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twoelevenmy delayed review of garett jones' 10% less democracy proves to be surprisingly timely. among his many proposals to improve the US government just a little is to disenfranchise blacks. no, not all of them, just the ones who he doesn't think are suitable voters. he also wants to disenfranchise some whites, too, but not as many.
so, is jones a racist? probably not deliberately: he's an economist with a bad case of dunning-kruger syndrome.
various professions suffer dunning-kruger in different ways. for economists, its major symptom is the belief that a rudimentary understanding of statistics conveys knowledge of many fields. the dubious logic seems to be "i am an economist. i studied statistics. economists use statistics to study many things. therefore, i have studied many things."
a further consequence is to mistake proxy measures for actual measures – mistaking a cartoon of a map for the terrain -- which is what gets jones into disenfranchisement trouble. he came across a study in which some random guy found that educational achievement (ie., the possession of credentials like a high school diploma, college diploma, etc) correlates with how informed voters tend to be.
what "informed voter" means is its own special problem, but let's gloss over that for the moment; jones certainly does. so, in some breezy, hand-waving sense, we can say that uninformed voters choose politicians worse than informed voters. jones has a proxy-measure "proof" of this, for some values of "proof", but it's basically circular. some economist "proved" that disagreeing with economists means one is an "uninformed voter", even though economists often disagree among themselves, among other problems with the definition. (oops! sorry for getting away from the breezy, hand-waving proof there!)
anyway, so uninformed voters pick the wrong politicians, and the wrong politicians make bad policy. thus, fewer uniformed voters, fewer bad policies. and since the poorly-educated tend to be uniformed voters, let's just disenfranchise them. no high school diploma, no vote.
does any anybody see any problems with this? i do. and it turns out that a little actual statistics reveals them:
the linked page also has figures by state, showing just how effective disenfranchising non-credentialed blacks would be at suppressing their vote. i'd say garett jones neither neither knows nor cares about that; his dunning-krugerful ignorance prevents him from recognizing that he should have thought of the implications of his policy.
however, a survey of recent evidence might suggest that black voters have slightly different interests than white voters, regardless of how well educated they are. perhaps they should be allowed to vote those interests. radical idea, but it just might work.
jones doubles down on his dunning-kruger symptoms, boldly claiming on page 102:Every serious theorist of democracy wrestles with the issues of voter competence, and to my reading, when the greater writers make their cases for universal (of "universal") suffrage, they sound as if they're whistling past the graveyard, hoping that no one will call them out for the strained reason required to conclude that every single adult can make a useful contribution to the national political debate.er, no, jones. put that strawman back in whatever field you found it in.
"serious theorists of democracy" worry about concepts like "rights", "fairness", and "justice" – I refer him to john rawls' excellent books on the subject, which I just happen to have at hand – and obvious abuses of using educational achievement, like literacy tests, a phenomenon of jim crow laws, as gateways to voting. one might get the impression that economists don't study history, apparently because it lacks numerical data.
*le sigh* the whole rest of the book is like that: sweeping, breezy conclusions that fall apart as soon as they're looked at closely. even the few things i think are supported by evidence have to be hedged in and limited to very narrow areas right around said evidence. for example, technical experts are better at making technical decisions than politicians. but in many cases, there's no easy or clear distinction between "technical decision" and "political decision", due to complex choices, limited data, and related questions of who should benefit and who should suffer, and by how much. so, even the general statement isn't very general.
i knew i was going to hate 10% less democracy when i read a review of it. i read it in order to know exactly what's wrong with it, and the answer proves to be "unfortunately nearly everything".
so, is jones a racist? probably not deliberately: he's an economist with a bad case of dunning-kruger syndrome.
various professions suffer dunning-kruger in different ways. for economists, its major symptom is the belief that a rudimentary understanding of statistics conveys knowledge of many fields. the dubious logic seems to be "i am an economist. i studied statistics. economists use statistics to study many things. therefore, i have studied many things."
a further consequence is to mistake proxy measures for actual measures – mistaking a cartoon of a map for the terrain -- which is what gets jones into disenfranchisement trouble. he came across a study in which some random guy found that educational achievement (ie., the possession of credentials like a high school diploma, college diploma, etc) correlates with how informed voters tend to be.
what "informed voter" means is its own special problem, but let's gloss over that for the moment; jones certainly does. so, in some breezy, hand-waving sense, we can say that uninformed voters choose politicians worse than informed voters. jones has a proxy-measure "proof" of this, for some values of "proof", but it's basically circular. some economist "proved" that disagreeing with economists means one is an "uninformed voter", even though economists often disagree among themselves, among other problems with the definition. (oops! sorry for getting away from the breezy, hand-waving proof there!)
anyway, so uninformed voters pick the wrong politicians, and the wrong politicians make bad policy. thus, fewer uniformed voters, fewer bad policies. and since the poorly-educated tend to be uniformed voters, let's just disenfranchise them. no high school diploma, no vote.
does any anybody see any problems with this? i do. and it turns out that a little actual statistics reveals them:
In 2016–17, the ACGRs [adjusted cohort graduation rates] for American Indian/Alaska Native (72 percent), Black (78 percent), and Hispanic (80 percent) public high school students were below the U.S. average of 85 percent. The ACGRs for White (89 percent) and Asian/Pacific Islander (91 percent) students were above the U.S. average.
the linked page also has figures by state, showing just how effective disenfranchising non-credentialed blacks would be at suppressing their vote. i'd say garett jones neither neither knows nor cares about that; his dunning-krugerful ignorance prevents him from recognizing that he should have thought of the implications of his policy.
however, a survey of recent evidence might suggest that black voters have slightly different interests than white voters, regardless of how well educated they are. perhaps they should be allowed to vote those interests. radical idea, but it just might work.
jones doubles down on his dunning-kruger symptoms, boldly claiming on page 102:Every serious theorist of democracy wrestles with the issues of voter competence, and to my reading, when the greater writers make their cases for universal (of "universal") suffrage, they sound as if they're whistling past the graveyard, hoping that no one will call them out for the strained reason required to conclude that every single adult can make a useful contribution to the national political debate.er, no, jones. put that strawman back in whatever field you found it in.
"serious theorists of democracy" worry about concepts like "rights", "fairness", and "justice" – I refer him to john rawls' excellent books on the subject, which I just happen to have at hand – and obvious abuses of using educational achievement, like literacy tests, a phenomenon of jim crow laws, as gateways to voting. one might get the impression that economists don't study history, apparently because it lacks numerical data.
*le sigh* the whole rest of the book is like that: sweeping, breezy conclusions that fall apart as soon as they're looked at closely. even the few things i think are supported by evidence have to be hedged in and limited to very narrow areas right around said evidence. for example, technical experts are better at making technical decisions than politicians. but in many cases, there's no easy or clear distinction between "technical decision" and "political decision", due to complex choices, limited data, and related questions of who should benefit and who should suffer, and by how much. so, even the general statement isn't very general.
i knew i was going to hate 10% less democracy when i read a review of it. i read it in order to know exactly what's wrong with it, and the answer proves to be "unfortunately nearly everything".