there were places out of business within a year and some took longer, but they eventually-- in fact, it's sad for me to drive through kingman, the part that i grew up in, because so much of it is so for lorn, and when you buy the magged is a vacant lot. very sat. one message that the books is pay attention. i wanted to reach that nine-year-old boy and reach them and hopefully excite them about the history of our country. >> you're watching book tv on c-span 2 with top-notch people. >> television for serious readers. readers. >> you teach philosophy at

georgetown university. has the election of donald trump made it more sympathetic about port st. louis-- po port. >> and they were doing it a year ago and people were saying the operate sit, what do we do about this? >> it's not that they're sympathetic to the point that i'm right and seriously it's serious seriously. >> and some might have argued if hillary clinton might have gotten election, that might have been fence democracy. >> i wasn't writing this as an interpretation of a-- it's brecks sis and the trump victory, but it's how my

colleagues generally, they're worried about someone closer to their power. >> and libertarians are saying, we told you know the to give the president so much power. >> absolutely. most people say they care about procedural restraints and opposition. and null of a sudden they start to worry about pleasure, since he got things in his way. it seeked like an and the have y you-- people are not very principled about their commitment, i think, through checks and balances. >> that's true, i heard david axelrod on a show say, dwra, the fill buster, he sounded much more sympathetic to the filibuster as a way to

president's mother than it was. so the basic sees sis of your book is that most voters are not smart enough or sensible enough to cast a sensible vote. we've been doing studies of voter behavior and knowledge for over 65 years. it's interesting how little they know is unconscious. now they have smart phones that contains the world's information in-- >> voters hardly know anything. and phil who said the two simple facts i know about voter knowledge, like the mean is low and variance is high. if you're to sort of take the american electorate and give them questions about basic questions relevant to an election. done by the national american election studies. 25% of voters get through like

a b-plus. the next middle. they do roughly about the same and the bottom is worse. and give them multiple choice and they get more than 75% of the question wrong. that's the electorate of the people who vote. when we talk about who stays home, it's even less. if it's arguing in the book that dfrjts. >> police information is a good thing because you want your plumber to know-- medicine since i'd like them to know what the effects are. why does it matter whether the voters are well informed? >> knowing they have stomach pains, it's enough to make me want the medicine to go away,

or that it's stomach cancer, i have to go to an expert to check that out. it may imbue some nationaling and expertise. maybe when you look around your hometown, people are unemployed and maybe it's beyond what most know, they don't know unemployment sta tadisticsadist they might have reasonable outcome preferences. maybe they're reasonable in assessing those things, but then to figure out what you want. what policies you want to inmriment. what leaders you want to. >> you need to know what's going on. if you say there's a lot of crime, i'm going to increase

the drug war, stop and frisk policies. anoth another-- the placing people, you know that you don't want -- you have to look at which policy is going to work betterer. being a foe tiff is they mostly don't know that. it's carries a celebration to what democrats were to do and we generally goen know that and it -- who are the abing nom micks. >> just burg you the answer, awe are vet very-- and from princeton, they disagree a lot even though

they're well-educated. >> simple facts, never the necessary, we can see if it's there. >> and in a book he looks at data from the national american revelation studies and asking people how demographics, your one income, low income or that you're unemployed and i'm unemployed. he's looking for poem, who they are, what they know and what you can't. you can term how spifl -- is a different result. people are involved regardless of the demographic and they

tend to move toward one set of policies and then we can look at the so thor, they fient to backed libeling a -- and they just different things with the different data sites and paul krugman and i disagree on a lot of things, but in general, they're more favored in criminal justice reform and increases taxes opposite the difference than reducing the policies they don't go to a direct generation, they're nuanced. >> nuanced although it does team like they tend in the libertarian direction. i tend to think if you understood the world better, you'd be the contrarian.

