Are We Too Stupid For Democracy?

Professor David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, thinks humans are too stupid to make democracy work. Well, yeah. . . duh. But that doesn’t mean democracy is a bad idea. Observe.

Dunning claims democracy can't work because “incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people.” Translation: when a person does not know how to do something (i.e. they are incompetent), they are also incapable of determining whether other people are competent or not. In other words, if you don’t know how to fix a car then you are also incapable of distinguishing between good mechanics and mechanics who don’t know what they are doing. Since politics requires problem solving in many fields in which few people are competent, the public is incapable of picking quality leaders. Ergo, we end up with “mediocre leaders and policies.”

Let’s blow this puppy away. . .

For starters, Dunning is no expert on logic. Indeed, he makes two fatal mistakes right out of the gate. First, his entire theory is a tautology (circular reasoning): he assumes people are incompetent at picking leaders and thus concludes they pick incompetently. That’s circular and it’s logical nonsense.

Moreover, he provides no support for his assertion that we pick incompetent leaders except his further assertion that we get mediocre leaders -- another tautology. Nor does he quantify how we should conclude that our leaders are mediocre. . . nor does he show that the alternatives offered were better. . . nor does he explain some of the primo talent of the past 30 years like Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, Paul Ryan, Helmut Kohl, Tony Blair, etc.

Secondly, he assumes that people must be incompetent at picking a leader because they can’t possibly know everything there is to know about tax policy and economics and social issues and environmental law, etc. In other words, since no person can be an expert in everything, we must be incompetent at picking leaders to handle everything. But here’s the flaw in that. We aren’t picking leaders who handle everything. Instead, we are picking leaders who will find the right people to handle the various issues. Hence, the only competence we need in picking leaders is competence in picking someone whose judgment we trust to find the right experts.

So Dunning’s premise and argument is simply wrong.

But I’m going to run with it anyway because there’s a bigger point here. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that his assumptions are right. Should we then get rid of democracy? Well no, because the alternatives are worse.

If people are by definition unable to pick someone to lead in an area about which they know nothing, then how would socialism work better than democracy? Guys like Dunning pretend that “panels of experts” would make decisions, but how do we determine who is an expert? The only difference between democracy and socialism in that regard is that a smaller pool of people (not a smarter pool of people) pick the leader. So even if his argument is true, it does not argue against democracy. . . it argues against trusting the government.

Moreover, my experience with expert panels is very much what Ayn Rand predicted. You end up with a committee of blowhards with little actual knowledge or ability, who are appointed because they speak the nomenclature and they have insider contacts. These people then spend their time trying to stop the genuine experts from plying their craft because the genuine experts represent a threat to the panel: in effect, the experts become a cabal that seeks to keep out anyone with the skill to expose the panel’s defects.

Thus, whereas democracy MAY result in the wrong leaders being picked, any system other than democracy will INVARIABLY result in the wrong leaders being picked. So it’s 50/50 under democracy or guaranteed 0% under the other systems. That’s where you get all-stars like Hitler, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Mubarak, the Ayatollah, Mugabe, Castro, Amin, Chavez, etc.

Further, politics suffers from an adverse selection problem. Adverse selection means the worst people will gravitate toward the positions where they can do the most harm. That’s why the unhealthy want insurance, but the healthy don’t. That’s why child molesters gravitate toward being priests or Scout Leaders. And that’s why the very people who should never be trusted with power go into politics -- because they crave power, and they end up satisfying their own desires to dominate rather than making decisions for the greater good.

Making this worse is the ego/arrogance aspect of this. In a democracy, politicians know their power is on loan. In other systems, where people are appointed because of connections or because they believe they are “experts,” the power is considered a divine right as a result of being superior to the public in some way, i.e. “I’m better than you because I’m an expert.” When you combine the adverse selection problem with a sense of divine right, you will end up with megalomania.

Finally, under democracy, politicians remain answerable to voters who can toss them out if they become abusive. No such check exists under the other systems.

So we may be too stupid for democracy, but we’re certainly too stupid for anything else.