> If you pay a lot of money and buy a piece of trash (say a > completely unrelaibale cell phone) > 1) Is it your fault for parting with the money? > Regarding 1: Logically, no matter how much money you pay, > you can only get a bad cellphone is a > Regarding 2: The quality of money makes no difference > to teh qulity of the cellphone. > Regarding 3: Ultimately it is the quality of cellphone that > matters. If only bad phones are available, no amount of fiddling > with any other factor will change things. > Apply this logic to the discussion:
> If the quality of people standing for election is > predominantly bad, no amount > of fiddling wth the number of votes, and the quality > of the voter will make any difference. 1. The issues of candidates being bad can be separated from the other issue of voters being ignorant. (Is it impossible to have these as two issues? ) 2. There being a chance that the two issues are still interlinked, solving the latter may also solve the former. (Can we discount that possibility?) 3. One logic which you used (bad cell phone) need not hold true for this discussion too. Now imagine this, You and a few of my ignorant friends decide to drive through some infamous forest. There are two routes. Taking the first route, there is a chance of all of us getting robbed. Taking the second route - the risk is getting killed plus robbed. My ignorant friends vote that we take the second route. You find that they are taking the wrong decisions due to ignorance. Now, applying this logic to this discussion, its quite simple to understand that giving voting rights to ignorant people is equal to giving a gun to a 2 year old. Like that - because these inferior among the nuts get voted to power due to voter ignorance, the rest of the voters also have to endure the policies formulated by those in power. Hence, it is important for the quality of voters to improve first. That is when the bigger problem will get solved. Going back to what Udhay pointed to earlier, ********* *********Lots of quoting (sorry but this is vital) ************* The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy. As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component. 1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1. 2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1. Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. Some would say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! In a sense, it was learned thousands of years ago, but natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial (8). The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed. **************End of lots of quoting**************** I am not saying this logic is not flawed, (nor do I claim that the same logic can be applied here) but one or two sentences said here make a lot of sense.... I quote again >Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, >each pursuing his own best interest in a society >that believes in the freedom of the commons. >Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. and then this gem...... >Education can counteract the natural tendency to do >the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession >of generations requires that the basis for this >knowledge be constantly refreshed. So, we need better quality voters but there has to be some mechanism by which they can be updating their knowledge. Lukhman