>> they are in general, the lightened economic one, then the unsolved. if anything they might be more nuanced pro fell wear state department who advocate a significant agree of economic and personal. >> which to come extented is the sort of concensus of where the country is. we have a welfare state but we understand that it's expensive. we have more or less free trade. we have been moving into the blowings, gay people, jews, immigrants. all of those are kind of the concensus and they're therefore this influences the way it

happened. >> and one thing, the work being done by benjamin page and mark dylans. mark dylans has a good book in it he asks, when people in the public disagree about what policies to implement. people with a 10 percentile of income or 50 percent tam -- percentile, and johnson and obama are unlikely and george w. bush many of my colleagues would call a plutocat. he notes that high income voters tend to go high information voters. low information people tend to be low information voting.

pro free trade, free gay rights, and the low information order and have offices of preferences and it looks like part of what might be happening, politicians it to some degree getting away with things that the median voter doesn't want. and my friend has an explanation, maybe this is why democracy, there's significant independence among the politicians and they often do peeve pills than what we would expect if the public got what it wanted. >> you describe three citizens, hobbits, hooligans and vulcans. >> and make it easier how people think and react. so if you've ever seen a lord

of the rings movies, or read the books, even better. hobbits-- hobbits don't care about the outside world, they would eat their lunch and smoke their pipes. the equivalent, would be a hiz who doesn't have a firm or business, and they just want to lead their lives. the average, say, nonvoter in the u.s. is a hobbit, so described. if you've ever been to a soccer game in another country, where people care about soccer. >> you know that there are these sports fans, just really rabid by that. >> sports fans consume information and talk about plays that took place 40 years ago, they have stats on top of

of your head. take tom brady and deflate gate. of course not if he guilt. the renes of the country, of course, i think he's-- >> you're getting the same information, but it looks as if your side looks good. the clinical analog, knows about politics or has information that ignore information. and they see members of the other political teams as rivals whom they may describe as evil. they don't process everythings in rational way and i use this as an ideal type. they're having a dispassionate belief.

it's not that i advocate the rule of the vulcans, rather, i think that other democratic spearists spokes about what, how it would react with vulcan, when we have hobbits. >> are there any vulcans? it sounds like we're not. >> some people are more vulcanish, they're better behaved. they frequently try to get into the heads of people whom they disagree. i think some become closer to that than others. and name one jeff brennan, not a relative of mine. but once you test whether you're an example? can you find a world view.

>> and the touring test. >> the touring test, it's supposed to be where the compute computers can communicating with humans. and maybe they're intelligent and in order for a line, are you table to look and depend say that it's not yours. except we find, this book written, it has the question along with a few other questions. what she found. if i ask you, okay, why would anyone be a republican? and your answer is because they're student and evil. that predicts you're involved and you vote early and often. if on the other hand you say i'm a democrat. let me explain why smart publics will say. that you don't get to

communicate and you have to stay home. it looks like we have the heightened information information stretchings to become trust and he's between different views and the ideal democratic problems, but the oesh-- we have people, but they're not that into. >> you don't want them making the decisions, they want someone who brings pure rationality in. >> maybe it's good when you're fighting clingens in outer space. but i'm not sure when it taste the choosing policies and i think we can look at people how well are their guts and i don't think they do well. and are your economic issues a

lot of what i know most about. but when we think about trade policy, it's not that they understand the economist's point of view and find fault with it, they don't understand why commerce would be in favor of this in the first place. well, tray leaves these people behind and they don't know what to do. >> they don't know how to test that, i think that we're zero tum and they lived in areas 128 level or less. and i always looked people like a loring -- and the foreigners, this don't trust them. they see interacting with them as dangerous and that kind of men amount might have been up

cess if you're a tribe years ago. i think we can't trust our guts and emotion. we have to test our heads more. >> is it in unusual for economics professors to know from this. >> the philosophical gourmet, university of arizona is ranked number one for the mrifl policy. it's also weird for people who concentrate not just on philadelphia itself, but rather, the methodology that hoelgdz that-- before you flphilosophize, it's not how everyone disagrees or things. they say i'm doing ideal theory. i'm trying to figure out what they would look like if case

