As if that wasn't bad enough, there's the #Asch effect, which says that we will change our minds based on pressure from the majority, even if we know they're wrong.

Finally, there's the fact that the public Just Doesn't Understand Economics. When you compare the views of the average person to the views of the average PhD economist, you find that the public sharply disagrees with such obvious truths as "we should only worry about how big the pie is, not how big my slice is?"

4/

These fools just can't understand that an economy where their boss gets richer and they get poorer is a good economy, so long as it's growing overall!

That's why noted "realist" #PeterThiel thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Thiel says that mothers are apt to sideline the "science" of economics for the soppy, sentimental idea that children shouldn't starve to death.

5/

That leads to votes for politicians who are willing to tax rich people. Thus do we find ourselves on #TheRoadToSerfdom:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

Other realists go even further, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with orthodox (#ChicagoSchool) economists shouldn't be allowed to vote: "[a]nyone who opposes surge pricing should be disenfranchised. That’s how we should decide who decides in epistocracy."

6/

Add it all up and you get the various "libertarian" cases for abolishing democracy. Some of these libertarian elitists want to replace democracy with markets, because "markets impose an effective 'user fee' for irrationality that is absent from democracy.

7/

Others say we should limit voting to "Vulcans" who can pass a knowledge test about the views of neoclassical economists, and if this means that fewer Black people and women are eligible to vote because either condition is "negatively correlated" with familiarity with "politics," then so mote be it. After all, these groups are "much more likely than others to be mistaken about what they really need":

https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/03/the-demographic-argument-for-compulsory-voting-with-a-guest-appearance-by-the-real-reason-the-left-advocates-compulsory-voting/

8/

The article is a companion piece to a new academic article in *#AmericanPoliticalScienceReview*, where the authors propose a new subdiscipline of #PoliticalScience, #AnalyticalDemocracyTheory:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/analytical-democratic-theory-a-microfoundational-approach/739A9A928A99A47994E4585059B03398

What's "Analytical Democracy Theory?" It's the systematic study of when and how collective decision-making works, and when it goes wrong.

10/

Because the libertarian elitists aren't completely, utterly wrong - there *are* times when groups of people make bad decisions. From that crumb of truth, the libertarian elitists theorize an entire nihilistic cake in which self-governance is impossible and where we fools and sentimentalists must be subjugated to the will of our intellectual betters, for our own good.

This isn't the first time libertarian political scientists have pulled this trick.

11/

You've probably heard of the "#TragedyOfTheCommons," which claims to be a "realist" account of what happens when people try to share something - a park, a beach, a forest - without anyone owning it. According to the "tragedy," these commons are inevitably ruined by "rational" actors who know that if they don't overgraze, pollute or despoil, someone else will, so they might as well get there first.

12/

The Tragedy of the Commons feels right, and we've all experienced some version of it - the messy kitchen at your office or student house-share, the litter in the park, etc. But the paper that brought us the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons, published in 1968 by #GarrettHardin in *Science*, was a hoax:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

13/

Hardin didn't just claim that some commons turned tragic - he claimed that the tragedy was *inevitable*, and, moreover, that *every commons* had experienced a tragedy. But Hardin made it all up. It wasn't true. What's more, Hardin - an ardent #WhiteNationalist - used his "realist's account of the commons to justify colonization and genocide.

14/