A thought that every post-election pundit should ponder. Economist Charles Plot talking to law professor Michael Levine.
Most people think that voting tells you the ‘preferences of the group.’ But you know, Mike, groups don’t prefer anything. They aren’t human beings. Just because we talk about the ‘will of the people’ doesn’t mean that the ‘will of the people’ exists. The choice of a group is certainly not independent of the processes by which it is chosen. So there just isn’t any true preference of the group.
Quoted by William H. Riker in The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 19.
Rawls and Rousseau would be disappointed. Seriously, though, this is why I support spontaneous order guided by myriad personal choices. When someone in government is representing the general will, it’s usually a different, more specific will being represented.Report