they were answers. go to my moral critical curb, from better to worse and hand it over to the social scientifics. >> and i spend, the class i teach tomorrow morning will repend a got half of the cemetery looking at social signs. >> that's probably useful. probably the most famous thing william f buckley, the founder of the conservative movement, i'd rather be governed by the 2,000 people on the directory than those that go to haar to be. >> maybe ask why would say that, but then you think he's wrong? >> yeah, so, i think one of the worries people have, if you talk about alternatives to

democracy, they're sort beguiled and maybe thinking of certain things and he might be right about that. you know, i would say i'd rather be gaff verned by the harvard economic park and i had to the take the people and maybe i'd go the other way. >> and you're arguing in your book and epistocrist. >> it's not in my dictionary, or it's not in wikipedia. it's something--

>> if you concentrate on a small number and extremely educated people, there's a potential for real distortions to take place and people just believe bad ideas and they reinforce bad ideas among each other and that's why i might be worried of the harvard faculty as a whole. and there are some when pop -- propagate, they kind of pontificate to one another back and forth. i think he's right about that. but my mother is something like this. democrat has bad incentives. it's props lower than ignorance. and misinformed. when you spread out power, you'll have choices. if you concentrate on the few and people at the top, then you might have different

disportions. you want something in between where political power is spread out widely. it's differents people coming in and other people with other kinds of information, but not giving an equal voice for those around the country regardless of what they know. >> maybe it's my mistake to have posed it that way because the harvard faculty is high on a come-- accommodati accommodating, there are more informed people who are not academics. so you do not argue in the books that academics should rule, your he an arguing that well-involved people should have more of a really in changing our leaders and policies. >> when you look at either, having a bachelors degree as

opposed to a high school diploma, you do-- the main thing is if you know something. and if the democratic system you think of that as the power of the people and it's supposed to be a system in which all citizens have equal political power, no country is a democracy. we explode 16 year olds, we include felonings, people who aren't living there, they can vote. and that's what democracy is supposed to be. and the other term is which political power is by law aportioned in some way by knowledge. there are many ways of implementing this, one is the-- plato probably didn't advocate that it's probably just a thought experiment. and other things that are

plausible, plural voting. he want today give everybody at least one vote, but thought perhaps people who had more knowledge and credentials should get an extra vote to make sure that ignorant and misinformed voters don't carry the day. you could have a system you don't have the right to vote, but pass a quiz of political knowledge, identify who the candidates are and which party controls congress and two or three facts about what happened recently, then you get the right to vote. otherwise you don't. and one from the mexican philosoph philosoph philosopher guerra. we have a campaign and then randomly select 20,000 people and they and only they are permitted to vote and first only if they have a confidence exercise, given materials and have to deliberate with one another, whether that can be done in an unbiased manner.

you could have a system in way, something that brian kaplan toyed with. laws are passed through normal democratic legislature the, but certain people have a chance to veto power over certain legislation on the grounds that was economically illiterate assuming they're vetoing on the grounds that it's unconstitutional and perhaps the legislature could override it with a majority vote. and the other one, system by oracle. everyone votes and when you vote you put down your democratic information and of basic political knowledge. whether it's what candidate you want and policies you prefer with that data you can determine what can happen to the american people if they all got 100% on the quiz, what would they have preferred. the demographics and you do that, what the enlightened

public wants, rather than what the unenlightened public wants. and that's are different forms. in this book i'm not advocating and not saying that we ought to do them. the book indicates that democracy is not in itself, it's a simple procedure for producing just outcomes and the justice outcomes are independent of the procedure and if we're able to find a procedure that works better, we should feel free to use it. >> is the electoral college in itself a form of epistocracy. >> people say well, it's meant to make sure that, you know, some cities and states like, with like large cities don't have all the power and others claim it's racist and the point

