Bottom Up Government

This article by Gary Imhoff (themail@dcwatch.com) discusses the power of bottom up government. New technologies, like the blog software that powers this site, get us closer to a model for participatory democracy. Will it work? Read on: We're used to the minimalist argument for democracy, the argument that even though the mindless masses are stupid as cattle (nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, right?), it's still better to let people participate to some degree in their own self-governance. Let them vote every two or four years, and then let the experts who know better make all the decisions between elections. Certainly, that's the assumption behind the way local government is conducted in DC. Whether it's building a baseball stadium, redeveloping entire neighborhoods of the city, or running the public schools, experts and the special interests meet with the bureaucrats and the elected officials, and when the plans are completed, they are either sold to the public in medicine-show tents disguised as town hall forums or passed so fast the public doesn't become aware of them until after they are a done deal. Things are done this way because the experts and the special interests and the bureaucrats and the elected officials know that they know best ò they know that the public couldn't have anything of value to contribute to the process. Well, the minimalist argument for democracy is all wet. Democracy works because the people, the stupid mob, the ignorant crowd, are smarter and make better decisions than all the experts and special interests and bureaucrats and elected officials combined. Let me recommend a book. James Surowiecki, a columnist for the New Yorker and Slate.com, has written The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations. Here's how the publisher's web site describes its central idea: "large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant " better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future (http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0-375-43362-7). The review in the Christian Science Monitor explains: "As counterintuitive as it sounds, however, the mathematics work so long as Surowiecki's three key criteria: independence, diversity, and decentralization" are satisfied. "If you ask a large enough group,'" he says, 'to make a prediction or estimate a probability,' the errors they make cancel each other out. 'Subtract the error, and you're left with the information.' In this fashion, the TV studio audience of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,' guessed the right answer to questions 91 percent of the time, torching the 'experts,' who guessed the right answer only 65 percent of the time (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0525/p15s02-bogn.html). If you want an informed, intelligent, wise decision on matters of public policy, leave the decision making to the much despised "masses" to us. If you want bad government, leave it to the small, closed circles of people meeting behind closed doors who make the decisions now.