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This is What Epistocracy Looks Like
Most academics know some version of the critique of elite rule, administrative power, and centralized regulation by experts. Hannah Arendt called bureaucracy the “rule of No Man;” Michel Foucault described the overlap of legislative power, knowledge-production, and the apparatus of discipline and control; Iris Marion Young defended simple street activism against the demand that political…
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Fear of Democracy
While there is much more to be said about the risks associated with advocating “experimental disenfranchisement,” I stand by the claim that we cannot ignore the widespread temptation towards disenfranchising ignorant citizens. We must at least acknowledge that the challenge is not simply coming from nowhere: Jason Brennan reflects a widespread, even common-sensical, fear of…
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Must we destroy the profession in order to save it?
Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting, 2011, page 5: “The right to vote and the rightness of voting are different things. I do not argue that we should disenfranchise anyone. Though I think many voters are wrong to vote, I will not argue that anyone should prevent them from voting.” (Emphasis mine) Eric Schliesser, New APPS,…
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Democracy Means Asking the Right Questions
Whenever I talk to students about democracy, I like to emphasize that the original term for democratic rule was isonomy. Consider the account Otanes gives in Herodotus’ History: “[T]he rule of the multitude [plêthos de archon] has… the loveliest name of all, equality [isonomiên]…. It determines offices by lot, and holds power accountable, and conducts all deliberating…