Leaving the Church of Democracy: What's It Gonna Take?

In yet another extremely fair review of my book, Jason Furman ends with a confession:

Although largely immune to the widespread biases about economic issues that Caplan attributes to the unwashed masses, I find that I suffer from what he calls “Democratic fundamentalism” – an irrational and unshakable faith in broad-based participatory democracy, a faith that was not budged by reading 209 pages of reasonably convincing evidence and theory to the contrary.

So here’s my question for Jason (and anyone with a similar reaction): What more would I have to do to shake your faith? Do I need a stronger factual argument? Do I need to go after democratic values, as in Nozick’s Tale of the Slave? Do I need to build a new social network to compensate for the one I’m undermining, as Larry Iannaccone might argue?

In short, to use a classic salesman’s question: “What would it take to get you to abandon democratic fundamentalism today?” Make me an offer, I’m all ears.

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