was to reinforce slavery. nevertheless at least some of the writers and people advocating it sounded, this was a one and final check who the president will be because if it's a really bad person. the people pick a really bad person or whatever the process is, the president is a bad person, it's one last check to replace that person with someone who might be better. originally the people weren't going to vote at all. the people were perceived not to know who the greatest man in the original 13 states were, but they would know who the leading man, the smartest man in their colonies were, their states at that point. so they would elect leading men from their states who it was presumed would have a broader understanding of the country and then those people would choose a president and that seems like a form of graduated democracy that ideally was intended to end up with people who knew more. >> right.

>> making the final decision. >> yeah, and it's never really worked out that way. we've always had a system, basically in which people vote for a president-- they're not literally voting for a president. we could have the state legislatures pick the electors. they're picking the president and electors will rubber stamp it. once in a while there will be a switched vote for another person, but there is no checks there. it's never actually worked out that way and probably never will. >> in your book, you quote the famous suffragist katie stanton who sees the vote as affirming the full citizenship and digitty of women. you say she's wrong. if people are excluded through a test simply by saying that women don't vote or blacks

don't vote, but through a test, aren't they being treated as second class citizens? and won't they at least feel that they are? >> right, so this is a big question i spend many, many chapters disentangling many things in here. one part of the question, when you get a vote does that make you more autonomous? . no, you personally are not made more autonomous, you don't move from being a mere petitioner, with the vote yourself. the vote is so small, it doesn't matter whether you have one or not. if you vote or stay home, doesn't make a difference or vote for the other side or the side you prefer, doesn't make a difference. it's built into democracy. it's supposed to be groups matter, not an individual. the whole thing-- if you systematically exclude certain groups, you can expect negative things to happen.

but one of the worries people have, i call this a demographic objection, suppose you had plural votings or a quiz of basic information and that's the term you get the right to vote we know there will be systemic effects given background injustice in our society. so, high information people are not evenly among all groups. they send to be middle age rather than older or younger. and they tend to be male more than female and the effects compound. on average, say look at the a 1966 book, what americans know about politics and why it matters. the high income white employed male at age 50 will score on the quiz roughly three times what say an unemployed 18-year-old uneducated black woman. all right? so we would expect if there were this kind of system, you

might get a populous that's not representative of everyone as a whole. and this is certain forms, so there's a lottery that avoids this, the system i talked about, government oracle, you're testing for the democratics and isolating the problem. this would apply only to the voting or -- and even then i'm not so sure it's as big of a problem as people think for a lot of reasons. >> a lot of people say once you make that point it's unacceptable, we stop the discussion. if you think it's inherently unjust, i don't think you should be in favor of democracy period. you should be in favor of statistician. they would say it's not fair. say democracy is not fair, but in a democracy the voting public is not a representative of the people as a whole. in the voluntary systems, the

people white, male, educated more. and even in a place like australia, people don't vote and they get away without voting and you have a skewed electorate. not as much as it is here. further, who wins office tends to go skewing towards these people. and the political prefrpss of some over others and doesn't actually look at the median voter since it's skewed to higher income more privileged voters and then what you might call persistent minorities never get a say. even in a democratic system say you're a native american, the democracy can ignore your preferences over and over and over again, you're not a big enough block, doesn't matter what you think. even our current election you might argue that this is a system where whites got their say over minorities, despite having a democratic system.

if you care about fairness, flip a coin, have everybody vote and say, a portion probability is the candidates based on what percentage of votes they get and rather picking the person who has the highest percentage of votes, use a number generator and based on those possibilities. that's genuinely fair and everyone has a chance. at this point it's not original to me by my former colleague.

