On Demand
Silly Voters
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Bryan Caplan, associate professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, 2007) says voters understand too little about economics to elect good policymakers.
The Myth of the Rational Voter is available for purchase at Amazon.com.
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Caplan appears to be yet another stormtrooper in the growing cult of Ayn Rand, as well as a free market apologist. Rand doesn't constitute actual philosohy, so I will dismiss that element here, but I would like to update Sinclair Lewis' prediction on the arrival of fascism in the United States: it will come in the form of anarchocapitalists and their hijacking of media (just watch Fox or CNBC).
Libertarianism= I'm a lone wolf, until of course something bad happens.
Didn't the Hurricane Katrina victims realize they should've voted for LESS government? Silly sheep.
Here's a better quote:
There is a reason for the affected profession of "anarchist sympathies" among Tories and grandees, and of "libertarian principles" by Hobbesian yahoos of the right. Among the former, one sees the upholding of the view that a gentleman's business and property are his own, and none of the government's. Among the latter, a distaste for democracy, for taxation, and for the need to consult others about the planet.
-- Christopher Hitchens
no surprise that Americans are not rational. I knew Americans were not rational after they 'elected' bush to a second term after 4 years of failure and incompetence. Even today the republicans won't criticize bush, they offer 4 more years of disaster. Many will vote in favore of this.
But how constructive is this argument anyway? We should prevent people from voting? Should some people be worth "3/5ths" of a vote?
We know when more people vote, Democrats and liberals tend to win. When less vote, Republicans and special interests win.
Please ask the guest:
"Is there any hard empirical evidence that markets produce better decisions than regulation?"
Economists, imho, tend to be short on empirical evidence for their wild pro-market claims.
What would the guest say to premium paying heatlh insurance younger in life, but low and behold the private insurance company goes chapter 11 or some convienient convention not to cover the long standing clien?
How irrational to not understand how international markets work and that your job is outsourced while chief executives get pay raises. How irrational to desire job security.
I wonder what Bryan Caplan knows about the history of labor unions and workers' rights in this country. The free-market robber barons didn't just grant America's middle class leisure status.
medicare and medicaid, and of course social security, have been wildly successful programs. And they were put in place because the "Free Market" was not taking care of the needs of US citizens. we need more such government programs, not fewer.
As for "Free Trade", it is bad for average Anericans, and bad for developing countries as well. It's all about what's good for the corporations and the rich.
When will they have a left wing economist on this program? like say Marc Weisbrot??
Caplan seems to have forgotten how a libertarian style of economy got us into a serf/lord lifestyle in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which was only ended because of the doctrines of Theodore Roosevelt (aka the "Trust Buster"). Todays politicians lack the moxie that T.R. had in standing up to big business and therefore, if we leave markets completely alone (as we do the insurance companies and look at that mess) we are heading towards another serf/lord lifestyle. Also, as automation and globalization of jobs becomes more affordable than domestic human labor, unemployment will skyrocket. Leaving us with an underclass of the unemployed, a serf class, and a lord class (executives).
Is this guy on speed? He speaks faster than John King. Makes one wonder if he knows what he's saying! Strange yet entertaining.
Voting is a privilage.
France gets almost 85% of the population voting. If Amarica achieved that percentage we would be making BETTER decisions because more voters would be engaged.
Taking the "silly voters" stance is an excercise in pesimism that hurts the country.
And to Caplan: Please don't site rising average paychecks as a positive to your theory. This AVERAGE rise is mostly due to high executives and corporate big dogs making millions more now than when corporations were more regulated and taxed once upon a time. Ah, the old days.
Economics is not really a hard science-- you can tell how ideologically motivated Caplan is. His arguments are gerrymandered to fit a predetermined outcome.
Good questions overall Brian.
Caplan, however, is a mercantile fascist.
Great: another economist scolding those of us silly enough to believe that politics is not reducible to economics. Thus, Professor Caplan is shocked--shocked!--that people operating in a political realm think politically, i.e., take politics as a phenomenon which requires political --and not merely economic--reasoning.
