IS THE PUBLIC INCOMPETENT? COMPARED TO WHOM? ABOUT WHAT?
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/08913810802503467
ISSN1933-8007
Autores Tópico(s)Culture, Economy, and Development Studies
ResumoABSTRACT ABSTRACT From Mill to, most recently, Bryan Caplan, political and economic elites have been seen as the solution to the public’s ignorance and incompetence. In order to show that elites are actually more competent than the public, however, we would have to find out what type of knowledge is necessary to enact good public policy. The empirical evidence shows that economic experts have a slight advantage over the general public in knowledge of how to achieve policy goals. But, contrary to Caplan, the evidence indicates that economists don’t possess significant predictive knowledge, and that general economic laws are of little help in predicting the magnitude of the effects of a specific policy in a multi‐variable, complex world. When we adopt a more complex understanding of the reasons behind policy choice, and consider rules and principles in addition to goal pursuit, the slight edge of economic experts evaporates. Notes 1. At one point Mill ([1859] 1977c Mill, John Stuart. [1859] 1977c. “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform.”. Edited by: Robson. 1977 [Google Scholar], 324–25) provides the following scale of voting power: unskilled laborers, 1 vote; skilled laborers, 2 votes; foremen, 3 votes; farmers, manufacturers, and traders, 3 or 4 votes; professionals, 5 or 6 votes; university graduates, at least 5 or 6 votes. 2. Note that this implies that economists are disagreeing more about free trade these days. 3. Caplan (2007, 151 ff.) does have a short discussion of “altruism.” 4. This effect was not observed among economists working at the top ten research universities. 5. The latter formulation can be cashed out in terms of “covering‐law analysis”; the others cannot. 6. See the references in these two essays for further conflicting studies of minimum‐wage legislation. 7. Note that we are applying the principle of insufficient reason over expected utilities. There are worries about this. We can develop alternative principles that would accommodate this concern; my aim here is just to show that we can devise principles for rational choice in these situations. 8. The claim that the basis for all justified beliefs is their instrumental value is ultimately incoherent (Gaus 2008 Gaus, Gerald F. 2008. On Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Belmont, Calif: Thomson Wadsworth. [Google Scholar], 7–12). 9. For the idea of such complex decision value schemes (though not focused on rule‐based reasoning), see Nozick 1993 Nozick, Robert. 1993. The Nature of Rationality, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar].
Referência(s)