>> it is unfair there's a reason to say all things equal it's better to have that than democracy. because ultimately in a sense, this is a marketers title for your become and not quite a precise title of what is in it. because what your book should be titled is --

about against the presumption that no system could be better than democracy. >> yeah. that's right. so what i'm really attacking is what you might call democratic triumph y'allism a term but it has it have a phrase so democracy deserves three. one is justice in what it accomplishes. i don't think that's u true. political power, give you go political power make you better off an riches you and make you better and improve your character. i think that's false. and number three is no system can work better than democracy and i don't think we know that. there are systemic problems within democracy and they create bad incentive that lead to misinformation ignorance as a result we get poorer quality government, and otherwise thinking seriously about alternate to democracy and to investigate.

but we can't do that as a society until we get it over this kind of view that it is just period no matter what it does. so, i mean, i don't talk too much about this in the book but besides that there are other systems might be thinking about. so a base system that people like alexander and ben sanders at sterling advocate whether supposed to randomly select people but in some way enrich them and make them more informed and better politic that they advocate when they call future and advocates specialized betting market used to choose in turn a kind of policy. and arguably it will be to better outcome than asking experts what they think and you can read a book -- i forget the author but read and talking markets work and better than any other system.

a law professor the george mason advocates about political ignorance as well and political ignorance he says, he wants radically decentralized system in which you have lots of different kinds of qualities with different policies, and it is made to be easy to move from one place to another and easy to move, change which government will rule over you. ideally voting rather than voting voting will lead to better politics. >> let me ask you a question about you. on my count and maybe this includes next year you have eight books in eight years. how do you do that? [laughter] >> yeah, with i try to write for 20 hours week that's pretty much the secret. and then i guess you can say you have a job and children. how do you do that? >> well i don't let -- good question soy try to avoid letting urgent take presence over the important. in academic every day you walk in you have lots of e-mails and became more famous more and more

and you have a article saying that trump orders you get 200 piece was hate mail in the day. i found that out recently, but you have to prioritize writing over several things so i don't work excessive amount but i work a typical week but also in a situation in which i don't teach many classes but three per year and teaches classes i've prepped before so i know what to do for the class i don't have to read a lot of new material or study more. i don't spend a lot of time on the small things and i try to make sure that doesn't take most of my time and spend roughly four per working day writing upfrngt and everything else later. if you do that it is easy to pump these things out. other secret for me just -- i always have the thing i'm polishing that i'm almost done with a thing i'm half way down through and churning in back of my mind and move it on a conveyor belt and stuck on one

thing, like what i'm pollishing i move on to the thing i'm about half way through and then my sub conscience figures out what had is over here and move become to that. so an inefficient discipline writing system. >> eight book in the next eight years. >> i'm on track for two more in next two years and three from the next three years and see what happens from there. >> very impressive having written one book -- i can't imagine a, having that many ideas an piengtding time to do them all. there's another new book by two political scientists that generated a washington post headline, washington's government elite think americans are morons and good for political leaders to think that way? >> well, yes and no. so -- this has such a hard question and some respects a easy question and some a hard question.

so how -- you and i have spent a lot of time thinking about how people here work an what they do. i think they have a strong incentive to behave in selfish ways destructive in a way i'm not worried about a electorate would. incentives are different. so to some degree i think that can be dangerous because sometimes people have genuine want and problems an ignore and should listen, on the other hand, i think that they know that the public doesn't know much about say the social science they understand that for example, free trade is really, really strong and public doesn't like it and they don't understand it. so -- on a case bay case basis that's the way to think ab sometimes not. moron, though, it is too strong of a word if people say, a popular plus is stupid but people are quite smart. capable running theirs own lives in a smart way if you give them

a chance so not a paternalistic person and don't want government running your life for you or random stranger life for them. but i think incentives are different when i purchase a car i make a good decision i get the reward. politics is entirely different in democracy, how you vote doesn't matter how i vote doesn't really matter but how we vote that matters. so metaphor is imagine a class in which -- the professor has 210 million students, and she announces at the beginning of the class three hospitals now we have a final exam on basic political information. and you're not going to get your grade but average all of your grades together and everyone will get the same grade. how much would you ?id i ask people that, they only say i wouldn't study at all and they don't study. so it's not that they're dumb but that they don't care and reason they don't care or think about that too bad is because incentives are wrong. >> there's two reasons they

