In our current marketplace of ideas, the invisible hand is not facilitating democracy by spreading knowledge and diverse perspectives to produce an informed citizenry. Instead, the invisible hand is acting as a puppeteer, manipulating voters and exploiting psychological prejudices to benefit a tiny elite. And because this invisible hand emerges naturally from a combination of psychological, political, and economic pressures, without a conspiratorial cabal or Head Propagandist, it manipulates in a way that North Korea could only dream of, and China is presently trying to emulate. But this undemocratic state of affairs is unnecessary: science and real-world experience show how we can repair the invisible hand in the marketplace of ideas by reforming the media system, allowing democracy to function and flourish.
Crooked Timber and the Broken Branch provides an engaging tour through six fields of science – social, political, and evolutionary psychology, evolutionary theory, political economy, and comparative media studies – and weaves them together in a compelling narrative that can provide answers to some very fundamental questions of interest to all who care about the state of the world and the people in it.
Peter Beattie is Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, focusing on political psychology and global political economy.