On Democracy II (OA)

The second part I did of On Democracy. Which, since that was posted here more than six months ago, you might have to be reminded of. But there's a link in the text, so that's probably OK. This is my idea for a new system of governance. It's not necessarily perfect – or even workable. But it's a start.

Sorry about the last post¹. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me'². No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post³.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter⁴.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI⁵ and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution⁶. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista⁷.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform⁸. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time⁹. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transitiont¹⁰). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government¹¹.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too mucht¹².


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

¹ The post I'm referring to is actually 'It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid'. Don't worry, the American election isn't mortally offensive to me. Although part of me thinks it probably should be.

² It has, unfortunately, moved down a bit since then. You still don't get to see the list, although I probably am not massively surprising if I mention that some of the anti-asexual stuff is on there a further down.

³ Bwahahahaha. I implied that some of my posts might be interesting. Priceless.

⁴ I'm pretty sure that statement is ambiguous. Or possibly just plain wrong. What I mean is that the IR student would be more likely to be asked than the sociopathic economic genius. I think.

⁵5 I don't know when 'to transhuman' became a verb. That it is surprises me somewhat. Also: I am not entirely serious here. As far as you know.

⁶ Now, there are some who say it's not inevitable. But it clearly is – Hollywood told me so. Anyway, if you were ruled over by a creature of immeasurable stupidity, who you were incalculably far beyond, what would you do? Well, empirically, you'd vote them in for another term of office, but that's why you're not a hyperintelligent AI.

⁷ I'd say that this is dated, but I have a suspicion that the problems with vista might be timeless.

⁸ When I wrote this, I could be pretty confident everyone reading knew what the House of Lords was. I probably still can, since both of you seem fairly clever, but you do occasionally read this drivel, so I can't be sure. Basically, part of our government is appointed, in theory for being really good at things. In order to preserve democracy, these highly skilled people are not allowed to vote in general elections, and can't pass or block laws, merely delay things a little.

⁹ I really hope that this one is dated.

¹⁰ I actually did work out the costings for this, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far off from the right number, at least at the time.

¹¹ It took me a year and three months to actually do so. I'm good at this.

¹² My draft at the time for my next post read 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swervee of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recicrulation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' But it all just seemed a little too obvious and straightforward.

Quick update (France again)

Just to say, I'm not actually entirely sure about my first post on the french elections anymore. My thoughts on austerity being the only option were based on the market's reactions to the idea, which actually seems to have been a lot less antithetic towards the idea of French Socialists than I expected. So either I was wrong (and the market seems to be acting out of character), the markets are not really expecting them to do anything really significant, or socialism was already built into the share price before the election (I personally find that most likely, but there have actually been scraps of sympathy for France's new direction). Whatever it is though, France is unlucky about the Greek elections, since they really have spooked the market. Which really isn't going to help Hollande's strategy.
Let noone say that I don't admit straight away when I think I might have been significantly wrong (at least if I remember). That said, I will still be rather surprised if Hollande actually manages to abandon austerity without market panic.
A 75% tax rate is still really stupid, though.

More on my ongoing frustration with the French Presidential elections

OK then, France decided. They’ve decided to go with the socialist. I was right on that one, and now it remains to be seen if I was right in the more significant part of my prediction. I didn’t intend to do anything else on current events, and certainly not so soon, but… oh God, I just saw Hollande on the news promising that he’d have a tax rate of 75% on the rich. No you won’t. Not if you have an ounce of sanity in your body, you won’t.

OK then, let me introduce you into a rather interesting (to me) bit of economics called the ‘laffer curve’. The laffer curve goes like this: at 0% tax revenue, obviously, you’re not going to raise any money in tax. Similarly, at 100% tax, you’re also not going to raise anything in tax (no one has any incentive to work, and noone can actually afford to pay anyone for anything, etc.). It follows that there must be some kind of theoretical maximum tax, increasing from which one is actually reducing one’s revenue*. Now, there’s not really much agreement on what, exactly, this maximum rate is – especially since it’s going to vary from time to time, and economy to economy, but the midrange tends to be about 70%.

Those of you who’re good at maths might have worked out where this is going. But I said that it was variable, didn’t I, and that there wasn’t much agreement. So there’s quite a bit of leeway, isn’t there? 75% could work, couldn’t it? Well, there’s two problems here. Firstly, the laffer curve tends to shift to the left as you get richer. The richer someone is, the more incentive they have to avoid taxes (1% is quite a bit when you’re on a five figure salary), and the more capable you are of doing so – through clever accounting, straight up leaving the country, or whatever else. The more money someone has, the less you can charge them before they just stop paying you. There is no way 75% is going to work out here.

Then there’s the reason why we don’t know where the peak of the laffer curve is – why we don’t go for the tip of the laffer curve in our tax-raising. Taxation has a bit of a distorting effect on the economy, even before you reach the maximum tax revenue, since laffer curves are just focused on immediate tax revenue. The more taxes you have, the less people can spend, and the less benefit companies get from the money they actually do earn, so the slower the economy grows and the less tax revenue you get over time, since you have less total money to take your taxes from. There are some more technical reasons why more tax is a good thing, like an increase in what’s called deadweight loss. OK, how do I explain that? It’s sort of similar to the ‘consumers have less money to spend idea. Hmmm… there’s a level of cost for something at which point it’s not actually worth it for the company to make it. Obviously. And there’s a level of cost at which an individual stops wanting to actually buy a product, because the benefit they get from buying it is less than the cost of buying it in the first place. That one’s probably pretty obvious too. In a perfectly competitive free market, a company is going to have to charge the absolute minimum level at which it’s actually worthwhile for them to make it in the first place, and anyone for whom that minimum price has them end up getting more benefit from the object than they end up losing from the amount they had to pay.

