Readers of this blog may find some comfort knowing that they are trying to stay informed about local political issues whilst the vast majority of Coldstream residents will remain woefully ignorant and unconcerned about the issues that plague us right up to and into the polling booth.
That is, if they even bother to vote in municipal elections. Unfortunately, as excerpts from the article below indicate, the preferences of thoughtful, responsible and informed voters are invariably swamped by the uninformed with a decidedly unfavorable net result to everybody.
That is how I have, in previous comments to this blog, tried to account for that bad policy decisions enacted by Coldstream councilors, over the last 6 years. The Coldstream electorate has simply made poor choices in whom they entrusted the affairs of the community.
Moreover, certain people on council, past and present, have hijacked the municipal agenda in favor of their own interests and/or the vested interests of a select minority. The scandalous handling of the Coldstream Meadows development, the attempt to remove the Spicer block from the ALR to build a sports complex and now the sewer extension along Aberdeen Road are the most egregious examples that come to mind.
Council has made fools of the whole community who are now left with paying exorbitant taxes on ill advised projects. I very much doubt Caplan's view that the votes of ill informed voters will cancel each other out, leaving the outcome to be decided by a minority of informed voters. I very much fear history will repeat itself next November, leaving us prey to a “tyranny of the dimwitted”, resulting in the election of yet another bad lot of councilors.
Peter Peto
P.S. The recent firing of the Fire Chief by city hall is disgraceful regardless of the reasons. City Hall is out of control, it needs a drastic overhaul. Too many overpaid administrators pushing their weight around for my tastes. the ranks at city hall need to be thinned out and cut down to size!
That is, if they even bother to vote in municipal elections. Unfortunately, as excerpts from the article below indicate, the preferences of thoughtful, responsible and informed voters are invariably swamped by the uninformed with a decidedly unfavorable net result to everybody.
That is how I have, in previous comments to this blog, tried to account for that bad policy decisions enacted by Coldstream councilors, over the last 6 years. The Coldstream electorate has simply made poor choices in whom they entrusted the affairs of the community.
Moreover, certain people on council, past and present, have hijacked the municipal agenda in favor of their own interests and/or the vested interests of a select minority. The scandalous handling of the Coldstream Meadows development, the attempt to remove the Spicer block from the ALR to build a sports complex and now the sewer extension along Aberdeen Road are the most egregious examples that come to mind.
Council has made fools of the whole community who are now left with paying exorbitant taxes on ill advised projects. I very much doubt Caplan's view that the votes of ill informed voters will cancel each other out, leaving the outcome to be decided by a minority of informed voters. I very much fear history will repeat itself next November, leaving us prey to a “tyranny of the dimwitted”, resulting in the election of yet another bad lot of councilors.
Peter Peto
P.S. The recent firing of the Fire Chief by city hall is disgraceful regardless of the reasons. City Hall is out of control, it needs a drastic overhaul. Too many overpaid administrators pushing their weight around for my tastes. the ranks at city hall need to be thinned out and cut down to size!
NEIL REYNOLDS: News from The Globe and Mail Wednesday, August 06, 2008
The Tyranny of the Dimwitted [excerpts]
Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University in Washington, cites this famous anecdote in The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, a brilliant and disturbing analysis of decision making by electorates that - he documents - are perversely ignorant and woefully misinformed.
"These low knowledge levels have been stable since the dawn of polling," he says, "and international comparisons reveal that Americans' overall political knowledge is no more than moderately below average."
In these circumstances, what reason exists to think that these same voters cast rational ballots on highly complicated public policy issues - such as (for example) global warming? A great deal of orthodox economic theory assumes that people vote rationally and in their own best self-interest. Mr. Caplan responds: There is no good reason whatsoever to think that people vote rationally. For whatever reasons, he says, electorates are remarkably dimwitted when it comes to public policy decisions.
"Democracies frequently adopt and maintain policies harmful for most people,"
Mr. Caplan does provide a comforting mathematical analysis. In one limited sense, it doesn't matter that electorates are dumb. By random chance, one deluded person cancels the vote of an oppositely deluded person - leaving the ultimate electoral decision to a very small minority of informed voters. But the central puzzle remains: Why do people vote so often for policies that harm them?
Mr. Caplan's answer, in part, is that people delegate their voting to the "mindset" they possess, a collection of religious beliefs, nationalistic instincts and political impulses that embodies biases and preferences of all kinds. Thus equipped, people don't feel any particular need for extraneous facts. Democracy, though, impartially imposes an economic penalty on everyone - rich and poor alike - when majorities of voters make irrational policy decisions.
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