It's the Aggregation, Stupid!

8 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2005

See all articles by Josh Chafetz

Josh Chafetz

Georgetown University Law Center

Abstract

This Comment reviews James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004). It first situates Surowiecki's arguments with respect to traditional ideas of crowd stupidity, on the one hand, and Hayekian arguments about spontaneously ordering systems, on the other. Surowiecki notes that crowds can be both much smarter and much stupider than their component parts. The Comment examines Surowiecki's criteria for distinguishing smart crowds from stupid ones. It then applies those criteria to juries and theories of deliberative democracy, and makes several suggestions as to how we can structure deliberative institutions so as to make them wiser than their members.

Keywords: Surowiecki, Hayek, crowds, juries, deliberative democracy, wisdom of crowds

JEL Classification: A12, K00

Suggested Citation

Chafetz, Josh, It's the Aggregation, Stupid!. Yale Law & Policy Review, Vol. 23, pp. 577-585, Spring 2005, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=755785

Josh Chafetz (Contact Author)

Georgetown University Law Center ( email )

600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/josh-chafetz/

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