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  • Interesting, but he doesn't prove his point

  • Mr Caplan's book is very interesting in the beginning as he takes us through research that illustrates how the average American holds biased views which influence how we perceive (and choose to solve) issues we face as a society. While I enjoyed the book for the factual insight to our belief system ... Continue

    Mr Caplan's book is very interesting in the beginning as he takes us through research that illustrates how the average American holds biased views which influence how we perceive (and choose to solve) issues we face as a society. While I enjoyed the book for the factual insight to our belief system, I'm not sure Mr Caplan proves his thesis as stated in the subtitle - "Why Democracies choose bad policies."

    For all intents and purposes, the topic is presented in three parts: 1) demonstrating that voters are irrational, that is, we don't make choices that are in our best interest, 2) case studies of irrational behavior in a democracy, and the potential impacts, 3) anecdotal sermonizing. It's the 2nd part that presents the problem.

    Myth of the Rational Voter plays by the numbers in the 1st part. Taken at face value, it's a factual walk through our beliefs and biases as captured by a scientific survey. In the 2nd part, Mr Caplan shows how these biases influence our decision making. He also shows how a Democracy (really a Republic; representative Democracy) has some give in the system, allowing better informed representatives to do what's right rather than necessarily what the voters say they want. The only conclusion I was able to draw from the case studies is that "Democracy" works better than it should - that is, better than "true" Democracy would if decisions were made directly by the voting public. If better informed representatives save us from ourselves, why does Democracy result in bad policies?

    In the 3rd part, Mr Caplan rails against the misinformed, and the policies that arise from their voting behavior in a rambling monologue. I don't necessarily disagree; however, he hasn't sufficiently drawn the connection given his arguments in the case studies, so his exposition doesn't flow. This segment is disjointed from previous conclusions.

    I enjoyed the first two parts, but tired of the waxing philosophic in the third segment. Here, Mr Caplan wanders from his derived conclusions, preferring, instead, to argue his own biases.

    

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• ― Andyberschauer said on May 26, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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.