Voting Reformation: 3 Alternate Approaches to Participatory Democracy | Dan Ariely | Big Think

Voting Reformation: 3 Alternate Approaches to Participatory Democracy |

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The maxim "One Man, One Vote" is so enshrined in our understanding of democracy that its weaknesses are difficult to see. Yet weaknesses it has.The maxim "One Man, One Vote" is so enshrined in our understanding of democracy that its weaknesses are difficult to see. Yet weaknesses it has. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely claims that our tradition of voting needs a modern update, and he presents three distinct ideas for achieving a voting system that not only puts more democratic control into the hands of voters, but encourages turnout and educates the electorate along the way.

Given the acrimony of the most recent national election, coupled with low rates of voter turnout, the flaws of our electoral system have rarely been on greater display. Ariely argues that while electing a politician carriers with it some well known consequences, it frequently leaves people feeling disempowered. After all, no national election has ever been won by a single vote.

But imagine if you could directly determine the fate of five percent of your income tax. Would you choose for the government to spend it on education, or science and technology, or infrastructure projects? Ariely argues that giving people more authority in the ballot box is an experiment worth trying.

His other recommendations for voting experimentation are equally intriguing. It may be time to experiment with the American democracy in ways that haven't been tried before, lest our institutions ossify.

Ariely's newest book is Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations.

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DAN ARIELY :

Dan Ariely is the James B Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and co-founder of BEworks, which helps business leaders apply scientific thinking to their marketing and operational challenges. His books include Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which became New York Times best-sellers. as well as The Honest Truth about Dishonesty and his latest, Irrationally Yours.

Ariely publishes widely in the leading scholarly journals in economics, psychology, and business. His work has been featured in a variety of media including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Business 2.0, Scientific American, Science and CNN.

TRANSCRIPT :

Dan Ariely: So when we think about democracy I think there’s kind of a real interesting opportunity to think about what is participatory democracy in the modern connected world. And I think there’s all kind of versions that are much better than the vote every two-year kind of version that we have right now. For example there’s a lovely experiment that said what if people got to vote on where five percent of their income tax goes to. So you would get a list of all the things the government does, right. Which is actually already a good thing because people don’t know what the government does. At some point we went to the Chapel Hill Public Library and we asked people when was the last time you got a benefit from taxpayer’s money? People couldn’t remember when was the last time. And they were in a public library funded by taxpayer’s money. So, you know, we don’t really understand what the government does, what taxes go for. But if you’ve got a list of all the things the government does and you could decide five percent. You probably don’t want people to allocate all of their income tax because there’s some things that the government needs to worry about. But doing some kind of marginal contribution and thinking where we want to be I think would get people to be more involved, care more, look at waster. I think it would make government offices a bit more accountable. So that’s one version where I think we could get participatory democracy to be closer to what we want it to be.

And another kind of direction is to say why do we need to vote for one person, right. So imagine that we will have a voting procedure. You could say I want Dan then really to vote for me on any issues that has to do with education and health but not about I don’t know, space exploration and not about nuclear activities. Can you imagine all of society as a network of people and you can assign your vote not just to the representatives but you could assign your votes to other people in society. Or you could say you know what Dan, I trust you on those topics.

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