Boulder Great Books

In our last episode, we discussed Bryan Caplan's highly opinionated The Myth of the Rational Voter in which Caplan applies economic decision making ideas to the franchise and finds it woefully wanting. After critiquing the existing voting analyses by economists and political theorists, Caplan framed the problem as voter ignorance and irrational economic beliefs that drive bad voting.

David Van Reybrouck has a different critique: democracy suffers from a spectrum of problems. While the vast majority of people in non-democratic countries aspire to democratic governance, 2/3 to 3/4 of people in the European Union distrust their most important political institutions. Elected officials are not giving people what they want. Responsible citizens feel like ballot fodder. Voter participation is sagging..

Unlike Caplan*, in Against Voting, Van Reybroick actually has a proposed solution: sortition. No, I didn't replace "ed" in that word with "ort". Van Reybrouck digs back to ancient Anthens for what might be the simplest way of selecting a representative body. He promotes

a consciously neutral procedure whereby political opportunities can be distributed fairly and discord avoided. The risk of corruption reduces, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases

Join us March 5!

P.S. Van Reybrouck reaks quite quickly. If you are interested in a fascinating look at alternatives to representational governance, check out Brend Reiter's The Crisis of Liberal Democracy and the Path Ahead.

* OK, Caplan does have a solution that includes force feeding voters mainstream economics by IV and restricting voting to the sufficiently educated and intelligent.

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We like to keep our conversations focused with the close-to-the-text analysis that thoughtful books require. We revel in making connections among the ideas in a book and between the many books we read. If you are looking for interesting discussions of idea filled books, come join us!

Boulder Great Books meets year-round on first and third Thursday nights from 6PM until 8PM, via remote conferencing -- for details, contact us The group is free and open to the public. Newcomers are welcome anytime!

Selections sometimes evolve as we read so please see the current schedule. Better yet, join out mailing list to receive (sometimes) entertaining announcements about upcoming readings
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Boulder Great Books takes its name from its focus at its founding in 1988 on materials from the Great Books Foundation. Having read the Great Books 5 year series twice (!), followed by other materials from the Foundation, we shifted our focus to read a cross-section of thought provoking works, ancient and contemporary, fiction and non-fiction, in English and in translation.

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