November, 2006

The Answer May Be Libertarianism

by Jeffrey Friedman

November 23rd, 2006

The editor of Cato Unbound has asked for a “summing up.”
In my opinion, Bryan Caplan has his finger on the most important, and neglected, issue in political theory. But he has misconstrued what is revealed by his own data, and has therefore concluded that the problem he’s analyzing is democracy.
His data, like a wealth of [...]

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All Questions Answered. . . In My Book!

by Bryan Caplan

November 22nd, 2006

David raises some great questions – questions that could take a book to answer. Fortunately, that book is coming out in the spring: Look for The Myth of the Rational Voter forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
P.S. If you’re feeling bored with conversation around the dinner table tomorrow, don’t forget that Thanksgiving is [...]

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How Bad Are the Voters?

by David Estlund

November 22nd, 2006

I have mainly argued against Bryan’s inference from the supposed superior expertise of economists and college grads to their having political authority. But Bryan is partly concerned just to show that voters are ignorant and irrational to a disturbing degree, and that would be important whether or not it directly supports the authority of experts. [...]

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Winning Jeff’s Trust

by Bryan Caplan

November 20th, 2006

Jeff writes:
But while that may be an argument—in my mind, at least—for making me king, it’s hardly an argument for giving more votes to people with bachelor’s degrees, or to councils of economics Ph.D.s. It so happens that at this particular point in history, American economists agree with me (and Caplan) on a few [...]

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Why Not Irrationality?

by Bryan Caplan

November 20th, 2006

In his original reply, Jeff faulted me for failing to pay attention to how people actually form beliefs and fall into error. But now he’s switched to the much stronger claim that the very idea of irrationality is somehow philosophically incoherent:
To call people’s emotional attachment to religious beliefs irrational, then Caplan has [...]

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Truth Isn’t Self-Evident; Mistake Isn’t Deliberate

by Jeffrey Friedman

November 20th, 2006

Caplan and I agree that markets are better than democracy. The reason I support markets is that they don’t rely on anyone having sound theoretical knowledge of the sort that seems to be so scarce among both the economically illiterate masses and the highly educated elites. Caplan and I disagree, then, about whether rule by [...]

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Democratic Authority Within Limits

by David Estlund

November 20th, 2006

In his post “Overruling the Majority,” Caplan says that this conversation shows “how uncomfortable people are at the idea of overruling the majority.”
Few believe that majority rule ought to be unlimited; I certainly don’t. Some think the limits can all be explained by the goal of protecting democracy itself, but I doubt that could explain [...]

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Overruling the Majority

by Bryan Caplan

November 19th, 2006

One thing this conversation has brought out is how uncomfortable people are at the idea of overruling the majority. Even if it’s clearly making a mistake, shouldn’t the majority be free to choose?
This line of reasoning makes libertarians uncomfortable, but for no good reason. After all, when the majority votes for protectionism, [...]

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General Acceptability Doesn’t Presuppose Democracy

by David Estlund

November 18th, 2006

Thanks to Bryan for engaging my comments so energetically. In his post “The Circularity of General Acceptability, ” Bryan wonders whether the general acceptability approach to political justification that I sketch in a previous post might be a circular justification for democracy and against rule of experts.
A circular argument would be one that assumes [...]

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Our Life to Ruin Our Own Way?

by Bryan Caplan

November 17th, 2006

A number of people who read my original essay interpreted it as a defense of experts’ right to tell individuals how to live their lives. This is a good time to set the record straight. Here goes…
In one of my all-time favorite songs, Morrissey says:
So…the life I have made
May seem wrong [...]

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The Circularity of General Acceptability?

by Bryan Caplan

November 17th, 2006

David writes:
“What makes you boss?” is not meant to be rhetorical. I think in some cases there can be a satisfactory answer. My argument was that “because I know best” isn’t a satisfactory answer.

Frankly, if you can accurately say “because I know best,” it seems a lot more satisfactory than if you can accurately say [...]

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On Bosses

by David Estlund

November 17th, 2006

In his most recent post, “The Bossy Majority,” Caplan rightly says that when a majority rules, it bosses people around every bit as much as a panel of economic experts with the power of review would be bossing people around. (Well, let’s just say in both cases they boss people. “Bossing around” connotes something extra, [...]

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Knowing and Ruling

by David Estlund

November 17th, 2006

Bryan, you sensibly ask whether I can really maintain (as I claim to) that the quality of the decisions is important, even though I don’t think you are entitled to overrule the majority even when you know what decisions would be better. Do I support the democratic process regardless of the quality of the decisions?
Just [...]

