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H.L
Mencken once described democracy as “simply a battle of charlatans for
the votes of idiots.” Writing in 1937 for the Baltimore Evening Sun,
Mencken theorized that by now “the incurable idiots may conceivably
constitute an absolute majority of the population.” Alas, another
election season is upon us to prove his prophetic point.
Of
course, this is about the time democracy fans will throw out the old
Churchill saw: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government except all the others that have been tried.” But few realize
that Churchill quickly added: “The best argument against democracy is a
five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
For
those true believers who need a couple hundred pages of arguments that
reinforce the Sage of Baltimore’s and the Prime Minister’s view,
George Mason University associate economics professor Bryan Caplan has
obliged with The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad
Policies.
No one
will accuse Caplan of being as clever a writer as Mencken – but then
nobody is. And despite leaning in the direction of free markets ideologically,
the author takes great pains to draw from economists across the political
spectrum as well as taking an unwarranted swipe at what he calls
“market fundamentalists,” or the followers of Ludwig von Mises
and Murray Rothbard as being “way outside” the economics
mainstream (Caplan’s emphasis).
A few
pages later, the professor makes fun of William Greider’s
“childhood faith” in democracy, writing that if “an
economist waxed poetic about his childhood faith in the free market, he would
be tagged a market fundamentalist, and his credibility would plummet.”
But, near the book’s end, Caplan writes, “even economists, widely
charged with market fundamentalism, should be more pro-market than they
already are.”
But he
doesn’t believe they should completely be pro-market? One wonders where
Caplan draws the line, and how he draws it. It’s also amazing that the
book has not a single mention of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The
God That Failed, a book of “genuine importance” according to
Thomas Woods who describes the book as “a stimulating and
intellectually exciting interdisciplinary analysis of the present situation
of Western civilization.”
Despite
his market fundamentalist digression and omissions, the author makes some
valuable insights in The Myth of the Rational Voter, and has sprinkled
the book with more than a few juicy quotes, such as: “The trouble with
the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of
doubt,” from Bertrand Russell.
The
fact is people hold irrational biases. And they vote these biases because it
doesn’t cost them anything. So while a voter will care most about the
price and the quality of a good or service in the marketplace because they
are directly paying that cost, in the voting booth, the voter/consumer can
vote his or her anti-foreign, make-work or pessimistic biases for nothing.
Unfortunately, all of these biased votes have severe negative ramifications
for the economy.
The
odds against affecting any single election with one’s votes are
massive; thus the votes, no matter how irrational, don’t directly cost
the voter anything. “Since delusional political beliefs are
free,” Caplan explains, “the voter consumes until he reaches his
‘saturation point,’ believing whatever makes him feel
best.” Economists often make the point that being a bigot in the
marketplace costs money, but in the voting booth the cost vanishes because a
single vote against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton because he is black or
she is a woman will not decide the election.
Caplan
also addresses Hollywood’s left-leaning millionaires. Arguably, voting for
high-taxing democrats will cost Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins more money in
taxes than the average Joe or Jane. But their votes won’t swing an
election, and thus they will “pay a few expectational pennies to
enhance their self-image.”
On the
supply side, the author goes to the man who wrote the book on politics
– Machiavelli. Caplan explains that when the cost of systematic error
is high, politicians make “shrewd and clear-eyed” decisions.
Thus, elected officials appeal to voter biases and don’t necessarily
care how policies work – because voters don’t care.
Voters
don’t want politicians with economics training; they want lawyers
telling them what they want to hear. Thus, 70 percent of presidents and half
the House and Senate have been lawyers.
To fix
all of this, Caplan naïvely thinks economics professors can correct
human biases in economics class, thus making the public better voters. I side
with Mencken: The voters are incurable.
Doug French
Mises.org
Douglas French is president of the Mises Institute
and author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply. See
his tribute to Murray
Rothbard.
Also
by Doug French
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