Rational Ignorance

Just reading up on some issues of human development, voting and democracies. Found the following term on wikipedia, which I think is quite applicable for a non-participatory democracy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance

This is just like the way we adopt a movie critic that likes movies that we like. In this way we let the political party, the politician, or the movie critic do the "heavy lifting" for us as we spend our time doing our job, raising our family or just lying on the beach.

That sort of sums it up. I was getting here through this link:

http://www.cidh.org/relatoria/showarticle.asp?artID=277&lID=1

which is a report on the importance of freedom of expression. One of the most important lines, I strongly believe, is the following:

"b) its instrumental role in enabling individuals to express their claims and call political attention to them, including their economic needs;"

which could be used to redefine poverty not just as a deprivation of materials and goods, but more as a deprivation of political power, resulting in the lack of materials and loss of dignity.

thoughts continue from here....