In China, there is a sentence "public is unwise". Is true or in what kind of circumstances this sentence is true?
In the book The Networked Nonprofit, the author says "crowdsourcing is the process of organizing many people to participate in a joint project, often in small ways...crowds are powerful(Kanter.B, p106)"and "crowds are unpredictable...crowd contributions are 90 percent useless(Kanter.B, p114)". Moreover, in the book Six Degrees, Duncan says "rational agents, optimizing their selfish interests, will be led by an invisible hand to a collective outcome that is at least as good as any other...we like to think of ourselves as individuals, capable of making up our own minds about what we think is important and how to live our lives...whether we are aware of it or not, we rarely, if ever, make decisions completely independently and in isolation...in the process, our apparently independent choices become inextricably bound together(p199, p217-219)".
The same as no absolute democracy, there is also no absolute wise or unwise decision made by public or group. Imaging that in a non-profit organization only has less than 10 full time employees, I do not think that they could make a wise choice by voting if they mostly represent themselves only based on the former materials. When the group gets larger, liking voting a new president, the whole population can make a relative wise choice. Why? The mission to vote a president is for most people's benefit. As Adam Smith said "people are selfish and only make choice for themselves", the voting system insure to satisfy this need and mission.
My conclusion: whether the public is wise or not based on the situation. In East theory, there is nothing absolute right or wrong. All the organizations need to figure out it is managed by small group or voting is best for development.
Sometimes people are concerned for their own selfish interests, though at other times they may be concerned for the system or community to which they belong. It is too bad that too few realize that their own own actions affect others, creating a cycle of action-consequence. Predispositions, perspectives, and behaviors aside, when voting such as for a nation’s president, the mission of electing the best candidate for the public’s benefit may be in vain. Naturally, the available candidates are very important, though one candidate may be bad and the other worse. The political system itself may be too flawed to actualize the public good. Additionally, the public good may be overly complex, riddled with competing factions and interests, disallowing collective progress due to the resultant adversarial nature of divergent needs. While there may or may not be an absolute universal right or wrong, there may be improvement (ex. Pareto Improvements). Yet improvement is subjective and relative. If we cannot definitively determine whether decisions are wise or unwise, right or wrong, maybe we are not quite developed enough as a species to act in solidarity to make such determinations. What would you think of an individual who asserts that her/his decision in an exceedingly complex situation is wise/right? Would you entrust such a person, or remain skeptical?
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