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18418132 No.18418132 [Reply] [Original]

Is this book any gud?

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178493/against-democracy

>Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.

>In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it’s time to experiment and find out.

>> No.18418153

>>18418132
Politics has more to do with values than it does to do with competence, and even supposedly really smart and educated people just tend to fall within the two party system anyway and voice mainstream positions. That's why the whole idea of "we just need smart people to rule us!" is wrong and wouldn't resolve anything. Besides, we live in a political system where elites already dominate out politics despite our "democracy," and almost anyone who isn't a centrist would agree that they've failed massively, certainly in the past few decades at least.

>> No.18418183

Seeing the constant back and forth seethe in America over election results defintely makes me think its not working out, for us in particular but seems to be the case in other western countries, everyone really only wants their side to win forever is that really democracy when that happens? And when the other side wins they usually are deemed as" Destroying democracy" seems kind of schizo. Whatever china has seems to work out for their population and dont seem nearly as divided, but I'm ignorant of how it actually is there

>> No.18418193

I can't comment on that book, but Alain de Benoist's The Problem of Democracy and Tocqueville's writing on democracy are worth looking into.

>> No.18418201

Just found a PDF copy on Z-Library if anyone is interested:

https://1lib.us/book/6056525/95e00a

>> No.18419917
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18419917

>>18418132

>> No.18419985

>>18418193
This, read Benoist. Brennan is really just an egalitarian liberal cuck at heart, despite his based pretensions.

>> No.18420003

>position has a good plan that will improves x
>opposition opposes it because it will make position look good
>they come to a compromise that's shit and appeals to no one
biggest issue with democracy imo. i see this happening all the time in my country and nothing ever gets done.

>> No.18420011
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18420011

>>18418132
>Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it’s time to experiment and find out.
Sounds like just another flavor of technocratic shit to me.

>> No.18420013
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18420013

>>18418183
>schizo

>> No.18420073
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18420073

>>18418132
Every system of government has its theoretical limits in terms of how effective it's use in in running a country or territory.
Democracy has run it's course in the West, and can't really be called democracy anymore with the way media and lobbing have butchered it. It's more in line with a Techno-Oligarchy.
The problem is that the (((powers that be))) have put this idea into the minds of the people that democracy is the best system and that everything else is terrible and mean and cruel and bad. Just look at the ebil Nahze Man!
How long until people wake up and recognize this fact however, remains to be determined.

>> No.18420083

>>18418132
Sounds like yet another iteration of the genre of liberal takes that oppose democracy because a guy like Trump can sometimes win. "Strengthen the state to liberate me from the flyover hick, daddy," cries the lib.

>> No.18420090

>>18418132
>Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy
who are the "knowledgeable?" Media elites and tenured radicals? Alarmist scientists with delusions of grandeur?
The idiocy of the common man is less idiotic and less destructive than the idiocy of technocrats.

>> No.18420186

>>18418132
Yeah it's really good.

>>18420090
>who are the "knowledgeable?
I mean just read the book. He proposes a variety of different epistocratic systems, but in general it's just people who can answer questions like "what's the current unemployment rate?"

>> No.18420188

>>18420083
he's literally a libertarian

>> No.18420191

>>18420186
>in general it's just people who can answer questions like "what's the current unemployment rate?"
we've listened to the people who can answer questions like "what's the current COVID positivity rate" and look where that got us.

>> No.18420204

>>18420186
So it's just democracy with the franchise limited to the reasonably informed?

>> No.18420214

>>18420188
To clarify, when I said liberal, I didn't mean democrat.

>> No.18420223

>>18420191
>>18420191
>we've listened to the people who can answer questions like "what's the current COVID positivity rate" and look where that got us.
Not sure what you mean by we've listen to them. In a lot of ways we did not.
His critique isn't targeted against people in political positions already. It's about the incentives that democracy creates. Take one point. For each of us our vote is incredibly unlikely to sway an election, meaning individually we have very little stake in being informed in our voting decision. When I said the people who answer question like "what's the current unemployment rate?" that was with respect to the voting public. He discusses systems were you would either get additional votes if you're more informed or were you don't get to vote at all if you're not(and some other ideas).
In any case I know nobody reads here. So if anybody is interested, just look him up on youtube. There's plenty of interviews of him explaining it well(nor is the book difficult either).

