CHAPTER SEVEN How Well Do Voters Behave? - The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan - #nazioego #bettybenevolence #ignoranzarazionalerazionaleirrazionale #conoscereticambia #acculturatoèpeggio #lepolitichedelpirla #piaceridellideologia #ilfaziosopartecipante
CHAPTER SEVEN How Well Do Voters Behave?Read more at location 3300
Note: rational theory ko. xchè? 2 ipotesi: rat ign e rat irrat l ignoranza conta? come cambiano le prefrrenze dell elettore quando s informa + info + estremismo. contro la partigianeria un libro poco pratico Edit
Voters face epistemic requirements. They must be epistemically justifiedRead more at location 3307
In this chapter, I describe some social-scientific research on the behavior of actual citizens and voters.Read more at location 3311
The literature I review gives us grounds for thinking many or perhaps most voters are bad voters.Read more at location 3314
voters tend not to vote for what they perceive to be in their narrow self-interest. For example, the elderly are not significantly more likely to support social security programs than younger workers. Rather, voters tend to vote for what they perceive to be in the national interest.Read more at location 3324
Some research purports to show that voters are much like Betty Benevolence. They intend to make things better, but they make things worse. They are misinformed or irrational about what promotes the common good and thus choose counterproductive strategies.Read more at location 3333
suppose I have some moral motivation, and I would like to think of myself as a good person, but I do not want to incur any major expense in acting on others’ behalf. I might recognize there is nothing to be gained from voting for narrow self-interest and thus instead vote for what I perceive to be the common good. If you want to indulge altruistic motives and believe that you have done your part, voting sociotropically is cheaper and easier than volunteering at a soup kitchen or giving money to Oxfam.Read more at location 3338
In games where subjects’ individual votes had high probabilities of being decisive, and thus individual votes had high expected utility, the subjects voted for narrow self-interest at the expense of the common good. Fedderson, Gailmard, and Sandroni’s work suggests that if you want voters to vote sociotropically, you should ensure that they have little to gain from voting egoistically.Read more at location 3348
However, this reduces the incentives for voters to know what they are doing.Read more at location 3352
“in general, we make the effort to know something in large part because we think it will serve our interest to know it.”Read more at location 3354
Study after study confirmed that most citizens are ignorant about politics.Read more at location 3358
79 percent of Americans cannot identify their state senators. During election years, most citizens cannot identify any congressional candidates in their district.5 Immediately before the 2004 presidential election, almost 70 percent of American citizens were unaware that Congress had added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, though this was a giant increase to the federal budgetRead more at location 3359
Political knowledge is distributed unevenly. Most people know little, but some people know a lot, and some people know nothing.Read more at location 3364
For instance, 93.4 percent of people in the top quartile, but only 13.1 percent of people in the bottom quartile, know that the Republicans tend to be more conservative than the Democrats.Read more at location 3368
Political knowledge also correlates with different demographic factors,Read more at location 3372
Althaus finds that political knowledge in the United States is positively correlated with having a college degree, being rich, working an executive or professional job, being a member of the Republican Party, being middle-aged rather than young or old, being male, living in the West or East, being married, owning a home, and living in an urban or suburban area. It is negatively correlated with being black, being a union member, and living in the South or Midwest.Read more at location 3373
Why do citizens know so little about politics? The standard answer is that citizens are rationally ignorant.Read more at location 3386
What is surprising is that some people know so much. Why? Some people find politics interesting and entertaining.Read more at location 3397
perhaps ignorant voters use heuristics and shortcuts that enable them to select the right answerRead more at location 3408
Richard Lau and David Redlawsk studied voter decision making at length,Read more at location 3409
At first glance, Lau and Redlawsk’s finding seems hopeful. It appears that voters somehow vote correctly despite their ignorance.Read more at location 3413
However, voters do much worse when there are more than two candidates.Read more at location 3416
when 70 percent of voters vote correctly, incorrect voters might alter the election results.Read more at location 3426
how knowledge affects voter behavior and also something about how knowledge correlates with ideology.Read more at location 3447
Althaus concluded that not only do policy preferences change as people acquire more knowledge but their preferences change in systematic ways.Read more at location 3464