don't care. partly e they're just not that interested because you know they could follow it. i know my vote won't affect the election but i'm interested i follow is partly as a sports junkie and partly because i think it is important and it's my job. as you said -- i have in my% a phone with all of the knowledge in the history of the world. i'm assuming i can learn a great deal on my phone about metal and no interest in doing so. and i haven't done so. and you probably wonts want me running miewk venue. so the question is, people who have very little interest in politics and policy and vice president taken the team either because their not interested in or because as you say they know it's not going to make any difference should they be run organize the government or making decisions about who will run the government an that is question at the heart of your book. >> right. yeah so i think then we can like in my worry about them is -- we look at what they know, it's not very much, and we look at

policies that they advocate and seems they wouldn't what they advocate if only they knew more. so i think -- i think that things that they press for in general, they advocate them because they don't know what they're talking about. and you can just afford to in politics is different from daily lives. in daily lives we can't afford to accept have many delusions because we're punished for them if aisle crossing the street a ensee what appears to be a truck barreling towards me at 50 miles per hour i might have optimus prime coming to take me adventure and beat mega tron together but indulge that illusion all right so i'm punished by reality for a lot of my help to believe that. when it comes to mr. speakers i can divulge any delusion and we e agree about what should happen and if we're wrong about that, that has no negative skt on the world it doesn't hurt us but help to some degree it doesn't

cost us anything true of everybody else as well. but system is set up to involve people to indulge their delusion to make mystic and not bare consequences of it because it's what we do that matter not what any one of us does. >> so from the point of view i'm thinking that you argue that voters democracy systemically make bad decision and pll political decisions are imposed through violence ultimately when they say there's a $15 minimum wage it means we will arrest you if you pay less than that. if they say, we're going to war in iraq they will arrest you if you don't go if you're a member of the military or pay your taxes -- that seems to be an argument against having government make decisions rather than specifically an argument against democracy. because people make bad decisions, through the political process, let's take as many decisions outside the political process as we can. >> right.

>> i think in the book i mentioned before that's one of his thesis. now this idea that government is any voluntary and supposed to violent non con sheen cial. if you believe government authority and some theories view that government has authority over us if we can con isn't to it then you have to be anarchist and refuted before the united states was even pounded like knew for a long time no version of that workings you can spend 20 minutes talking about variations of it. but most people i think accept -- most people are status and philosopher attitude is consent to government fails but that show ma maybe government is justified on some other kind of groped and other reason why we should have it. that said, you know, i prnlly agree with you only on this point that i think -- governments are incompetent to make decisions and that's reason for stripping them of that power. this book, though, i purposely

avoided writing it as libertarian leaning book but at the beginning of the book i'm trying to convince if you're a conservative and trying to convince to be a birkin conservative, and social democrat trying to convince you to consider -- social over a social democracy. if you're a lib anarchist convince you to stay anarchist but between the two pick up that over democracy so not a stance on any policy that i myself advocate i want this to be in a sense neutral and focused on question of the begs form -- best form of government taking for granted what it has to do. >> one of my favorite movies is animal house and one of my favorite quotations in there is from otter in the trial where he says the fraternity system is guilty then isn't this of the american society ab we won't sit here and listen to you bad mouth the united states of merck.