>>18420204
That's true for most varieties of epistocracy he discusses he discusses.

>> No.18420236

Retarded. Every take arguing for technocracy is usually made by an autistic man who does not understand what politics is. It is not teleological. It has no fixed end. It is the height of silicon valley bugman philosophy to try and judge it by results. As >>18418153 alluded to, democracy is about people collectively deciding what they want the community they live in to look like. Some cloistered group of experts pulling levers was already tried in the 90s/early 2000s in the US/UK and all it did was suppress genuine politics until it exploded in events such as Brexit and Trump. Aside from all that, experts have no special ability to rule compared to anyone else, and in fact fools like economists have little predictive power whatsoever.

>> No.18420286

>>18420236
Liberals swing between two poles, one where they push for the eradication of cultural institutions in order to produce a more perfectly free democracy which they idealize as the liberated expression of the community's will, and then another where they push for "reign of the experts" type consolidation of state power when freedoms are used in ways they disagree with or when it produces outcomes they dislike. We're left in the growing wreckage of national institutions as the people responsible for wrecking them constantly redouble their efforts by oscillating between these positions, deracitaned libertarian tea party freedom and technoliberal progressive snob rule. Disastrous

>> No.18420345

>>18418132
I'd skip it and read democracy the god that failed by hoppe. It's a lot better book arguing against democracy. Even if you're pro state.

>> No.18420350

Democracy doesn't work

>> No.18420358

>>18420236
No one has this type of democracy. Voting for rulers isn't democracy.

>> No.18420413

>>18420236
>arguing for technocracy
I'm not. Far from it in fact.
I just pointed out in my post that Democracy has reached it's effective limit in the West.

>> No.18420452

>>18420236
>democracy is about people collectively deciding what they want the community they live in to look like
But that decision is already made by authority and largely dictated by intelligence agency cutout institutions - the people are not involved in any way.

>> No.18420457

>>18420350
What about Switzerland?

>> No.18420478

based and Jung-pilled

>> No.18420483

>>18420191
>we've listened to the people who can answer questions like "what's the current COVID positivity rate"
We actually did not. Epidemilogist have been talking about the risk of a global pandemic caused by globalization for years but every western and non western leader ignored (for electoral reasons, I suspect - taking precautions against something that is not percevied as an immediate threat by the masses is not good optics)

>> No.18420488

>>18420483
>but
*that

>> No.18420499

>>18420457
An exception to the rule

>> No.18420501

>>18420286
They don't seek, per se, to eradicate cultural institutions, but rather to commodify them into some heterogeneous consumer culture.

It's, of course, obviously pseudo-religious in nature; judex via bureaucracy. "Democracy" becomes name-only -- or, well, it already has been the case for a while.

>> No.18420522

The issue with "expert trusting" is that a lot of "experts" are simply dumb. Just look at "epidemiologists" who can't do statistics lol, or foreign policy "experts" who know literally nothing about the place they're supposed to be an expert on.

>> No.18420527

>>18420522
This.
Never fall for the Appeal to Authority meme.

>> No.18420548

>>18420013
Just as the proper response to "ur a fgt" is "no u" rather than an essay on the noblesse of male-bonding, the proper response to "take ur meds" is "dilate" and not further schizoposting.

>> No.18420567
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18420567

>>18420548
>schizoposting
Schizo is a confirmed insult in the Toolkit of shills that come onto the board.
Don't believe me? Have picrel and this;
http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/search/text/schizo/

Can't blame the Trannies for everything. Though, they certainly worsen the situation, whether intentionally or not.

>> No.18420587

He is against democracy because people do not vote on what he wants, and his preferred policies thus cannot be pursued, hence why he calls the results "not good enough". His merit lies in being more honest than 99% of these types who are just in denial over this opinion.

