[extropy-chat] Voter over-confidence (was: Examining Risks)

[Robin Hanson]

At 02:14 PM 2/26/2006, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 08:41:01AM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote:
> > ... While an electorate who knew how little they know
> > might effectively discipline a central government, an overconfident
> > electorate can do a lot worse.
>
>I've idly wondered about the impact of policy outcomes on the
>electoral success of policy makers (I assumed very little).  ...
>The reason I've been idly wondering is that I find Robin's Futarchy
>idea increasingly compelling but probably too unfamiliar for people
>to consider it a realistic proposal anytime soon.  ...
>One possibility to to fire
>all or (randomly) most politicians if certain benchmarks are not
>met, e.g., current members of the relevant legislative body are put
>out of office (and not eligible for re-election) if real per capita
>income growth falls under 1%.  ...
>The goal is to automatically punish politicians for producing bad
>outcomes since voters cannot be counted on to do so.

The key problem with these proposals is not so much voter familiarity
but voter self-confidence.   Over-confident voters are not likely to
approve proposals whose major rationale is to mitigate voter
over-confidence.  Voters do not believe they are over-confident.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323