Aulus Gellius meinte am 2. May, 15:07:
The other side of the coin
Whether or not universal suffrage leads to more optimal electoral results, disenfranchising a significant portion of the population would lead to their no longer feeling any sense of citizenship, of belonging to the same nation and the same community as those who have the right to vote. Once you create two classes of citizenship, you have denied equality even in the most restrictive, libertarian sense of the word. When a crisis strikes, you cannot rely on the same whole-hearted support from second-class citizens who do not feel involved in government as you would get from those who do.I think that such an outcome may not even be Pareto-optimal under your assumptions. In reality, the non-voting population would have to be bribed to acquiesce in the decisions of the voting portion. If the non-voters did not like the country's policies, they could offer resistance from small scale, passive non-cooperation all the way to outright revolt. So their preferences would still have to be taken into account, no matter how irrational, and the cost of meeting them may well be higher than when they simply have the right to vote.
Finally, historical evidence suggests that suffrage always increases. I am not aware of democratic societies that permanently and legally eliminated voting rights from any segment of the population who enjoyed them.
HedgeFundGuy antwortete am 2. May, 16:15:
good points, but I think there's still a case
The essence of citizenship is not voting, but having legal rights to person and property. I think the non-voting may appreciate the rights in a more prosperous economy. Would you rather live in Zimbabwe or Venezuela, democracies in their peculiar way, or work as a non-voting citizen in a prosperous country? I guess I thinking its most relevant towards developed countries where the populace is very uneducated.I think the bribe to the non-voters is that they can have more prosperity and legal rights but no voting, versus less prosperity and legal rights but voting. Do the ignorant really believe they will get the most out of the political redistributions? After all, redistribution is a zero-sum game, and the ignorant are likely to lose once they have worn the "pity the victim" ploy wears thin on the majority.
abiola antwortete am 2. May, 16:40:
Of course ...
"Do the ignorant really believe they will get the most out of the political redistributions?"Isn't this just what it entails to be "ignorant?" It's highly unrealistic to expect people who don't even know what a molecule is to cotton on to the game-theoretical subtleties of political patronage.
While I've bashed the "wisdom of crowds" nonsense several times in the past myself, I'm extremely suspicious of any claims that a better educated electorate will necessarily make more sensible choices: to illustrate, there is little doubt that America would be a socialist "Democratic People's Republic" today if voting had been restricted to only PhD holders in the 1940s and 1950s, and the very same set of people will *still* insist in the here and now that the lower growth, higher unemployment European welfare state model is much to be preferred to the "messy" and "heartless" capitalism of the United States.
We already have the seperation of powers, the constitution and representative democracy to save us from the worst instincts of the mob, and I'd like to see some hard evidence that the United States is worse governed today than it was during the era of literacy tests before I buy that they're something to be missed - a claim which is going to prove tremendously difficult to substantiate, given the extent of the abuses which said tests made possible.
abiola antwortete am 2. May, 16:46:
By the Way
The following is a false dilemma:
I think the bribe to the non-voters is that they can have more prosperity and legal rights but no voting, versus less prosperity and legal rights but voting.How exactly are they supposed to be able to safeguard those rights without the vote? Are they simply to trust in the benevolence of the enfranchised? That worked so well for African-Americans in the "Jim Crow" South, and it's working gloriously for the citizens of most Middle Eastern countries with their hereditary princes and presidents-for-life ...
The problem with a place like Zimbabwe isn't an excess of democracy but an absence of real choice: when Mugabe shut down the foreign food aid programs, he knew precisely what he was doing, and it ought to come as no surprise that he was returned in a landslide, seeing as the alternative for most voters was to either pull the lever for him or starve.
Aulus Gellius antwortete am 2. May, 16:47:
Contradiction
If the ignorant truly understand that political redistribution is a zero-sum game, and that protection of legal rights to property are a foundation of a prosperous economy, what harm is there in letting them vote? And if they don't understand it, then you have to pacify them somehow, through bribes or oppresion.I do understand the intuitive appeal of the argument that only people who agree with me should be allowed to vote (which is the underlying logic of all the plans for restricting suffrage by some qualification), but it does not stand up on closer investigation. What if the qualification was designed to disenfranchise you personally? Would you still support it?
HedgeFundGuy antwortete am 2. May, 18:04:
I agree with William Buckley's famous statement that he would rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty at Harvard, but that doesn't imply all voting criteria are suboptimal, just that you need to increase the base. One good example (and I admit there are few) on the benefits of an anointed elite is Alan Blinder's obsevations while he worked at the Fed. He could not imagine many of issues they addressed would be better managed if we brought in the influences of more direct democracy to Federal Reserve management. Think about the social security stalemate, no one offering realistic solutions getting any say because of scaremongering. see article here
Perhaps I'm getting to the idea the we need more representatives, fewer elections. As Fareed Zakaria states, the western model of government' is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.
