Shall We Vote on Values, But Bet on Beliefs?

P OLICY disputes arise at all scales of governance: in clubs, non-profits, firms, nations, and alliances of nations.Both the means and ends of policy are disputed.While many, perhaps most, policy disputes arise from conflicting ends, important disputes also arise from differing beliefs on how to achieve shared ends.In fact, according to many experts in economics and development, governments often choose policies that are "inefficient" in the sense that most everyone could expect to gain from other feasible policies.Many other kinds of experts also see existing policies as often clearly inferior to known alternatives.If inferior policies would not have been adopted had most everyone known they are inferior, and if someone somewhere knew or could have learned that they are inferior, then we can blame inferior policies on a failure of our "info" institutions.By "info" here I just mean clues and analysis that should change our beliefs.Our info institutions are those within which we induce, express, and evaluate the acquiring and sharing of info.They include public relations teams, organized interest groups, news media, conversation forums, think tanks, universities, journals, elite committees, and state agencies.Inferior policies happen because our info institutions fail to induce people to acquire and share relevant info with properly-motivated decision makers.Yes, disputes that appear to be about means may actually be about ends, economists and other experts may greatly overestimate how often there exist policy changes that could benefit most everyone, and contrary to appearances current info institutions may now acquire and share pretty much all useful info.This article, however, will focus on the opposite possibility: that large policy gains may be possible from better info institutions.