so when i reads page 72 of your book do you hate america or fraternities? [laughter] >> in the book i have analogy how democracies are kind of like college fraternity and philosopher and defending from democracy they're often defending an ideal form of democracy. well here's how democracy should work if people were better and i say that is like saying here's hoy a fraternity should work if stuck to ideal in mission statements and work really well but they don't stick to ideal and don't work that well. how to put it, of course, i don't hate america. i dislike things that america has done. i think we have a sorted past with injustice. i think we have a sorted degree of injustice as well and all sorts of things we're doing right now that are quite horrible. caring it to say other countries i think they do things better. a lot of countries that do

things worse. i think there's a difference, though, between how we approach each other on a daily live and what happens in licks. so final chapter of this book i call civic gnome. i consider calling it higher, editor thought it was a bad idea. he's right. so what i say is in our daily lives we think about the market intersections. we're part of a vast web of cooperation and people talk about markets they think about competitive aspect applying for a job and competing against so many poem and competitive but i think you and i agree, in fact, it is mostly a system of mass cooperation. if you take the pen you're holding and ask how many people participated in building that pen. the answer is, roughly around 50 million. millions and millions of people that participated making a pen, only some who knew they were doing that. but in u our daily lives we benefit from other poem and exper toes and benefit from them get their way and in a whole as a positive intersection where

they koangt don't come at the expension but help me and vice versa. but get toic mrs. thegs change. so politics one problem with that is inhairnght inherently if i disagree with you, you're an enemy and i don't to be a friend but the same politics, i'm more likely to be your friend, and that already is psychology of that to the book is stoushing. but i think it is worse than that. not just that we're bias. rather mr. speakers politics narrows down to a few things and makes situational enemies where basically forced to be against each other. so imagine that, like my analogy would be -- taken but now that we're put in the gladiator pit and you kill me or if i kill you then i'm forced to fight you and you're

forced to fight you an become enemies as a result so that happens with a decision upon everybody and they have just to live with it then we become enemies with one another. finally one other reason to dislook others when they are voting and way that participating in politics because they don't do it comp tengtly imagine try for say a capital murder trial like first-degree murder, and let's sate jury doesn't pay any attention to the facts of the case but pndz you guilty because they flip the coin. or don't pay tension to facts of the case and find you guilty because they don't like you personally were paid off to find you guilty or because they foolishly believe you're one from underground the lizard people trying to take over the world and this is their way of get about back to you so you have real reason to dispize jury and hold to con tengt for what

they've done to you and exercising power over your life and deprive you of life, liberty, happiness at gun point literally and without good faith. you have reason to despise them and ruled by a king and that king made decisions capriciously with misinformation we have no so much for exercising so much power overs in such a capricious careless way. so i think in the same way we have reasons to look at electorate scene say why, a sphapght amount of power and acting in a careless way and not comptently. not romantic about the great columnist about politics dongt be romantic it is not a struggle about good versus evil but that democracy creates that incentive. one of the criticism that of democracy in conservative

literature -- is based on this quote that is not clear anybody ever actually said but exist until they can vote out of the public treasury. but you don't think that's actually an accurate krit criticism of dhx. >> i think early on when people like hamilton and madison and so americans founders were writing about this. man of you of democracy is largely being self-interested voting and will have happened in democracy is that we'll bargain with one another an call democracy and say constitutional republic, philosophers don't think that's ab interesting distinction perhaps. but the republican form of government we're all vote or for our sel of interest but ideally reach compromise and have enlightened form of self-interesting an reasonable high hypothesis but i studied this with a huge literature testing the claim our voters voting selfishly, and they keep piengsding answers no. and one of the reasons why,

because every time someone got the answer no they thought that can't be right. let's test another way and they get the answer no again and then that can't be right and then 50 papers shows the same they can so better putting that what we call nationalist and it is the nationalist but not knowing what they're talking about but what they perceive to be the concern. for most voting look at the wave at the sports game like waving flag but for your sense of justice rather than voting your self interest and given that people living selfishly day-to-day lives until you think about the incentives. it doesn't make sense per you to vote the in the first place. donald trump called me up on november 7th said i want you to vote for me. and if i win i will give you $10 million not saying to vote for