>> No.18420637 [DELETED] 

>>18420587
My main problem with the current iteration of the democratic system is that you have to many people with absolutely no care in the world for politics and just go with whatever team, or whim or feature that they, the person like about a candidate.
For a democracy system to work, you need intelligent, politically active members of the community in order to pick the candidate that best reflects the communities needs and is willing to engage and work for the community. Otherwise, you get what we have now wherein its a popularity contest decided by the media and glowniggers.
For example; here in Canada, a survey was conducted to see why people picked Justin Trudeau, who at the time was recently elected. As it turns out, the majority of the Woman who responded because he looked attractive. No joke.

>> No.18420656

>>18420587
My main problem with the current iteration of the democratic system is that you have too many people with absolutely no care in the world for politics, engaged in politics. These people just go with whatever team, or whim or feature that they like about a candidate.
For a democratic system to work, you need intelligent, politically active members of the community in order to pick the candidate that best reflects the communities needs and is willing to engage and work for the community. Otherwise, you get what we have now wherein its a popularity contest decided by the media and glowniggers.
For example; here in Canada, a survey was conducted to see why people picked Justin Trudeau, who at the time was recently elected. As it turns out, the majority of the Woman who responded because he looked attractive. No joke.

>> No.18420661

>>18420637
I agree completely; one should do the politically disinterested groups a favour and lift the burden of politics from their shoulders. But I take issue with an epistocracy as proposed in the OP, because I really do not want to be ruled by 105IQ guys who say they've looked at the data at the beginning of every sentence. I would imagine that even archaic methods such as the kleroterion, the election modus of the doge of Venice and the womb of the empress would deliver better results than whatever elite selection mechanism we would currently come up with.

>> No.18420730

democracy sucks dick but as beaver once said long ago we are already living in a de facto non-democratic system much like the author of your post describes OP.

The true ruler of a democracy is the shadowy cabal(s) who manipulate the levers of the propaganda machine. The opinions of the masses are produced on an assembly line by a bunch of cultural revolutionary collaborators who have sold out their own country to global finance and the people in charge of global finance.

>> No.18420935

>>18418132
How does this book match up to the democracy book by Hans Hermann hoppe

>> No.18420957

>>18420236
He isnt arguing for technocracy, he just thinks we need some sort of filter for retards without basic knowledge and what their candidate even supports. Problem is that rules out 95% of voters

>> No.18420977

>>18420730
Yes we are. And it's failing, which is why we are seeing the Great Reset

>> No.18421387

>>18418132
>>18418132
I read it a few months back. It's a relatively strong book as far as academic analytic philosophers go.

Pros:
1: he knocks down deontological arguments that democracy is required by morality
2: lots of interesting arguments about the harms of democracy

Cons:
1: Jason Brennan is an idiot who believes that anything academia generally supports is true. For example, he uses the fact that "more educated people support affirmative action, immigration, free trade" as implied evidence that these are good policies (implied because he's literally trying to restrict voting to make less educated voters have less say)
2: he doesn't consider the long-term consequences of epistocracy. Power is already accumulated in the cathedral. This would give them VASTLY more power, since they control information for the "epistocrats"

I recommend it if you read a lot of political philosophy or are into the subject. If you just want a single book that criticizes democracy, Hans-Herman Hoppe's Democracy the God that Failed is superior in most respects and much more red pilled

>> No.18421397

>>18421387
btw I gave it a 4/5 on goodreads if that counts for anything. My average is ~3

Brennan's best book is "Why Not Capitalism" because it throws the analytic socialists for a loop and his worst is "In Defense of Openness", his book about the special immunity thesis ("When All Else Fails") and I haven't read most of his other stuff. Cracks in the Ivory Tower is nice, though not really political philosophy.

>> No.18421405

>>18420957
Clarification for both people arguing here. Some variants of epistocracy allow everyone to vote, but they don't vote directly on policy.

If the technocrats are good (like in China, Singapore, debatably Japan) I'm in favor. But IRL, if the US suddenly becomes a technocracy, who are the technocrats going to be? We all know it's going to be Shaniqua with the long finger nails and a degree in black LGBTQP+ studies

>> No.18421449

>>18421387
Also, probably relevant, Brennan is a very clear writer for less experienced philosophy readers. If this is your first political philosophy book you shouldn't have much trouble understanding 90% of it, though obviously the picture will be clearer as a whole if you know more

>> No.18421595

>>18420656
>the majority of the Woman who responded because he looked attractive
So he's basically the Canadian JFK?