On social issues, the enlightened public is more tolerant and open. People are less likely to support school prayer and more likely to support equal rights for homosexuals. They are more likely to support abortion on demand. As the public becomes enlightened, they become more in favor of free markets and less in favor of strong government control of the economy. (This effect is strongest among those in the bottom economic quartile.) They tend to favor tax increases to reduce the government deficit.16 They favor less punitive measures on crime and less hawkish military policy.17Read more at location 3465
miracle of aggregation can occur only if uninformed voters vote randomly.Read more at location 3493
For instance, there have been many studies confirming position bias—where early answers in multiple-choice tests tend to be favored over later answers.Read more at location 3495
Of course, in real life, uninformed voters are not completely ignorant. Sometimes a little knowledge is a bad thing.Read more at location 3500
SYSTEMATIC ERRORS AND RATIONAL IRRATIONALITYRead more at location 3518
For a great many issues, we would get better government performance by deciding questions on the basis of coin flips than by asking voters.Read more at location 3521
Caplan argues that voters underestimate to what degree self-interested behavior can lead to publicly beneficial results. They thus call for government interventionRead more at location 3522
They tend to regard foreign trade in zero-sum terms (e.g., to see foreigners’ gains as domestic losses), to be distrustful and resentful of immigrants, to misunderstand balance of trade issues, and support subsidizing inefficient enterprises in a misguided attempt to boost exports. They do not understand the market’s power of creative destruction and choose policies that spread work or subsidize inefficient and obsolete industries at a loss to most people’s welfare. Finally, they have a pessimistic bias—they tend “to overestimate the severity of economic problems and underestimate the (recent) past, present, and future performance of the economy.”Read more at location 3524
they asked subjects to estimate how much national income would grow over the next 25 years, if the annual growth rates were 1%, 3%, or 5 percent.25 Subjects made wildly inaccurate estimates.Read more at location 3531
More than 90 percent of subjects under-estimated the correct amount of growth;Read more at location 3534
Caplan notes that many surveys show systematic divergence between the economic beliefs of economists and of laypeople.Read more at location 3537
When asked why the economy was not doing better, the public thought “there are too many immigrants”Read more at location 3542
The public thought “technology is displacing workers,” “business profits are too high,” “companies are sending jobs overseas,” and “companies are downsizing”Read more at location 3544
Caplan concludes that people would change their economic policy preferences in a systematic way.Read more at location 3554
much of economic theory is counterintuitive.Read more at location 3560
Caplan argues that this is not merely because laypeople are ignorant, but because they are irrational. He says that if laypeople were merely ignorant of economics, we would expect erroneous beliefs, but not systematically erroneous beliefs.Read more at location 3569
A person is said to exhibit rational irrationality when it is instrumentally rational for him to be epistemically irrational. An instrumentally rational person chooses the best strategies to achieve his goals. An epistemically irrational person ignores and evades evidence against his beliefs,Read more at location 3574
Epistemically irrational political beliefs can reinforce one’s self-image; boost one’s self-esteem; make one feel noble, smart, superior, safe, or comfortable; and can help achieve conformity with the group and thus facilitate social acceptance.Read more at location 3578
Part of what it takes to be justified in believing X is to understand why people might believe ~X.Read more at location 3611
1. Deliberative citizens have frequent significant crosscutting political discussion.Read more at location 3617
Diana Mutz’s empirical work shows that deliberation and participation do not come together.Read more at location 3623
The people who are most active in politics tend to be (in my words, not Mutz’s) cartoon ideologues.34 The people who are most careful in formulating their own political views and who spend the most time considering contrary views tend not to participate in politics.Read more at location 3624
Deliberation with others who hold contrary views tends to make one ambivalent and apathetic about politics.Read more at location 3627
Many deliberative democratic political theorists hold that the government should provide more meaningful opportunities for political participation. Mutz argues that if we created these opportunities, the people most likely to take advantage of them are extremists and partisans.Read more at location 3637
this book probably would not make people better voters. In part, this is because the people who are most likely to be bad voters are also least likely to read this book.Read more at location 3649
If this book induces better behavior among voters, great, but I do not expect that. My purpose has been proof, not persuasion or behavior modification.Read more at location 3656
Note: DIMOSTRARE NN PERSUADERE
