"Wisdom of Crowds" Redux

Finished reading this book. The review (also mentioned below) is very good especially the mention that a limited government puts more power in the hands of the democracy. Author Surowiecki does do a good job explaining a sometimes tangled subject. I came away with a good Jefferson quote I believe I heard somewhere before. From the book, "There is no reason to think that experts are better at making those decisions than the average voter. Thomas Jefferson, for one, thought it likely that they might be worse. 'State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor,' he wrote. 'The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.'" Recall if you will how ahead of their times Jefferson and Madison were as they (Republicans) went to the secret meetings of the Democrat societies which were so feared at the time.

The County Chairs of the Libertarian Party are meeting this weekend. State Party Chair is giving instructions on Robert's Rules of Order for productive meetings. At the State Central Committee Meetings I see us too often as being Surowieck's dreaded concensus rather than a group of independents. I may suggest times (at least in these small groups) where it may be advantageous to waive the rules. One problem is that if one (like myself) presents a resolution, five or six people will have their say before the presenter can respond. It would make for a better informed group (less of what some call "groupthink") if the presenter is allowed to answer the questions or opinions as they are presented. Another break in the rules for small groups we should consider is a secret ballot. In most votes it does not matter but I believe it will force others to come to their own conclusions. Too often we don't want to be out of step with the group. (peer pressure?) Top down parties have failed miserably, but for the Libertarian Party (or any other party) to be superior it must not only be bottom up, but must follow the four rules mentioned in the book. Otherwise we can only be as intelligent as our most intelligent person. I'll repeat the four rules explained in the review:

Surowiecki argues that “four conditions characterize wise crowds: diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of known facts), independence (people’s opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them), decentralization (people are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge), and aggregation (some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision”

The collective wisdom of Libertarians can be aggregated in Yahoo polls. We are already doing this at county and district levels, but we will become more wise if we can extend our polls to all libertarians. (This should extend to the entire voting population, but the other parties do not encourage free thought. Perhaps their motto should be, "there is no such thing as a free thought!")

We may get tagged with being democrats or republicans, but hey, no other parties are living up to those names.