Something someone once said has stuck with me since I was a teen. I can’t even remember where it was that I first heard it, but I’ve always found the saying both entertaining and enlightening. “An ‘ex’ is a has-been, and a ‘spert’ is just a drip of water.”
Maybe others find it a little less humorous, but it has always entertained me.
We are shaped in our thoughts and opinions by two things: our knowledge and our experiences. No one has ever had the exact same set of knowledge and experiences each of us possesses. Therefore, to some degree, we are all experts. However, there is good reason to place a little emphasis, when forming opinions, on the thoughts and opinions of people who might have more knowledge and experience in certain areas. It only makes sense to partially rely on the opinions of those who have learned more on a given topic than we have ourselves. I’ve never been an astronaut. If, at some point, Space-X decided it would be a good idea to test a space capsule with a slightly overweight, middle-aged man that is way out of shape, then I think I would rely on former astronauts to give me some good advice on how to handle it. I just don’t have much to draw from on that.
The problem comes when we rely almost entirely on expert opinion.
Experts may have more knowledge and experience than we do in particular areas, but that doesn’t mean they are always right. At one point, as we know form history, the experts overwhelmingly believed the Earth was flat. Expert doctors once believed leeches would alleviate most illnesses. Experts once believed a little cyanide was alright to make a lady pale and beautiful. It is a fallacy to make arguments solely on expert opinion. All too often people debating a topic will say something like “Almost all experts agree that…” Or they might say, “Your experts say x, but there are more experts that say y.” If we all relied on the consensus of experts to determine all we do and say, in every area where experts have misjudged, we would all be universally wrong. In fact, I have made a lot more money in the stock markets investing against the experts than I have investing with them.
There are also the people who say something like, “You just have no idea about x, because you haven’t lived it. You haven’t experienced what I have experienced.” I understand and empathize with these sorts of statements more. I’ve noticed myself using the same pattern of thought as this many times before. However, it is very important to understand that, while someone who experiences something generally has a better understanding of it, this does not exclude another person from forming an opposing opinion. There is good reason why victims of crimes do not sit as members of a jury on their own victimization. Such opinions coming from experience should always carry extra weight, but they are also biased. Unbiased opinion should never be entirely excluded.
Now, I’m going to explain why none of the above really matters when it comes to how we govern and restrict ourselves in actions and behaviors, and thoughts and opinions. Most governance comes from an elected or selected small group of individual experts who determine what is best for everyone else. Usually, representatives are elected to a governing body, and some people are appointed to various agencies, all to make rules and laws that are supposed to represent the thoughts and opinions of the people who are being governed. At least, that’s how a representative form go government usually works, and it isn’t an entirely bad process. If authority is granted by the people, it makes sense that the authority will be used.
The vast majority of libertarians believe that by decentralizing this authority away from government and ceding it with the people allows for the combined expertise of everyone. There is no better expert than the entire knowledge and experience of an entire population. The only way to combine the vastness of this expertise is to shrink the size of government to a point that allows people maximum freedom to pursue their own individual opinions. When there is a marketplace for ideas, the best ones grow and the weak ones die out. Majority opinions are irrelevant in how a society governs itself, because majority opinion can never approach the strength of the entirety of the populace. And, choosing a select few individuals to make important decisions for everyone is even less effective.
Governments are good for giving a framework for individual freedom to flourish, and to protect from fraud, theft, and aggression. It is freedom of individuals, all working to find their own opinions and discoveries that advances society best, and it is freedom that best determines what works best for each one of us – as individuals. The mass of individuals exploring through the open marketplace of ideas provides more knowledge and expertise than any other system. No one should ever be excluded form having an opinion on any topic, and neither experts with authority nor majority opinion should ever have any relevance to government. The beauty of it all is that by allowing individuals to pursue their own expertise, there is greater expertise available overall, and society advances in its ideas at a superior rate to anything else. Everyone’s opinion matters, wrong or right, and liberty is the only way to enforce the right to opinion and thought. Historically, it has always been the small dissenting voices that have given us the greatest advancements, the most innovation, and the greatest productivity.
Featured image: Government of Russia
Danny Chabino
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