Although still struggling to put together all that was learned through the Systems Practice Course, another Stanford Online course, The Active Citizen in the Digital Age has been started.
It should be noted before starting this response to The Case Against Democracy as part of The Active Citizen in the Digital Age course, that the article only deals with one of the three realms that are to be dealt with by the course, the political. It does not touch on civil society, an absence which is critical, and only by indirect analogy, the marketplace. This is my own interpretation and response which requires one to first read the article to verify my take and doesn't attempt to follow ideas in the same order. This discussion forms a philosophical basis for what is being attempted with new community paradigms so the response is extensive.
Caleb Crain's article first starts off appealing to the modern, cultured intellectual so that when he criticizes those who confuse the work of Marx with that of Madison they know he isn't talking about them, that others are to be blamed for failing democracy, not them. This deflects then from any notion that it was democracy or at least what was claimed to be democracy that may have failed those others. Instead, the New Yorker reader is asked to judicially question whether one shouldn't take on the entire burden because its readers will be assumedly included with the in-group. Let's keep in mind that Plato was an aristocrat.
The basic problem is that elites, bad elites not good ones (and who were elites because they are neither poor nor immigrant), fearing the ignorance of both poor and immigrants restricted ballots to their own favor. In opposition to a more general altruistic ideal of “if a man is ignorant, he needs the ballot for his protection all the more." This lack of protection "helped racists in the South circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment and disenfranchise blacks." This is still occurring today though in a different form so the form of democracy must also evolve to adapt to maintain any criteria of fairness.
I don't see fairness, however, being equated with randomness as in the flip of a coin as the article seems to claim, therefore, "It must be that we value democracy for tending to get things right more often than not, which democracy seems to do by making use of the information in our votes," as a conclusion is not enough for me. Instead, for me, it is also a question of agency, and in exercising that agency we can determine to be morally proportional in allocating with our fellow citizens in our community. I don't understand the concept of a decision that is supposedly better without saying for whom but less fair without again, not stating for whom. Democracy should not be designed to be a zero sum, winner takes all game which can then invariably default to gridlock if it isn’t in an ideal representative form.
Epistocracy or “government by the knowledgeable," defined in the article first by Estlund's then by Brennan versus the general notion of "democracy" only vaguely defined by suggested shortcomings, faced three valid philosophical objections in what is set as an up or down vote in which if you can't deny all three then you must then choose epistocracy. This would though only make the case why it shouldn't be rejected not preferred.
One, deny that truth is a suitable standard for measuring political judgment but to which of the two stated propositions does this apply, the administrative or the consensual? I would assert that the general proposals that, "Democratic procedures tend to make correct policy decisions," and that, “democratic procedures are fair in the eyes of reasonable observers," involve two different but paradoxically not distinctly separate systems, one of administration and one of consensus, each with multiple objectives. Mashed together like forcing repealing magnetic poles in a generator. They are necessary together in seeking to attain a desired democratic goal but do not naturally fit together.
A demonstrably better administrative outcome resulting from decisions requires facts or empirical truth but the determination of what that outcome should be will likely necessitate debate which as Hannah Arendt pointed out “constitutes the very essence of political life,” but it should also include deliberation to purposely reach consensus as a part of civic life, an aspect of democracy absent from the article and basically from the course, taking the advantage of hindsight.
Two, deny that some citizens know more about good government than others. It is not necessary to do so though. We often defer to others in our community based on their superior knowledge but we don’t unconditionally surrender our own agency. Voting is a matter of general agency. In choosing a representative or expert, I am not necessarily giving up that specific agency as I would if others had absolute power to decide for me regardless of their own specific expertise in one area versus another area.
Three, deny that knowing more imparts greater political authority or the “You might be right, but who made you boss?” argument. Except that we do impart authority for knowing more, just not absolute authority, political or otherwise.
There are then supposedly only two practical arguments against Estlund’s analysis of epistocracy. First, the possibility that epistocracy’s method of screening voters might be biased in a way that couldn’t readily be identified and therefore couldn’t be corrected for. Wait, what method of screening voters? Who screens them? Even Crain admits that “Without more details, it’s difficult to assess Brennan’s (epistocratic) proposal.” It is not like we have absolutely no criteria now for whom should be allowed to vote but it isn’t determined by an elite or at least when it was we decided over time to change that. Historically, we have had a greater sense of suffering more from and therefore have moved away from rule by the elites rather than extolling their efficiencies.
Second, let's turn to Brennan's argument that it’s entirely justifiable to limit the political power that the irrational, the ignorant, and the incompetent have over others as it would be to disqualify jurors who are morally or cognitively incompetent. Is this a valid practical equivalency though, could one actually be found incompetent to serve on a jury but competent to vote, considering a major supply for the jury pools are from the voter rolls? We then return to the first practical argument.
Brennan’s answer to demographic bias also seems weak to me. While empirical research may show that people rarely vote for their individual narrow self-interest, they are more likely to vote with their group or class. The division on Social Security may not be based on age, more likely it is income but Brennan cannot assure us that it isn't based on the unknown means of selecting the epistocracy. Brennan also seems to assume that it is the bottom 80 percent of white voters who are oppressing blacks and the enlightened perspective of the top 20 percent of elites (historically also white) would apply crime and policing policies undoubtedly more favorable to poor blacks but leadership in Washington D.C. makes me seriously doubt that.
Feeling more unjust in giving the knowledgeable power over the ignorant than in giving those in the majority power over those in the minority is an overly abstract and conceptual notion rather than an empirical realization of universal suffrage. As is Brennan’s assertion that the public’s welfare, considered by the epistocratic elite, is more important than any other one's theoretical or imagined individual's hurt feelings without consideration of the actual populace making up the community or of the actual individuals of which it is comprised.
Suffrage is not a matter so much of knowledge over ignorance which we actually do, teachers over students, doctors over patients, nor is it simply a matter of majority versus minority. It is a matter of power over the powerless. Knowledge is a weapon for the powerful and ignorance is a prison for the powerless. South African apartheid provided the minority knowledge and power over the majority which had to be overcome by struggle. This was a more heartfelt defense of democracy by those who were colonized as opposed to that made by those that did the colonizing.
So would a polity ruled by superiorly educated voters perform better than a more standard democracy, and if not could some of the resulting inequities then be remedied after the fact? First, our current democracy is not absent of educated voters so it would be only selected educated voters who became responsible for remedying those inequities or at least some of the inequities based on an assumed utilitarian noble oblige. Who then determines who makes the grade and then the choices? Underrepresentation is usually based first on group then is remedied through selected individuals deemed worthy by the group who already has an abundance of representation. How many votes is the majority represented group going to be willing to give? How beholding will those being bequeathed those votes be to those who gave them?
A group can also deliberate, something we hope for from among our representatives but that seems lost these days and something that is not really made apparent with epistocracy. Both Brennan and Estlund instead seem to be restricting democracy to an individualistic competition between political opponents on a debate field aggregated to the group or in this case a select group. Intellectuals galled by the ignorance of the many should remember that democracy is supposed to be with other people. Limiting faith in democracy to only the “ennobling power of political debate” is no more reasonable a proposition than the supposition that college fraternities are the only aspect of college that builds character.
I don't agree with the article's author's view that democracy is fundamentally combat, albeit gentle. It needs to be far more and it can be. Epistocracy seems a top down means of defining community that could be contrasted with bottom up approaches more akin to Charles Leadbeater's Pro-Am Revolution applied to the civic space. We may not respect corpse-eating any longer but many still strive to emulate sacrifice of body and blood for others. So we first must determine what signifies human dignity to us then determine if voting rights fulfills that in a way we find meaningful.
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