Trust democracy?
I’m often accused of being too cynical and too negative about the intelligence of voters. In contrast, I think most people put too much faith in democracy and over-estimate most voters.
Democracy has become a new faith. Simply saying the word supposedly makes an argument stronger, as though there is some inherent morality in two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Democracy has it’s uses — it allows you to change government without any killing and it puts downward pressure on corruption. But I doubt that it leads to better policy, and indeed I think it has a built-in bias towards ever more totalitarian policy controlled by special interest groups (as suggested by Schumpeter nearly 100 years ago).
As for the intelligence of voters… well… I suspect that about half of them have below-average intelligence. 
Guest Post: Stomping A Frog
Self-described ‘punk-ass libertarian’ Dan Nolan, who blogs occasionally at Ultimate Science Team, has written a guest post for us on police powers. I reproduce it here unaltered:
It’s a widely held misconception that you can boil a frog alive by putting it in a saucepan or a pot of cold water and slowly applying heat. The theory goes that the frog adjusts to its temperature naturally, so if you heat it slowly enough you will be able to boil it alive without the frog even noticing. It’s a great story and a great allegory, one that Libertarians frequently use to point out the slow erosion of our rights and the increase of police powers in any society slowly moving towards a form of benign totalitarianism. Unfortunately in this situation the reaction does not reflect the reality, the frog will jump out of the water as it starts to heat. They don’t like being contained. The frog boiling alive is a myth that seems to have taken hold in our minds. In the situation of eroding police powers, though, the analogy holds because we are, effectively, doing nothing about the situation.
You may consider it to be a grotesque hyperbole on my part to claim that what is happening in NSW in any way resembles a ‘form of benign totalitarianism’. You may think that this kind of ardent claim is indicative of a mind poisoned by Libertarian propaganda and proof that the individual is thoroughly disconnected from reality. This, however, is not sensationalism. In NSW you can have your property investigated by the police without your consent, or you even knowing as long as a judge issues a warrant. Your car and everything in it can be searched without your consent even without a warrant without reason. Your mobile phone can be taken from you and the contents searched without your consent and, again, without a warrant. If you are traveling on public transport or are in a licensed premises you can be searched invasively without a warrant if a (notoriously unreliable) sniffer dog looks at you funny. The police can and will categorically misrepresent the scope and ability of their powers because their particular role carries with it the ‘fate of society’. They feel as if they are the individual guardians of society and anyone who questions them or attempts to limit their abilities and powers is effectively a criminal. If any or all of you have interacted with police and have uttered the phrase ‘civil libertarian’, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Though it is valid to say that police corruption has decreased substantially over the past three decades, the scope of their powers has increased by a truly vulgar degree.
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