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The Bossy Majority

by Bryan Caplan

November 17th, 2006

Unrelated point: It’s interesting that Estlund appeals to the quasi-libertarian idea that even though the majority may not know what it’s doing, we shouldn’t boss it around.
The problem is that very often what the majority wants to do is boss people around. If a panel of economists prevents the majority from imposing a tariff, [...]

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Question for Estlund

by Bryan Caplan

November 17th, 2006

I thought you might say that, David. Here’s a question for you. In your reaction essay, you wrote “I agree with Caplan (against many) that the quality of political decisions matters, not just the process.” But even if someone knows how to substantially improve the quality of political decisions, you don’t think [...]

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The Expert/Boss Fallacy

by David Estlund

November 17th, 2006

I argued that since political decisions are usually also moral, it’s not clear that the better educated (or the economically educated) will, as a group, be especially qualified. The reason is that it’s far from clear that the class of the (economically) educated won’t also have other traits that might narrow and damage their moral [...]

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Reply to My Critics

by Bryan Caplan

November 16th, 2006

On a superficial reading, my critics and I have found little or no common ground. Public debates between economists have created the false impression that economists don’t agree about anything. In a similar vein, I believe that my debate with David Estlund, Loren Lomasky, and Jeffrey Friedman may create the false impression that [...]

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Irrationality, or Just Plain Ignorance?

by Jeffrey Friedman

November 14th, 2006

Jeffrey Friedman argues that Caplan’s charge of voter irrationality relies on the unrealistic idealizations of economic theory and that “[v]oters who don’t understand economics because they haven’t been exposed to it, or because they’ve been exposed to it but have found it tough going, aren’t irrational; they’re just ignorant.” While agreeing that Caplan’s findings support more markets and less democracy, Friedman fears Caplan’s “economistic” formulation of the problem makes the deep implications of voter fallibility too easy to dismiss. Economics, Friedman argues, is not the key to understanding economic ignorance.

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Lineup Change

Unfortunately, Ian Shapiro has had to bow out of this month’s discussion. Fortunately, Jeffrey Friedman, editor of Critical Review, has agreed to step into the breach. Friedman has taught poltical theory at Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Barnard College, Columbia University, and is editor of The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered. His reply [...]

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Caplan’s Republic

by Loren Lomasky

November 10th, 2006

University of Virginia political philosopher Loren Lomasky compares Caplan’s criticism of democracy and defense of expertise with Plato’s argument in The Republic, while noting that in a modern system of representative democracy, voters choose among candidates, not policies. “If voters are as intellectually maladroit as Caplan suggests,” Lomasky writes, “then they are incapable of mastery of their elected representatives,” who are thus left with a fairly free hand to set policy. “What [voters] can do, though, is ‘throw the rascals out,’” and that, Lomasky argues, is good enough.

Read: Caplan’s Republic

Outsmarting Democracy?

by David Estlund

November 8th, 2006

In his reply to Bryan Caplan’s lead essay, Brown University political philosopher David Estlund argues that neither of Caplan’s proposed alternatives to democracy, markets and experts, satisfactorily correct for the problem of voter irrationality. With respect to experts, Estlund observes that political questions are moral as well as empirical: “[M]aybe . . . my morally wise mother would perform better overall than the economists. That settles nothing, since there is no entitlement to rule others based simply on the fact that you know what is best.” As far as markets go, Estlund says “Voters and market actors are the same people, so we should expect the charges of ignorance and irrationality to be leveled against people in both guises. . . . In the aggregate many market mistakes, like voting mistakes, affect everyone.”

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The Myth of the Rational Voter

by Bryan Caplan

November 6th, 2006

In this month’s lead essay, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan argues that voters are not just ignorant, they’re irrational. According to Caplan, when the cost of holding irrational beliefs is low—as it is in religion and politics—we should expect a lot of irrational belief. “Even when his views are completely wrong,” Caplan writes, “[the voter] gets the psychological benefit of emotionally appealing political beliefs at a bargain price.” But the low personal cost of irrationality has a high social cost. Caplan provides statistical evidence of voters’ “systematically biased beliefs” in economics, and argues this undermines the electorate’s ability to implement good policy. Caplan suggests we should rely “less on democracy and more on private choice and free markets,” in addition to several other provocative reforms sure to make civics teachers blanch.

Read: The Myth of the Rational Voter