Governance by Democracy
This essay was written by my friend Perry Metzger.
Lets say your company has a business decision to make. Say there is a committee (already a bad idea but lets ignore that for now) assigned to the problem. Will you make the decision better or worse by adding a large number of people to the committee who aren't very interested in the topic, know ( Read more... )
Funny you would say that. As it happens, I have a rare disease. I was misdiagnosed by all the smart doctors who believed they knew what I had (and confidently disregarded some hints and pieces of evidence I had collected over the years), and their prescribed treatments were all ineffective (I was lucky, since some of the possible treatments could easily have killed me).
It was only after I started adding lots and lots of average people that I was able to reach a diagnosis consistent with all the symptoms. People like an immigrant single mom from Florida, a german student of chemistry, an australian journalist, and a dozen more. The treatment is perfectly effective and might be doubling or tripling my life expectancy.
This is not a mere exception to the rule. A few weeks ago a promising curative treatment for Alzheimer's disease started human trials, not through appointed expert panels and public research grants, but through laymen discussing and private charity funds coming to agreement with them.
Hayek's argument against planning still holds, even in "expert-led" fields. Quantify and qualify the involvement of the crowd, through free pricing ideally, and you'll consistently get better decisions than you can ever hope from "experts".
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