I don't claim The People are incapable of making correct decisions in a market. I only claim that they are irrational actors, and the hypothesis of Free Market sans regulations should probably be tested in some manner before being confirmed theory by its pious adherents.
You ask a very difficult question, and I know not the answer.
It's fairly obvious the regulatory bodies that exist today are corrupted.
Perhaps some sort of regulatory body that, per industry, is charged with prosecuting these types of lawsuits. A matrimony of lawyers and scientists-of-the-field instead of lawyers and business-people-of-the-field, perhaps: A bevy of prosecutorial lawyers governed by a board of scientists of the given field.
An EPA governed by environmental scientists instead of .. oh, wait! The last few directors of the EPA _have_ been environmental scientists. Perhaps if the agency had teeth and claws instead of throw pillows and accusatory fingers. But the cries of woe from Big Chemical if that ever came to pass! It would be so unfair!
An FCC governed by communications and data scientists instead of telecommunications lobbyists.
An FDA governed by doctors, toxicologists and clinical nutritionists.
But you asked specifically about electing a government. Again, I never claimed that The People are incapable of making correct decisions in a market, only that The People are, at the individual level, irrational actors without perfect knowledge of said market.
Gauss's law predicts that we will never, with a democracy or a republic, have a perfect government. We will, on the other hand, never have a truly deplorable government. We will just have an average government. We won't pick the best people for the job -- or, usually the worst. We'll pick the middle of the road, the mediocre, the Just Average, the fellow we'd like to have a beer with.
You ask about correctness -- how do you determine correctness? How do you determine that every choice was made without error? I suppose you could relegate the governing body to software written in Scheme - at least then you could prove that the software is correct!
But correct is, probably, not quite the word you were looking for.
But, as I understand it, you're suggesting that they can produce a government which is on average less irrational than themselves without a government. I don't understand what mechanism exists that should make us expect that this is possible.
> Perhaps some sort of regulatory body that, per industry, is charged with prosecuting these types of lawsuits.
At the end of the day, society has to figure out how to appoint these people. This doesn't break out of the problem of people being irrational.
> An FCC governed by communications and data scientists instead of telecommunications lobbyists. An FDA governed by doctors, toxicologists and clinical nutritionists.
A reasonable-sounding idea, but how can you implement it in real life, given that people are irrational?
> Gauss's law predicts that we will never, with a democracy or a republic, have a perfect government. We will, on the other hand, never have a truly deplorable government. We will just have an average government.
I can agree with that, but that's not what's important. What's important (to me) is whether having a government is better than not having a government. Not whether the perfect government is better than not having a government (which, is pretty much the case by definition of "perfect"). Not whether a truly deplorable government is worse than not having a government (which again is the case by definition). But whether the government which we can reasonably expect to have in real life (which is similar to saying "the average government) is better than the government-less society which we can reasonable expect to have in real life.
You ask a very difficult question, and I know not the answer.
It's fairly obvious the regulatory bodies that exist today are corrupted.
Perhaps some sort of regulatory body that, per industry, is charged with prosecuting these types of lawsuits. A matrimony of lawyers and scientists-of-the-field instead of lawyers and business-people-of-the-field, perhaps: A bevy of prosecutorial lawyers governed by a board of scientists of the given field.
An EPA governed by environmental scientists instead of .. oh, wait! The last few directors of the EPA _have_ been environmental scientists. Perhaps if the agency had teeth and claws instead of throw pillows and accusatory fingers. But the cries of woe from Big Chemical if that ever came to pass! It would be so unfair!
An FCC governed by communications and data scientists instead of telecommunications lobbyists.
An FDA governed by doctors, toxicologists and clinical nutritionists.
But you asked specifically about electing a government. Again, I never claimed that The People are incapable of making correct decisions in a market, only that The People are, at the individual level, irrational actors without perfect knowledge of said market.
Gauss's law predicts that we will never, with a democracy or a republic, have a perfect government. We will, on the other hand, never have a truly deplorable government. We will just have an average government. We won't pick the best people for the job -- or, usually the worst. We'll pick the middle of the road, the mediocre, the Just Average, the fellow we'd like to have a beer with.
You ask about correctness -- how do you determine correctness? How do you determine that every choice was made without error? I suppose you could relegate the governing body to software written in Scheme - at least then you could prove that the software is correct!
But correct is, probably, not quite the word you were looking for.