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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: TigerPaw who wrote (227465)4/4/2005 9:41:19 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1572152
 
Group decision making, esp. decisions made by groups that are mostly remote from the specific situation, is often worse than the decisions people make for themselves.

Of course when action is going to be taken as a group, or you are setting the basic rules for how the group members will interact than it is usually better that the group as a whole decide rather than one member. But for the actions of each individual it is normally better that the individual gets to decide.

This was echoed in one of those links (very short article) which studied herd animals and their group decisions on predators. When few of the animals has good information, for example cannot see the predators, then the decision is no better than that of a lone animal

The herd might have better collective information than the individual, but the US government, or the government of VA, or of Fairfax County, doesn't have better information about my life and wants and needs than I do. Also what if the herd is a group of lemmings? In any case powerful government is not necessarily decisions being made by the herd. It can be decisions being made by one powerful politician, a special interest group, or a non-elected head of some government agency.

In an older post you said of Neocons that "They want to make government less powerful than corporations." That's just silly, even many libertarians wouldn't want that and neocons are not a group of libertarians. Neocons don't always even want the government to be weaker. Libertarians do, but it could become a lot weaker without becoming weaker than corporations. Also a lot of acts of government directly strengthen the power and profitability of corporations. Not all "government downsizing" makes corporations more powerful.

Tim
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