Hey Dumby! Don't vote!...

[Timothy]

Ignorant people, please stay home on Election Day

By John Stossel

Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote.

Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in “The Fatal Conceit,” it’s a problem that in our complex, extended economy, we rely on instincts developed during our ancestors’ existence in small bands. In those old days, everyone knew everyone else, so affairs could be micromanaged. Today, we live in a global economy where strangers deal with each other. The rules need to be different.

Hayek said: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

You might think people have begun to understand this. Opinion polls show Americans are very dissatisfied with government. Congress has only a 12 percent approval rating. Good. People should be suspicious of what Congress would design. Central planners failed in the Soviet Union and Cuba and America’s public schools and at the post office.

Despite all that failure, however, whenever a crisis hits, the natural instinct is to say, “Government must do something.”

Look at this piece of instinctual wisdom: Everyone should vote. In the last big election, only 90 million people voted out of more than 200 million eligible voters. That’s terrible, we’re told. But it’s not terrible because a lot of people are ignorant. When I asked people to identify pictures of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, almost half couldn’t.

This is one reason I say those “get out the vote” drives are dumb. I take heat for saying that, but Bryan Caplan agrees. He’s a professor of economics at George Mason University and author of “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies”  . He was on my Fox Business show last week.

“A lot of bad policies ... pass by popular demand,” Caplan told me. “In order to do the right thing, you have to know something.”

The “informed citizen” is the ideal of democratic societies, but Caplan points out that average citizens have no incentive to become informed, while special interests do. The rest of us have lives. We are busy with things other than politics. That’s why our democratic government inflates the price of sugar through trade restrictions, even though American sugar consumers far outnumber American sugar producers.

Caplan has a radical proposal for citizens: Be honest. If you know nothing about a subject, don’t have an opinion about it. “And don’t reward or penalize candidates for their position on an issue you don’t understand.”

Political life differs from private life. If you vote for a candidate while ignorant about issues, you’ll pay no more than a tiny fraction of the price of your ignorance. Not so in your private affairs. If you’re dumb when you buy a car, you get stuck with a bad car.

You get punished right away.

“And you may look back and say, ‘I’m not going to do that again.’ ... It’s not so much that voters are dumb. Even smart people act dumb when they vote. I know an engineer who is very clever. ... But his views on economics (are) ridiculous.”

It’s not what people don’t know that gets them into trouble. It’s what they know that isn’t so.

“A very common view is that foreign aid is actually the largest item in the budget,” Caplan said. “It’s about 1 percent.”

Actually, even less. Medicare, Social Security, the military and interest on the debt make up over half the budget. But surveys show that people believe foreign aid and welfare are the biggest items.

So, you ignorant people, please stay home on Election Day. And those of you who do vote, please resist the instinctive urge to give our tribal elders more power.

If Americans keep voting for politicians who want to pass more laws and spend more money, the result will not be a country with fewer problems, but a country that’s governed by piecemeal socialism. Or corporatism. We can debate the meaning of those words, but there’s no doubt that such central planning leaves us less prosperous and less free.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/19/ignorant-people-please-stay-home-on-election-day/?intcmp=spotlight#ixzz1k1BQE5Yr

[Pecos Bill]

Tim, what should we do? Let those who "understand" what is going on decide what is best for us? Perhaps we should create a ruling class of uber "intelligent" individuals who see that we the unintelligent are told what is good for us just like the nobles we fought a revolution to throw out. Sounds like we should, perhaps, revert back to the good old days of a ruling class and peasants. Chicago politics anyone?

Pecos

[Timothy]

Lighten up Pecos!  It wasn't my idea, it's from John Stossel...

On a personal note, there are a few in my family that cannot identify any of the candidates running on the GOP ticket at the moment!  I'd prefer they'd stay home but they have every right to vote based on the current version of our constitution!

It's people that DON'T vote, then bitch about politics or how bad things are that piss me off!

We've had a "sarcasm" emoticon on order for some time, Marshal is busy!

 

Remember, lacking knowledge is NOT stupidity!  An intelligent person can gain knowledge but a stupid person is stuck for life...

[tombogan03884]

Actually Pecos, the Revolution you mentioned did result in a "ruling class" and another class who did not meet the property requirement and were essentially "peasants".
I believe we should go back to that system.
Those who are working, or retired after a career (the ones who actually generate the nations wealth)  should be allowed to vote. while the unemployed, and welfare recipients should be denied any say in the spending of wealth they did not help generate.
The idea of "universal suffrage" (any one with a pulse gets a vote) is a "democratic" ideal introduced to water down the foundations of our Republic.
With the drones removed from the voter rolls the choice of "bread and circuses" is left in the hands of those actually paying the tab.

