[ExI] Democracy/was Re: Donald Trump

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Sun May 8 20:55:48 UTC 2016


On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 3:01 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>>
>> I wish democratic politics were as you say, actually representing the
voters.  They haven't and that's why it's such a mess.  They have been
representing the viewpoints of the rich donors,
>
>
> ### The average voter is an idiot. If American democracy meant actually
representing
> voters, the US would have imploded before the 18th century was over.
Thank gods for
> rich donors being on average smarter.

I don't know if that's exactly what happened. There does seem to be some
evidence that, overall, voters in any putative democracy rarely get exactly
what they vote for -- not just in the US. There seems to be friction in any
democratic system that prevents this in most votes. (I believe Caplan
covers this in his book, _The Myth of the Rational Voter_.)

By the way, the federalists seemed to want the rich to be stuck to the
government -- partly by getting them to buy public debt and therefore be in
favor of taxation to recover their money -- because some of them (the rich)
might otherwise support decentralist or secessionist movements. And this
seems to make sense all around: don't alienate people who might organize
and effectively fight against you.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
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