Mr. Will, you have to find democracy to test your thesis

The price of political ignorance: More government

In “Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter” (Stanford University Press), Ilya Somin of George Mason University law school argues that an individual’s ignorance of public affairs is rational because the likelihood of his or her vote being decisive in an election is vanishingly small. The small incentives to become informed include reducing one’s susceptibility to deceptions, misinformation and propaganda. And if remaining ignorant is rational individual behavior, it has likely destructive collective outcomes.

It is not smaller government, it is government matched to fair political districts. Ignorance is imperfect communications. In California I know we have imperfect communications because our public schools teach fantasies about DC. They even teach that Californians have a fair vote in DC! The fact is, in California we have absolutely no contact with DC, until some bozo pops up with a train deal or a education deal; generally some grand scheme in which Californians had no part of, it just shows up!

Here is a gem from Somin at George Mason:

And with “confirmation bias,” many people use political information to reinforce their preexisting views.

And another:

Despite dramatic expansions of education and information sources, abundant evidence shows the scope of political ignorance is remarkably persistent over time.

Well, I might suggest that George Mason conduct a study of democracies in which fair voting is quite distorted. Berkeley isn't going to do it, Mason U is the home of public choice, no? Suggest that the folks at Mason look at value added government in a mal proportioned government system like the USA. You folks could very well win some bananas. What we really want to know is how to compute the optimum sizing of political districts in a value added chain such that communications is maximized. Experts on public choice should be able to solve that.

En el estado de California, que son ignorantes acerca de Washington DC debido a que no realice una buena votación del Senado.