Will's Challenge

I love that pedagogic trick. I think I first saw it used with car speeds and safety. You ask those who don't believe making a car safer makes people drive faster and less cautiously if they think making a car less safe makes people drive slower and more cautiously

I would push your disenfranchisement button.

You should take a highly informal and in no way statistically sound poll on this question. A la Wilkinson.

Bryan,
You didn't ask this but I'd give up my vote if it kept my expected lifetime the same but substantially raised my freedom.
David

I'd prefer democracy over income in both cases.

Life is not all monotonic functions.

I believe that few people would push the button that equalizes democracy, but I'd also be very cautious about giving so much power to the "elite." There are many people among the highly educated that agree with the populists about how best to reduce poverty. I'm going to have to agree with David Henderson. I would give up my vote if I could live in a society with much more individual freedom.

Happiness Research has discovered that "procedural utility" is important to well-being too. The feeling that one has a voice in matters of public policy is of some more than trivial importance to the less tangible elements of "living standards," and the notion of autonomous experts antithetical.

There is no way to avoid sounding Machiavellian, but the perception that people have more say than they do may be an important part of an elitist strategy.

See this: http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/can-procedural-utility-lend-a-hand-to-paleo-libertarianism/

Dain wrote:

"Happiness Research has discovered that...."

See, the thing is, I stopped reading right there.

Jeremy:

"I would give up my vote if I could live in a society with much more individual freedom."

You'd trade your right to vote for the very thing you'd vote for (with uncertain success.) Not bad idea! :) I'd give up my freedom to chose woman if I could get Cathrine Deneuve.

except that it is always the awesome intellectual elites like yourself bryan that have been saliently responsible for the rise of populist socialism, and not from the ground up.

Bryan, thank you for opening my eyes about the foolishness of democracy.

I would definitely push the disenfranchise button.

How about a button that disenfranchises the poor and working classes and doubles their expected lifetime income?

Neat idea. Too bad that given reality, the question would be "How long would the poor and working classes likely keep their doubled income if they were disenfranchised?"

Bryan, You're in my blood. Well, that sounds gross. You have been assimilated into my weltanschauung... sounds dirty. Anyway, you get the drift.

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Conflating "equality of democratic voice" with "populist socialist revolutions" muddies things up a bit.

Let's look at the 10 richest and 10 poorest nations. The poor of the rich nations have considerably more "equality of democratic voice" than those in the poorest nations, and of course, they live more comfortable lives.

Pavlov's dog was a Democrat voter too!!