Comments on: Estlund Reading Group Chapter 9 http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/ a blog for political philosophers Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:18:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 By: David Estlund http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-528 David Estlund Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:41:38 +0000 http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-528 I've posted a response to these comments to this point. I’ve posted a response to these comments to this point.

]]> By: Jonathan Quong http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-525 Jonathan Quong Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:34:42 +0000 http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-525 Hi Harry – thanks for the great post. I just have one quick thought. In your first comment you note that David seems to accept that his argument does not preclude having the electorate selected by lottery, provided the random group selected was sufficiently large and diverse. I wonder if we couldn’t take the idea a bit further? Why not select a sufficiently large random sample of citizens (after discussion in the informal political arena) to be <em>legislators</em>, and then also provide those citizens with two years of training in various disciplines that seem relevant to political decision-making (e.g. economics, history, public policy, political philosophy, etc…)? Those citizens then spend two years (or four years or whatever) as the legislators while the next batch are selected by lottery and trained. Like jury duty, but much more intensive. People won’t like the time commitment, but let’s set that aside. Surely this plan would do better in epistemic terms than the alternatives? You have a large and diverse pool of legislators who have a lot more of the relevant knowledge than legislators typically do when selected by the general public. If David’s argument does not preclude the selection of electorate by lottery (provided this does not dampen general debate amongst the population) then it’s not clear why it would preclude selection of legislators by lottery. And if so, it seems he must be committed to this further modification if it delivers superior epistemic results. But this looks a bit like an epistocracy, albeit an <em>equal chances epistocracy</em>: a subset of the population are trained to be wise and do the governing. We might reject these proposals for liberal reasons, but it’s not clear why they shouldn’t be endorsed by the epistemic argument since there are no invidious comparisons being made. Hi Harry – thanks for the great post. I just have one quick thought. In your first comment you note that David seems to accept that his argument does not preclude having the electorate selected by lottery, provided the random group selected was sufficiently large and diverse. I wonder if we couldn’t take the idea a bit further? Why not select a sufficiently large random sample of citizens (after discussion in the informal political arena) to be legislators, and then also provide those citizens with two years of training in various disciplines that seem relevant to political decision-making (e.g. economics, history, public policy, political philosophy, etc…)? Those citizens then spend two years (or four years or whatever) as the legislators while the next batch are selected by lottery and trained. Like jury duty, but much more intensive. People won’t like the time commitment, but let’s set that aside. Surely this plan would do better in epistemic terms than the alternatives? You have a large and diverse pool of legislators who have a lot more of the relevant knowledge than legislators typically do when selected by the general public. If David’s argument does not preclude the selection of electorate by lottery (provided this does not dampen general debate amongst the population) then it’s not clear why it would preclude selection of legislators by lottery. And if so, it seems he must be committed to this further modification if it delivers superior epistemic results. But this looks a bit like an epistocracy, albeit an equal chances epistocracy: a subset of the population are trained to be wise and do the governing. We might reject these proposals for liberal reasons, but it’s not clear why they shouldn’t be endorsed by the epistemic argument since there are no invidious comparisons being made.

]]> By: Ben Saunders http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-522 Ben Saunders Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:10:31 +0000 http://publicreason.net/2008/03/12/estlund-reading-group-chapter-9/#comment-522 Thanks, Harry, for that clear summary. I have a worry about how universal the scope of the demos ought to be. It seems to me that, if we value democracy for epistemic reasons and think that it's better to have more people involved, then there's no reason to restrict who has a say in <i>our</i> collective decision-making to members of our group. In other words, if we think the US Presidential Election has a right answer and appointing a president by popular vote rather than lottery is justified because it's likely to produce a better outcome, then why not let non US citizens (Brits, French, Iraqis, etc) vote? More generally, I think plenty of non-democratic systems will do a good job of avoiding 'primary bads' - it's not obvious that democracy does best (even out of those that pass the qualified acceptability test). I suppose this partly comes down to the question of what democracy is, however. One might say that a benevolent dictator who can be voted out by the people would do fairly well - but this pretty much satisfies the minimalist Schumpeterian conception of democracy. Personally, I don't think that's particularly democratic but, as I've said before, I'd like to hear more about what democracy <i>is</i>. Thanks, Harry, for that clear summary.

I have a worry about how universal the scope of the demos ought to be. It seems to me that, if we value democracy for epistemic reasons and think that it’s better to have more people involved, then there’s no reason to restrict who has a say in our collective decision-making to members of our group. In other words, if we think the US Presidential Election has a right answer and appointing a president by popular vote rather than lottery is justified because it’s likely to produce a better outcome, then why not let non US citizens (Brits, French, Iraqis, etc) vote?

More generally, I think plenty of non-democratic systems will do a good job of avoiding ‘primary bads’ - it’s not obvious that democracy does best (even out of those that pass the qualified acceptability test). I suppose this partly comes down to the question of what democracy is, however. One might say that a benevolent dictator who can be voted out by the people would do fairly well - but this pretty much satisfies the minimalist Schumpeterian conception of democracy. Personally, I don’t think that’s particularly democratic but, as I’ve said before, I’d like to hear more about what democracy is.

]]>