> Even the illiterate can see the problems. But he will not know how they came to be, or how they could be resolved.
Will the literate know? It seems similar to a sports fan saying what the coach should do. They absolutely know that if they'd just do X, they'd win. I have zero knowledge about professional sports. My guess is that neither I nor that kind of fan actually do know how to coach a professional sports team.
I believe it's similar in politics. If you don't become a subject matter expert -and I don't mean "politics expert", I mean a tiny field and literally expert, like seasonal effects on labor requirements in some specialized industry- you don't know how to fix "it" whether you watch 0 or 10 hours of news a week.
What experiences have you had in the world that make you think things are so complicated?
From what I've seen in my short time, it seems like when you get "experts" in a room you get closed-mindedness because everyone thinks alike.
I can't even begin to think of an example were a voter would need to be an expert to be informed. But I can think of dozens of examples of bad policies that experts have backed. Book bans, carbon credits, moral hazards in our stimulus packages, bad trade deals, eugenics etc.
There are obvious things like "should we just blow up the planet for lolz?" where you don't need to be an expert. But there's also a lot of stuff where a universe of complexity expands once you look close enough. Things have unintended side effects, and the average voter will not and can not spend the time to look close enough to even notice that there are side effects, much less what they are or how they are connected.
"That's easy, just do X" is usually something non-experts say, me included in things that I know nothing about. I like to look into some of those things and usually learn that it's not as simple as a cursory glance makes it look. That's also why most people shouldn't be day traders.
Will the literate know? It seems similar to a sports fan saying what the coach should do. They absolutely know that if they'd just do X, they'd win. I have zero knowledge about professional sports. My guess is that neither I nor that kind of fan actually do know how to coach a professional sports team.
I believe it's similar in politics. If you don't become a subject matter expert -and I don't mean "politics expert", I mean a tiny field and literally expert, like seasonal effects on labor requirements in some specialized industry- you don't know how to fix "it" whether you watch 0 or 10 hours of news a week.