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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Perry, can you suggest a better place to discuss this than here? I'm happy to discuss this with you, but not so much to veer about 100 miles off-topic here.

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Paul says "A democratic government policy X is superior to an autocratic government with policy X because a democratic government expresses the autonomy of its citizens."

That assumes, implicitly, that "expressing the autonomy of the citizens" (whatever that means) is a primary value. I'm not sure why I should believe that. Indeed, I deny it.

What people really want is good laws and legal systems. Democracy is a tool -- nothing more or less. If it produces better results, good. If it does not produce better results, then defending it is mere religion rather than based in a rational consideration.

Paul says that "My claim is simply that all else being equal, the fact of being a democracy has some value in itself." I'm not sure I buy that. It is only true if you have some sort of mystical attachment to "The Collective Will Of The People". I can't see why one should care about "The Collective Will" -- indeed, I think one often needs protection from said collective will.

Paul also says that he "[doesn't] deny that, over all, democracies also produce better policies". I'm unsure about that, too. Sir John Cowperthwaite did wonderful things for Hong Kong as, effectively, its financial dictator. Perhaps democracies produce better policies, and perhaps they don't -- I would say that is an assumption rather than a proven hypothesis.

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