>> No.18421601

>>18418153
Politics is an exact science like is anything else that pertains to holding a civilization together, emotion driven, instinctive and self-referential conclusions of "values", philosophical or otherwise can not make one a better leader or civilizational organizer. What does is knowledge pure and simple of political theory, philosophy, economics and history, but this is coming from the presumption that any leader has the desire to uncover objective realities about politics, economics and societal functioning for the greater good of the nation, as opposed to just employing whatever allows more control for the mega corporations and government organs of the world. All competent world-class leaders (Presidents, Prime Ministers) are well aware of what to do to unleash an economic beast of a nation on the world, and how to make the general public's life easier and better, but ultimately they actively refuse this objective information for the sake of taxing people, controlling the economy and dominating people's civil and economic liberties.

>>18420236
Politics is teleological. It is the constant never-ending and exponentially enhanced pursuit of the perfect civilization or at least a better one. The best way to organize the constantly changing and increasingly complex human societies we live in. The problem with Democracy is Democracy itself. The way that it IS, not its effects. It is a naturally coercive system where the majority forces their will on the minority through mob rule, and where the powerful demagogues and plutocrats and social engineers convince people that their desires are this of the people. Our main mistake is in the assumption that "doing politics" is doing so through the government, politicians and their forced interactions. And that we need centralized power structures to control our civilizations to be better. A knowledge of political theory, philosophy, economics, history, military strategy and what not can be much better used for the good of a society in the hands of a huge number of common people than in the hands of centralized powers.

>> No.18421616

>>18418132
I can't believe people still buy into the joke that is democracy. If you think the average dipshit has any amount of say in the who's who of global politics, I have a bridge to sell you.

>> No.18421621

>>18421595
Yeah except more corrupt and a whole lot less effective desu

>> No.18421636

>>18418132
Holy fuck that's retarded, what the fuck is this dumbcunt thinking? We've been a fucking technocracy for decades and it's never done anyone a lick of good, instead the whole thing has increasingly dehumanized people at length and torn asunder the communities which give meaning to life and thrown it into a downward spiral of meaningless drudgery simply to move the GDP up a bit. Cantankerous fuckwit.

Here I thought he was going to attack it from the facade of participation that it actually is, hilariously he insists that we should further concentrate power into the hands of the blithely ignorant "intellectual" elite. What a fuckwit.

>> No.18421648
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18421648

>>18421636
I wonder who could have been behind this book?

>> No.18421661

>>18420935
Hoppes is a lot better. This is babies first red pill.

>> No.18421726
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18421726

>>18421648
Careful boys, I've posted some truth and they've come false flagging.

>> No.18421736
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18421736

>>18421726
That's one abstract yid ya got their

>> No.18421741

>>18421601
Have sex

>> No.18421753

>>18421621
>effective
Meh, I'm not a very big fan of Kennedy (or the Kennedy family in general) but we definitely would have been better off as a country if John F. Kennedy had finished his term and LBJ hadn't gotten in, he was truly a bad commander-in-chief.

>> No.18421772

>>18421753
He did try and break up the FED, keep the USA out of Cuba and prevent the Yids from getting nukes, at least for a time.
Now we're doomed to a scenario of coulda

>> No.18421835

>>18421601
Go read The Open Society and Its Enemies and come back when you're enlightened. Refrain from discussing this topic further until the assignment is completed.

>> No.18421867

>I am against this thing we don’t actually have
What a psyops you CIA kids are running

>> No.18421983

>>18421867
if we didnt live under the tyranny of democracy then psyops would not be required.

>> No.18422261

>>18421835
Already did a long fucking time ago.

>> No.18422443

>>18421983
>tyranny of the community deciding for themselves
We live in an elaborate oligarchy. This always happens to republics

>> No.18422502
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18422502

>>18418132

>> No.18422644

>>18422443
if we lived under an oligarchy that in fact was devoid of a democratic process there wouldnt be any need to manufacture consent.

>> No.18422669

>>18422644
But it is an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy that needs to manufacture consent to stay functional (and profitable).

>> No.18422683
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18422683

>>18422644
>Saving millions in advertising!