Posted: May 13, 2018 5:03 pm
Xerographica wrote:Here's a list of books...
The Origin Of Species
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The Handmaid’s Tale
A Tale of Two Cities
50 Shades of Grey
Principia
The Bible
War and Peace
A Theory of Justice
The Cat in the Hat
The Wealth of Nations
The Hunger Games
Imagine if this list was sorted by a bunch of college students. One group of students would use voting to rank the books while another group would use spending. To be clear, the spenders wouldn’t be buying the books, they would simply be using their money to express and quantify their love for each book. All the money they spent would be used to crowdfund this experiment.
How differently would the voters and the spenders sort the books? In theory, the voters would elevate the trash while the spenders would elevate the treasure. This would perfectly explain the exact problem with Google, Youtube, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Medium and all the other sites where content is ranked by voting. Democracy is a major obstacle to the maximally beneficial evolution of society and its creations. Of course I might be wrong.
Evidence is something that all reasonable people expect. Reasonable people expect medicine to be supported by evidence. Reasonable people expect executions to be supported by evidence. Reasonable people expect evolution to be supported by evidence. Reasonable people expect love to be supported by evidence. Reasonable people expect important things to be supported by evidence. So when it comes to democracy... where are all the reasonable people? Where's the expectation for evidence that voting is more effective than spending?
Democracy is the least unfair system that I am aware of. It's not perfect, but it's the best we currently have.
Now with regards to your argument/analogy:
1. Books are a matter of taste not objective facts.
2. This means you have no objective basis to assert that one way would elevate trash and the other treasures. Especially since you haven't even properly defined what 'trash' or 'treasures' refers to exactly.
3. You haven't justified your assertion that voters would elevate trash and spenders treasure.
4.
Reasonable people expect executions to be supported by evidence.
Reasonable people wouldn't accept executions.