[Solus]

Restricting the vote to only certain eligible people by wealth really stinks.

Until you compare it the manure pile not doing so has allowed to ripen.

[Sponsor]

[Timothy]

I've been a proponent of being able to pass a basic civics test or immigration test to be an acceptable voter requirement.  I'm also in favor of having to prove who you are before you're given a ballot!  The only time that's happened to me was the last general election (2010) when I lived in SE Connecticut!

It won't happen, at least in my lifetime!  I've heard that nearly 80% or Congress probably can't pass the immigration exam!

[Pecos Bill]

What we have in this country is a population raised on "the tube" who will not and can not think for themselves. They have given up this country to a large group of greedy "educated leaders" and those leaders have got the country exactly where they want it.

We need to change the system we have here and we need to begin with the schools. We are not educating our children we are creating another generation of mindless followers. We are not teaching our children to think, we are not teaching them to lead, we are teaching them to follow. This is the failing of the "ruling elite" theory. The "elite" don't and won't care about the "non-elite" except for what the "non-elite" can do for the "elite". This is what scares me about restricting the right to vote to a specific group of citizens. The danger is the same thing that happened in Germany in the thirties and has happened in every country where there was a "ruling elite" set up.

Also unless you have walked in my shoes, as the saying goes, how can you say I or anyone else can not make an intelligent decision? I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most intelligent person in the country nor am I even close but I think the people I know and I have enough knowledge to make a good decision when it comes to voting. I know there are plenty who vote for some silly reasons and these are the voters we must educate. To exclude them in WRONG, in my opinion. I guess I'm too liberal to be a conservative and a good Republican but that's how I think.

Sorry if this upsets the New England conservatives on the site but I guess that's my Mis-West upbringing.

Pecos

[Solus]

Pecos, I worry too that any voting qualification, be it education, passing a test, work contribution or whatever, might be abused by those in power......but ANY law/situation can be abused by those in power.

The only answer is to get rid of them...and that won't happen when they have to ability to buy votes with the public dole.

Eliminate those who are on the dole and you make big strides at eliminating all the rest of the problems.

Changing the educational system won't happen either until that "elite" power crowd is removed....that system is also on the dole.

Making it so it can be done with the vote is the more peaceful and less drastic solution proposed by the New England Conservatives.

[Timothy]

What we have in this country is a population raised on "the tube" who will not and can not think for themselves. They have given up this country to a large group of greedy "educated leaders" and those leaders have got the country exactly where they want it.

We need to change the system we have here and we need to begin with the schools. We are not educating our children we are creating another generation of mindless followers. We are not teaching our children to think, we are not teaching them to lead, we are teaching them to follow. This is the failing of the "ruling elite" theory. The "elite" don't and won't care about the "non-elite" except for what the "non-elite" can do for the "elite". This is what scares me about restricting the right to vote to a specific group of citizens. The danger is the same thing that happened in Germany in the thirties and has happened in every country where there was a "ruling elite" set up.

Also unless you have walked in my shoes, as the saying goes, how can you say I or anyone else can not make an intelligent decision? I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most intelligent person in the country nor am I even close but I think the people I know and I have enough knowledge to make a good decision when it comes to voting. I know there are plenty who vote for some silly reasons and these are the voters we must educate. To exclude them in WRONG, in my opinion. I guess I'm too liberal to be a conservative and a good Republican but that's how I think.

Sorry if this upsets the New England conservatives on the site but I guess that's my Mis-West upbringing.

Pecos

I agree that education of our kids is the most important thing to work for but unless you're planning to send them to private school or teach them at home, that's not going to happen!  My wife and I raised our daughter to have moral, ethical and compassionate values and as a result, she is an independent thinker, works hard and doesn't expect anything for nothing!  I've done my job in that regard but her school failed miserably when it comes to Civics and Government!

Not a New Englander, I was born and raised in Michigan.  I live here out of necessity and I would much rather be anywhere else but the Northeast!

[Timothy]

Pecos, I worry too that any voting qualification, be it education, passing a test, work contribution or whatever, might be abused by those in power......but ANY law/situation can be abused by those in power.

The only answer is to get rid of them...and that won't happen when they have to ability to buy votes with the public dole.

Eliminate those who are on the dole and you make big strides at eliminating all the rest of the problems.

Changing the educational system won't happen either until that "elite" power crowd is removed....that system is also on the dole.

Making it so it can be done with the vote is the more peaceful and less drastic solution proposed by the New England Conservatives.

Et tu Solus?  I was born further west than Ohio my friend!