A Complicated Problem

I was talking to a nice liberal person at work today who said that voters are idiots, because they had approved some random hateful piece of culture-wars gay-hating legislation. Similarly, "Constitutional rights should not be left up to popular vote" is some advocacy group's phrase. Many "liberals" are technocrats at heart, as are just as many "conservatives." Any ghoul who has studied public policy will know about public choice theory and information asymmetries and the like. Perhaps the most hilarious, extreme expression of this view is the way Free Traders rationalize consistent public opposition to their policies, and the most reasonable, sensitive one is John Hart Ely's concept of "representation reinforcement." Who could have guessed that most people who hold the first view also hold the second? Anyway, since people do not have perfect information, and are "rationally ignorant" (they are busy thinking about the groceries and baseball, right?), and other freshwater economics bullshit, it is always consistent with Democracy to ignore what people think and just rule them: it is in their own best interests, which they would come to agree with you on if they just had more time. Most people probably agree with that last assertion regardless of the information they have--it is maybe the fundamental proposition of Really Existing Democracy.