There’s a symposium at Cato Unbound on Ilya Somin‘s new book on voter ignorance.

I’m especially interested in this critique: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/10/16/sean-trende/dont-voters-get-things-right

In response to the claim that voters are extremely ignorant, especially about social scientific matters (basic economics, etc.), I often see political scientists and philosophers make arguments like this:

1. Social scientists change their minds about many basic issues, and there have been major revolutions in past thinking.
2. If so, we shouldn’t be very confident in even the basic conclusions of the social sciences, even, e.g., the stuff we cover in econ 101 and poli sci 101.
3. If so, then social scientists don’t really have much of a claim to greater knowledge than the electorate at large.
4. If so, then evidence that the electorate at large doesn’t agree with purported experts, or that the electorate at large doesn’t know basic social science, isn’t all that frightening. What the experts claim to know probably ain’t so.

There are variations on this argument, stronger and weaker versions, and so on. But the basic idea is to stress 1) pessimistic meta-inducation and 2) expert disagreement to conclude 3) that experts really don’t know much more than laypeople.

Rather than challenge this kind of argument here, I want to ask a question: Why bother have economics, sociology, or political science departments at universities? If these departments aren’t producing real knowledge after all this time and countless billions of dollars of investment, then we should stop wasting our money and time on them, and instead put that money and time into things with a higher expected payout.