Apropos the previous post, the Wizard of Id again:

Great interview with an interesting fellow over on TCS Daily, picked up via Commentary South Africa. The subject is an author, who makes a controversial point: Typical voters are ignorant of economics - in fact, popular, strongly-held beliefs are often the exact opposite of what you’d learn in economics class. They also exhibit certain common systemic biases. These result in policies that hurt not only the voters themselves, but everyone else. When markets apparently fail, turning to democracy for solutions is often a guaranteed way to make things even worse.

Excerpt:

In general, though, I think it’s better to focus on improving the quality of public opinion than changing the form of government. After all, if you can convince the majority to change the form of government, why not cut to the chase and just convince them to support better policies?

Excerpt:

I’ve gotten a much more sympathetic reading than I expected from other scholars. But the conclusion least likely to sink in with this audience, I think, is that free-market policies are a lot more attractive than they seem on the surface. Economists can often figure out ways to make markets work better, but the democratic process tends to adopt policies that makes markets work worse.

For a broader audience, I suspect the most difficult claim (or perhaps it’s more of a tacit assumption) is that democracy is not sacred. In our society, we are used to the idea that we should do whatever the majority wants. In fact, people often treat the majority opinion as the standard of both truth and value - how often have you heard a pundit say, “The American people want X” as if that were a sufficient reason to do it? I emphasize that popular policies can be very bad - and when they are, I don’t see why we should give the American people what it wants.

Is this paternalism? Not exactly - after all, people who support bad policies are not just hurting themselves. When my colleague Pete Boettke tells me “According to you, we get the policies we deserve,” I always answer, “Actually, we get the policies they deserve - hardly the same thing.”

These questions aren’t exactly new. Plato knew all about the problems of democracy. I too have some some views on this issue, but can’t claim to offer a solution that is both fair and practical. It’s worth thinking about, though. Even if only because this justifies time spent writing and blogging in the hope of “improving the quality of public opinion.” ;-)

It’s not so much what they do, as how they do it, that’s impressive:

Bella Thomas went to Cuba, and returned wondering why so many Western visitors continue to romanticise a place that, for ordinary people, remains synonymous with privation and tyranny. Did they - like Michael Moore - go only where their official guides took them, and speak to locals only in front of the regime’s minders?

Her portrayal in Prospect is pleasantly prolix, but poignant, perceptive and perspicuous.

You’ve got to hand it to the French. How am I to maintain my Sarkozy-inspired moratorium on France-bashing when they come up with this hilarious lunacy?

President Sarkozy has fallen foul of intellectuals and critics who see his passion for jogging as un-French, right-wing and even a ploy to brainwash his citizens. <snip>
“Is jogging right wing?” wondered Libération, the left-wing newspaper. Alain Finkelkraut, a celebrated philosopher, begged Mr Sarkozy on France 2, the main state television channel, to abandon his “undignified” pursuit. He should take up walking, like Socrates, Arthur Rimbaud, the poet, and other great men, said Mr Finkelkraut.

“Western civilisation, in its best sense, was born with the promenade. Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation.” <snip>

Le jogging, originally known as le footing and now more fashionably as le running, caught on in France, as elsewhere, in the 1980s and eight million claim to indulge. But Mr Sarkozy has rekindled a French suspicion that the habit is for self-centred individualists such as the Americans who popularised it. <snip>

Beyond the self-promotion, some commentators see something sinister in the media fascination with le jogging de Supersarko. The “hypnotic” daily images of presidential running are not innocent, said Daniel Schneidermann, a media critic. Mr Sarkozy uses the video images of his jogging as “a major weapon of media manipulation”, said Mr Schneidermann.

Now if he was a cyclist, I could understand it. But jogging? That’s just silly.