over themselves.

[@abcw114]

Do you know what contradictory means?

[@Orbitinbloom19018]

You missed the entire point

[@gcgrabodan]

This anti Sanders attitudes in the interview and the comments really irritate me. I am an economics Phd Student (and therefore probably understand more about eco 101 that Mr. Brennan) and I think lots of Bernie Sanders' policies are at least "ok", certainly much more so than those of Trump. And economic nobel laureats like Krugman and Stiglitz did favor Clintons economic policies over his, but only slightly and they found positive things to say about Sanders. His attemps of transparency are imo very important to protect us from the "idiocracy". So portraying him as the archetyp of stupid voter's politician seems extremly dumb and ideologically motivated. His idea of educating the mases ironically would bring us closer to an "Epistocracy" which Brennan so desires (and I do, too)!

[@gcgrabodan]

Btw he was the one talking about issues and policies while Clinton sayd "I m with her" and Trump sayed "Make America great again". So Sanders clearly was the candidate for people desiring better informed voters... I really dont understand those commentators resentment...

[@yurona5155]

Brennan probably perceives Sanders' position on trade agreements in their current form as an opposition to free trade in general (which it isn't). For example, campaign rhetoric like 'bring back American jobs' can mean very different things, one of which would be the Trumpian self-harming mercantilism and trying to rebuild a national economy for manufacturing basic consumer goods. On the other hand it could mean ridding current trade agreements of their non-free parts favoring monopolies and exploitation, incentivizing technological innovation and worker education in order to improve chances in an essentially free trade global environment (which is much closer to Sanders' actual position).

[@gcgrabodan]

But someone like Brennon who talks about the importance of forming and educated opinion should listen more carefully and without bias to politicians... He really didnt seem to do that here. Or I overlook some issues with his policies due to my bias ;)

[@pablodono7227]

@@gcgrabodan in other videos he agrees thwt even himself could be bias.. BTW sanders policies are idiotic, socialism failed.. It's a fact.. The Clinton's are a different deal, for instance they're right about boosting the inmigtation

[@カスカディア国人]

Pablo Dono Sanders’s policies aren’t even socialism and most of them have been shown to work. His ideas come from Western Europe and FDR, not Lenin. He’s really a social democrat which really isn’t socialism. I would venture to say if you don’t recognize that then you don’t even know what socialism is you turkey. Also I wouldn’t say it can’t work or that socialism was disproven, in the 20th century almost everything was done in a Leninist inspired fashion for various reasons I won’t get into here because we would have a book, but that’s not the only way to do socialism, and it’s certainly not the way westerners have ever wanted to do socialism. You should look up left-libertarianism and market socialism. Worker cooperatives are socialism at a micro level and they’ve been proven to work, and worker cooperatives are the pillar of left-libertarianism and market socialism. Classical Liberal John Stuart Mill believed that in the future capitalism would be replaced or evolve into a left-libertarian market socialist type system himself. It’s not like socialism as an idea is inherently this terrible thing that can only go or come about one specific way.