No one remembers that Clinton/Gore tried to institute a mere 5 cent per gallon on gas BTU tax back in 1993 to help fund alternative energy. Everybody howled and cried. And then Clinton backed away from being the environmental president we had hoped for. I think the key to stupid / self-centered voters is that the schools are getting worse (so people are less informed) and many politicians pander to this ignorance.
i beg to differ things are NOT better without farmers - we EAT cr-p!!! If we had more traditional farmers we would eat better and have far less disease. Also the environment would be better with grass fed cows not farting like those who eat grains and are overworked and never see the light of day - he's just just a classic left-lobe r thinking you see the whole picture more educated are also less educated in this regard
Kaplan's language=
"Educated" = rich. Ergo,
Rich people should vote. Poor people should not.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....NOT entertaining at all.
Just another blowhard "libertarian" spouting praise for the cult of the marketplace....but they would sacrifice us all on the altar of the marketplace in their cold, immoral and un-empathetic world view. I am so sick of these narrowminded "the marketplace" solves all idiocy.
I won't even get into why what is commonly called a "libertarian" these days is in fact NOT what a libertarian really traditionaly is/was.
This is just elitist oligarchical NONSENSE. "More educated people..." blah, blah, blah....
Yeah mr. Caplan you are right, poor people, lesser educated people, minorities, etc, aren't people at all and deserve no rights and don't deserve to vote....
WHY exactly is this oligarchical fascist being given any airtime????????
I was curious why the guest believes that economics should be the primary concern in making policy decisions and when going to the polls, as opposed to rational self interest in other fields, security, international relations, or perhaps idealistically moral responsibility? (aside from the fact that he's an economist of course)
I have always said that in jury duty, there should be a way of ensuring a minimum awareness to be on a jury (yes, elitist, but I have seen very contentious debates in jury because one person just can't get their arms around the issues). Is your guest implying a minimum intelligence to vote? I find that more disqueting than my view on jury duty.
I think most people you are talking about are ill-informed and that is a given in our current media picture - you have to go far and wide to become informed -
re Alan Blinder / Free Trade
A Wall Street Journal article (*) highlighted Dr Blinder's second thoughts about free trade - that the cost might be exceeding the benefit. I wondered at the time if his shift of view was brought about by the fact that "Economist" is now one of the occupations thought to be most at risk of out-sourcing.
(*) Pain from Free Trade Spurs Second Thoughts, WSJ Mar 28, 2007
Ugh....the parade of scum continues on this show
neo-con warmongers with blood on their hands, economic "libertarian" nazis.......
I mean could you imagine what the country would be like if this fascists world view came into being?
I think this scumbag forgot that this is a DEMOCRACY-- well, at least it's supposed to be
I suppose it's ok to have these fascists on in the name of being fair and balanced,lol....yeah,right
He is right, people make un-educated choices.
Mr Caplan should choose on our behalf, all of us in the world.
What Kaplan is REALLY saying is that the fewer people who vote, the more likely the result will be what HE (and his neocon anti-democracy elite friends) wants it to be.
I think there's enough evidence that we fill our shopping carts with the "wrong things" as well
Economist are weird
-Mr. Sociologist
To "a" I meant entertaining from the point of a musician, which I am. He sounds like a speaking version of "Flight of the Bumble Bee" otherwise I completely agree with your assessment. I can't understand a word he's saying but it is musically/rhythmically interesting.
What about looking through the lens of history? The last time we had a pure "free market" was the late 1800's where there was massive disparity in the working class and the rich, which only increased existential frustration, which in turn created the labor movements, and resulting was "regulation"
I don't know which is more annoying, this guy's ideas or his philadelphia accent.
His wikipedia entry says most of his work has been devoted to pushing libertarianism and freemarket capitalism. And, that he's heavily influenced by Ayn Rand.
Give us a break from these one-dimensional ideas.
Yes I agree, please Mr.Caplan...make all my choices for me...in fact let's all agree to elect Mr.Caplan as Il Duce or Fuhrer and he can make all our decisions for us because we are obviously unable and unfit to do so due to his superior education
wow...what self-agrandizing garbage....and people take this seriously???? I propose a different theory...the people that take this self-agrandizing elitist seriously...THEY should not be allowed to vote!
Ayn Rand hero worship blah blah.
Read "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, a much more mature work; history is shaped by the masses and "uneducated" minions Mr. Caplan.
Another argument to stop teaching Rand in high schools and to teach more Steinbeck.
This segment angered me, for many of the reasons already posted. Trevor made many of my point. BTW, full disclosure, I'm a Columbia PH.D. NOT working in academia. Caplan's definition of rational and national interest is raising productivity, stability, etc., all the conditions good for capitalist production. The education system does work to convince people these are the greatest goals for a nation. Ergo, educated people do tend to vote for policies that achieve these goals, whether they are dems or reps. However, this tends to put "profits before people." To use an old slogan.
