A review of The Myth of the Rational Voter:
Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
(Authors: Bryan Caplan)
In his critique of democracy, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan asserts that voters are worse than ignorant – they are irrational, and vote accordingly. His focus, unsurprisingly, is on economics:
The reason why I emphasize economics is that it is at the heart of most modern policy disputes. Regulation, taxes, subsidies—they all hinge on beliefs about how policy affects economic outcomes. The modal respondent in the National Election Studies ranks economic issues as “the most important problem” in most election years. In fact, if you classify “social welfare” issues like welfare, the environment, and health care as economic, then economic issues were “the most important problem” in every election year from 1972 to 2000. Biased beliefs about economics make democracy worse at what it does most.
