Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70830 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Caplan, an associate professor of economics, believes that empirical proof of voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy and, thus, how to approach and improve it. Focusing on how voters are systematically mistaken in their grasp of economics-according to Caplan, the No. 1 area of concern among voters in most election years-he effectively refutes the "miracle" of aggregation, showing that an uninformed populace will often vote against measures that benefit the majority. Drawing extensively from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, Caplan discusses how rational consumers often make irrational voters, why it's in politicians' interest to foment that irrationality, what economists make of the (non) existence of systematic bias and how social science's "misguided insistence that every model be a 'story without fools,' " has led them to miss the crucial questions in politics, "where folly is central." Readers unfamiliar with economic theory and its attendant jargon may find themselves occasionally (but only momentarily) lost; otherwise the text is highly readable and Caplan's arguments are impressively original, shedding new light on an age-old political economy conundrum.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Christopher Hayes, In These Times
"Caplan's willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important."

Review
The best political book this year.
(Nicholas D. Kristof New York Times )

Caplan thinks that democracy as it is now practiced cannot be salvaged, and his position is based on a simple observation: 'Democracy is a commons, not a market.'
(Louis Menand The New Yorker )

One of the two or three best books on public choice in the last twenty years.
(Tyler Cowen Marginal Revolution )

Like a few recent best sellers--Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds--The Myth of the Rational Voter unwraps economic theories and applies them to everyday life. Mr. Caplan's thesis, though, lacks any semblance of a compliment: The 'unwisdom of crowds' is closer to his point. He believes that the American public is biased against sensible, empirically proved economic policies about which nearly all economists agree. Voters, he says, are not just ignorant in the sense of having insufficient information. They actually hold wrong-headed and damaging beliefs about how the economy works.
(Daniel Casse The Wall Street Journal )

The Myth of the Rational Voter usefully extends the discussion [about democracy] by linking it with 'public choice' theory. . . . Public choice theory faces a dilemma. A rational and self-interested person has no incentive to study political issues, as the chances of his or her determining the outcome are negligible. This has become known as 'rational ignorance'. Caplan maintains that the reality is much worse. He shows that voters are not just ignorant but systematically biased in favor of mistaken views.
(Samuel Brittan Financial Times )

Caplan is right to detect a stubborn irrationality in ordinary voters and he correctly points out to his rational choice colleagues that their models are hopelessly unrealistic.
(Martin Leet Australian Review of Public Affairs )

Caplan argues convincingly that irrational behaviour is pervasive among many of us today....Caplan's point, however, is that most voters are irrational. And that is worse than being ignorant....Their irrationality comes with a host of misconceptions that drive policy choices.
(Fazil Mihlar The Vancouver Sun )

This engaging and provocative volume describes why democracy gives us far less than its promise. Countering existing theories of rationally ignorant voters, Caplan argues persuasively that voters are irrational, registering systematically biased beliefs--and consequently votes--against markets and other sound economy policy metrics...[T]his is a compelling book, offering readers a well-written and well-argued competing theory for why democracy fails and why we should limit what is done through the political process.
(M. Steckbeck Choice )

[Caplan] argues that voters' own irrational biases, rather than flaws in the democratic process, compel voters to support policies that are not in their interest. While one may quibble with his specifics, the overall argument is convincing and applicable across a variety of fields...Forces the reader to take a second look at our nation's unshakable faith in the wisdom of the electorate.
(Pio Szamel Harvard Political Review )

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully thought provoking.
This book is wonderfully thought provoking and can be summed up with an exhortation that Caplan uses near the end: "Democracy is a commons, not a market."

Under this thesis Caplan shows how economics would predict 'irrational' voter behavior even under the rational actor theory. Voters are no more irrational when voting for bad policies than are people who decry global warming while still driving to work.

Caplan gets carried away with the rhetoric of his position occasionally, but his points have that delightful quality of seeming obvious once explained that economic writing aspires to. Well worth the read.

This is the worst use of paper and ink I've ever seen
Okay, all hyperbole aside, Dr. Caplan raises some excellent points, but everything he raises has been said before, critiqued before, and thoroughly proven and/pr dis proven over years of debate. It's almost as if he cut, copy, pasted Thomas Friedman's political economic rants and those have been debated ad-nauseum in most intellectual circles. The truth is, he has a somewhat different approach to the same ideas but in the end it just comes off as parroting, and ultimately the read is a waste of time.

This is Why I am Not a Libertarian
In many ways, libertarian ideas have been winning in America. Oh, you wouldn't know it from reading the leading lights of libertarian dogma. There's always someone out there trying to turn your community into a police state or destroy your hopes of prosperity. But for the most part, free-trade ideology has been winning.

And people aren't happy about it.

This has absolutely nothing to do with free-trade being a flawed, or at the very least questionable, economic policy. No, it's because voters are stupid.

Thus, the thinking patterns of libertarians are pretty much the same as those of liberals.

A. Your disagree with me.

B. Your disagreement isn't really a disagreement, but a symptom of your stupidity.

This book simply ignores the many RATIONAL arguments against unfettered immigration and unrestrained free-trade. Gas prices, for example, are skyrocketing due to increased demand from China. Why is there more demand in China? Because we are buying so many of their exports, they are getting wealthier and more capable of energy consumption.

So gas prices are going through the roof.

Is this an "irrational" concern?

Hardly.

The argument may or may not be flawed, but it isn't irrational.