Reflections on Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter

Abstract

Putting it bluntly, this book is an attack on democracy. Nowhere, however, does Caplan come out and say that there is another form of government which works better. Of course it would be quite possible for democracy to have many defects and still be better than other governments which have more. The first half of the book is taken up with questions on economic policy matters in which the average voter is shown to give answers much worse than the Ph.D. economists. It seems quite possible that the average dictator or Prince would do as badly or even worse. The data were collected by professionals and I see no reason to doubt them. There is how ever another set of opinions on economic policy in the book: the opinions of the "enlightened voter." They tend to fall between the opinions of the Ph.D.s, and those of the masses. In fact they are a statistical creation, which I think have little real world basis. It does seem reason able, however, that people with at least some knowledge of economics would tend to answer questions in a way which falls between the views of the completely ignorant and Ph.D. economists. Since enlightened voters, like the few people who hold Ph.D.s in economics is a small group, the ignorant masses dominate in any election. We would predict from these data that democracies would follow outstandingly foolish economic policies. I would not say that the economic policies in democracies are brilliant, but they don't seem to be suicidal so the prediction is oversimplified. Alternative forms of government are not obviously better. Caplan makes no effort to judge the economic knowledge of dictators. A little more than half of the human race lives in undemocratic states. Traditionally hereditary monarchy has been the dominant form of government, but it's rare now. I suspect that the average dictator would do as badly as the average voter if given an economic test. Presently, there are only four dictators who are the sons of their predecessors, ruling in North Korea, Syria, the Congo, and Singapore. Singapore is probably the best governed country in the world. North Korea is probably the worst.