The Myth of the Rational Voter
Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
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The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack. The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.
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It's not just ignorance. Not even deliberate (rational) ignorance, or for that matter voter self-interest. It's outright irrationality. Shocked? Me either. But what did surprise me is the resistance that Caplan seems to find to this: it seems economists model people as “rational actors” and are reluctant to change that perception – or at least to discuss it in mixed company. Elitism is a 4-letter word.
Caplan describes potential fixes, fascinating ones involving markets and education, but that's just a tease. He quite clearly understands the impossibility of either. After all, what's the incentive?
This is without a doubt the best book I've read this year, if not ever.
Caplan delivers spectacularly on the title. Not only is it a rebuttal of the common view of economists that everyone always acts rationally, but it also strongly argues that humans are particularly bad in the political arena. The book persuasively challenges many common criticisms of democracy: that most voters are stupid and only vote in self-interest, that bureaucratic inefficiencies are a bad thing, that politicians are mostly crooked, that low-voter turnout is a bad thing, and that democracies aren't very good at giving the people what they ask for.
MY GOOD IS THIS BOOK GOOD.
If you accept Caplan's premise, and evidently I do, the consequences he points out are staggering. “Get out and vote” campaigns are actively harmful to society. If you're running for office, you should in fact not keep your campaign promises. It's a delightfully different lens for looking at the world, and one which puts a lot more into perspective than I realized beforehand.