you be if you win i'll give you $10 million. now a stake in trump winning. but it doesn't mean it is wort my while to vote for him and chance what of making a vote is so small and getting car into accident in the poles is very high. that selfish thing to do is to play video game or write a paper or watch tv. so if people are going to vote, they tend to vote expresencively to what's good and right. selfish voting doesn't pay for itself. one of my other favorite documents which is sort of a mission statement of the united states, says to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men derive their just powers from the consents of the governorred. does our system rest on the con sent of the government? >> no. i don't think. i think that metaphor of contract is just really completely misleading. from the book i have a lecture on this, and think about like a

typical consensual transaction like i like call up fleet water and i ask them to send me a tell kansas or type of get for and not in thresh metal because they got into that too. so i say i won a get for and sent you money that's a typical transaction. now think about how government works. imagine that instead of they just sent me the guitar say here you go. we're giving this to you and then demand money i have to perform some action that signifying my con sent if they ask if i won a guitar i say no i don't one. that ensdz the deal and it qoangt take place ore send them my money and no guitar that wasn't a consensual transaction but fraud or something else and in relationship to government. does it look like buying a telecaster, not really. regardless of what you say they do what they're going to do but no actual act that you do that signals your con sent you don't sign a contract. you don't -- to you act ichly defend it

opportunity make a difference. you can't say no. so pulled over say for possessing marijuana you can't say you "don't ask, don't tell" understand i don't consent to that law they don't let you go. they don't care. further, a number of supreme court case where is they test if you do your part and government doesn't do it so a case in d.c. where a woman called police and said, like there's people breaking into my apartment come help me an they department and hurt and raped her and then she sued and government says they don't owe you protection but to people in general. so this is not like you do your rt and get something? return but that's the official government ruling. so most say like by choosing to remain here, you can consent to living in that government that might be true for someone like me. i've had toppings move to other krkts so in one place rather than another so especially

entitled con senting to u.s. government. literally not legally allied but they koangt let us come in so we are statistic where we are. the fact we remain doesn't mean we're con senting and back in the 17 00s and leaving jumpling overboard and dying. you don't like the rule go within the ocean. you can't do that. legally speaking they won't let you so like all of the land has been taken up by other government and most will not let you live there if you want to so in the u.s. you don't have a meaningful choice. all right as we wrap this up. it seems like unlikely to replace democracy so if that's the case, what's the main value reeders should get from your book?

>> so one, we could change our civil culture we try to push everybody to vote. vote no matter what. a difference way of thinking. should be pushing for informed voting and uninformed vote or you're not doing us a paver and push for that insteds. other thing we can limit is are there a little gnats legal, constitutional that might wo better. so brian kaplan talks about what if we have people like take this quiz and if you do well voter agreement we can incentivize to know more. these are things that are legal but fundamentally trying to get to think dmment is not imagine. it is not secret or value that a person has or a beautiful poem. it is nearly a hammer that's all it is. a tool with outcome and we should be in favor of looking for ways to improve that tool or a place that if we can. >> all right. thank you jason for interesting book and interesting

conversation. >> thank you very much. here's a look at some of the staff pib frustration harvard bookstore in cambridge, massachusetts. policemen columnist explores how the downfall of gary heart presidential campaign shaped today's campaigns in all of the truth is out. supreme court justice stephen breyer look at how some of the high courts decisions are stretching you understood america's borders in the court and the world. in 1944, historian jay reviews the decisions fdr had to make regarding d-day and end of world war ii. journalist jenny reports on lives of afghan women and girls in the underground girls of kabul. another staff pick from the hard harvard bookstore is bidet

monowho weighs in on race and equality in the american health care system. in we should all be feminist, [inaudible] argues that everyone should be fighting for gender equality. brandeis university john burt six debates between abe hail lincoln and steen douglas during their 1858 u.s. senate seat race, in lincoln's tragic pragmatism and barrel reveals difficult did i she faced as year pilot first woman to fly solo against atlantic water in west with the night. that's some of the staff picks in cambridge, massachusetts. many of these authors have parred on booktv. watch them on our website booktv dog.