...this is the biggest pile of bunk that i've ever heard. please have mr. caplan cite by name the studies, date and author asserts to suggest that (1) voters vote national interest versus self-interest. i'm highly dubious that mr. cave is the only economic or social scientist to "leave the university" and "survey the public" about these topics.
every study of voting at every level -- local, state, federal -- shows that voting is predictable by demographics of race, ethnicity, gender, education, income. to suggest that the more well educated votes are "legitimate and laudable and nationally interested votes" while the less educated are not is ridiculous and offensive.
as an economist, mr. caplan must be familiar with occam's theorem, paraphrased, "all things being equal, the simplest solution/rationale tends to be the best/correct one." in that vein, maybe we might consider doing the SIMPLE THING the majority of the civilized western world does when it comes to voting -- spread voting out over multiple days to literally EXPAND the physical opportunity for voters to vote! the increase in voter turnout that the u.s. would experience from such would be substantial and immediately put to rest this highly offensive notion that lack of a formal school education somehow discounts one's voting opinion.
mr. caplan exhibits the same warped thinking cloaked in the faux science of "economics" that undergirds eugenics. math, by the way, is a hard science. economics is not hard science, and shouldn't be confused as such. economics is the use of mathematics to try to explain and predict human social behavior, that's it.
Imagine a world where you can't afford to get an education or health insurance, but are powerless to vote to change it because you can't prove you are worthy, not "smart" enough to vote and you've created the perfect world for some people that only care about making money for themselves. It's the view of a heartless, cruel, selfish world that would leads to nihilism.
If we use technology to allow the "common man" to vote on more issues easily, I'm betting more money will be allocated to education. This would raise the collective intelligence so that we wouldn't have to restrict voting to only the "smart people".
Much of the study of Economics divorced itself sometime ago from the actual human condition. A lot of the profession judges the world on numbers instead of human spirit.
Andrew Carnegie treated his workers pretty badly but he made a TON of money very EFFICIENTLY. He told his workers he would do the right thing with their money, build libraries that would help them raise their plight, which was better than them spending the money on "better cuts of meat". Mr. Carnegie was true to his word and did give the money back to the public.
Imagine if Carnegie had just kept it for his subsequent generations. Maybe the totalitarian worlds imagined by Orwell would be a more efficient way to run things. Keep the greater society in fear, working all the time, consuming a minimal amount of resources. I wonder how efficient that would be for the guys at the top ?
Moral people believe in the idea of "The Greater Good" and building an efficient health care system for EVERYONE that is not run for profit but to provide the best care possible for all. We have a responsibility to help others in our lives. If you only want to make money you will end up with a broken spirit. Look at Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, they're giving it back too.
Brian, your last question of Caplan hit the nail on the head. When it comes to consumer markets, which are strongly shaped by the multimillion dollar advertising industry, we make "rational" choices, but in the political market place we are duped into making "irrational" decisions. What a bunch of intellectually inconsistent malarky. Caplan gives economics the bad name it rightfully deserves.
Once we agree to adopt Mr.Caplan's world view, we in reality agree that certain people deserve less rights than others...that they don't deserve the privilege to vote.....once that is agreed it is in essence agreed that these people deserve less rights because there is something inherently "wrong" with them....once that is agreed any opression toward that group is easily justified in favor of the elite.
This is the same thought process that justified slavery, segregation and apartheid and the opression of Jews in Nazi era Germany which lead to genocide.
Once you adopt the philosophy of putting forth one group of people forward at the disadvantage of another group because one group is "lesser" in some way or not as good...you begin the VERY slippery and INEVITABLE slope toward the kinds of horrors mentioned above and throughout history. This is proven time and time again throughout history. What Caplan promotes is a form of oppressive fascism pure and simple because tha is exactly where it would INEVITABLY lead.
Isn't there a responsibility to not provide airtime to people who promote such garbage? FOX news and CNN are the propoganda forums for these anti-democratic views.....these people really do have enough airtime already...in fact much more airtime than what is proportional to the number of adherents to such backwards philisophical views than is present in the population. Enough already. Really, enough.
addendum: other thing majority of the western civilized world does with voting: make election day a HOLIDAY. that too might generate a few MILLION more voters for mr. caplan.
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