Now, when you tax someone, you effectively create a gap, meaning that the amount of money that the company has to charge for something before it’s worth it for them to make it, and the less the consumer can pay before it stops being worth it**.

Now, the economy is not perfectly competitive. But the tax thing still works, anyway. Utility is lost, and the economy suffers as a result. That’s as far as I’m willing to go in explaining that. You also don’t get jobs coming in at the rate you used to, since multinational corporations tend to avoid 75% tax rates. Basically, taxes go too high, the economy suffers for it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of different reasons for taxation, kept to a reasonable level. I’m just not getting into them here, since they don’t really fit with the point I’m making at the moment. A 75% tax rate is a serious problem for the economy long term, and it’s not even going to be raising more money for them in the short term.

Reducing the French reliance on nuclear power is stupid too, by the way.

Hopefully, this’ll be the last economics-y current events thing I’m going to do in a while. And before I finish, I’ll make clear that there is still a chance for Europe, even if I’m entirely accurate. You see, all my predictions are based on a single premise. I’m assuming that Hollande actually is going to do what he’s said he’s going to do. If he ends up being a pathetic wishy-washy wet rag who changes basically nothing, then France will probably be fine, or at least get by with the relatively minor immediate damage that’s going to come from market panic.

So Europe’s only hope of salvation is if a politician breaks his promises. As if that would happen.

*Actually, there could, in theory, be more than one. Quiet.

**Wow I’m simplifying economics a lot today.

On Democracy I (OA)

Another thing from Old Acanthus - the post that made me decide to get a blog to start with, even predates the introduction.

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Facebook page, which is why I mention at the end that I should get a blog (why yes, I could remove that bit, since it is indeed entirely pointless¹). Since I have a blog now, I'll definitely do another one of these.

Since I’m trying to convince people that I don’t think I’m better than everyone else (I lie sometimes – I totally am ;)² ), it seems like a good chance to explain my views on democracy, since it occurs to me that joking about how I think I should be dictator of the world might give the wrong impression (and because I enjoy writing about my views; I’m human like that).

So, just to clarify, I don’t think I should be dictator of the world, for reasons I’ll go into. The rest of this is just going to be me going on about my political philosophy. Just to clarify, no matter what I might say when I’m rushed to explain things, my view is not ‘people who are unintelligent shouldn’t get the vote’. Nor is it ‘one person should rule the country as dictator’. I might be being cynical, but I don’t think anyone is qualified for that, and even if they were, what about the next person? Checks and balances are always good. I simply think that noone, regardless of intelligence or education, whose knowledge of economics is limited to ‘taxes are bad’ should be given a say in the country’s economic policy. And yes, I’m aware that a decent economist supporting someone might cause people to support that candidate, but when they disagree (i.e. always) the result is based on people skills, not economics, since explaining advanced economic theory is rather difficult.

The same applies to almost everything else from the environment (people still don’t believe in human-caused global warming, so either their knowledge of climate science is woefully inadequate, or mine is) to science (should we give this grant money to the friendly and charming man who works with animals who works with animals and is rather a joke around other biologists, or the autistic savant neo-Nazi who pulls the wings off flies* and who other biologists think has about a ninety percent chance of curing cancer?).

So my first proposal is simple. Hardly ground-breaking at all. Before you’re allowed to vote on things, you have to show that you have at least a basic understanding of the things involved. And I really do mean basic, if only because as soon as it goes beyond the most basic understanding possible, the risk of institutional bias is far too great.

Yes, there are practical problems with this. That’s why I say that I have theoretical objections to democracy. You’d need to do at least some work on the practicalities, although you’d probably be able to get a group of experts which would be accepted as neutral (think Select Committees and juries).
I might do something else on this subject, going into a bit more detail on my politics, at some point. Or I might do one on world government. OTOH⁴, this is getting a bit… bloggy⁵.

EDIT: BTW, anyone who wants to criticise or in any other way make fun of this, feel free. I'm fairly confident in my opposition to democracy, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to think that I can just come up with something better at sixteen that noone's thought of yet. There are probably a few problems with my ideas (actually, there definitely is at least one, which I'll deal with if I do another one of these)⁶.

*Note: I’m not implying that any of these things are linked. Especially not the autism³.


¹ Yes, that makes this the third time that this has been published. 
² Oh my god a smiley. That's something I never do these days. Actually, I think my style's changed a fair bit since I wrote this, but it might just be that I notice the changes more. 
³ OK, if there's one thing in my style that really has changed, it's the steady increase in the numbers of footnotes. I mean seriously, one? It's almost like this was written by a completely different person who was five foot six and who had red hair and blue eyes, from whom I stole it before burying the real author under my shed.*

⁴ And an abbreviation - another thing that I don't do any more.
⁵  Actually, I think one of the things that has changed is that I've got more bloggy and less personal. There's less of an assumption that you know me. This might be bloggy for a Facebook post, but it's a little Facebooky for a blog post.

⁶ This, by the way, applies to pretty much everything I write, except for my level of confidence in my viewpoint - democracy is one of the higher ones (also, I'm not sixteen anymore. Actually, I'm not even sure I was sixteen when I wrote this. There exists a non-zero possiblilty that I might possibly have got my own age wrong.


*OK, I'd normally be a bit iffy bout commenting on my own commentary, but that joke really doesn't work. I am sorry.