Democratic Failure Mike Rappaport

Bryan Caplan, whose work I greatly admire, argues that public choice is too optimistic about the operation of democracy:

Public choice economists are used to blaming what they call”rational ignorance.” In elections with millions of voters, thepersonal benefits of learning more about policy are negligible, becauseone vote is so unlikely to change the outcome. So why bother learning?

Inmy book, however, I argue that rational ignorance has been oversold.Rational ignorance cannot explain why people gravitate toward falsebeliefs, rather than simply being agnostic. Neither can it explain whypeople who have barely scratched the surface of a subject are soconfident in their judgments and even get angry when you contradictthem. Why, to return to the case of immigration, do people leap to theconclusion that immigration is disastrous, and have trouble holding acivil conversation with someone who disagrees?

My view is thatthese are symptoms not of ignorance, but of irrationality. In politicsas in religion, some beliefs are more emotionally appealing thanothers. For example, it feels a lot better to blame sneaky foreignersfor our economic problems than it does to blame ourselves. This createsa temptation to relax normal intellectual standards and insulatecherished beliefs from criticism in short, to be irrational.

Butwhy are there some areas like politics and religion whereirrationality seems especially pronounced? My answer is thatirrationality, like ignorance, is sensitive to price, and false beliefsabout politics and religion are cheap.[10] If you underestimate thecosts of excessive drinking, you can ruin your life. In contrast, ifyou underestimate the benefits of immigration, or the evidence in favorof the theory of evolution, what happens to you? In all probability,the same thing that would have happened to you if you knew the wholetruth.

I am less sanguine about his proposals for reform than his analysis of the problem, but they are certainly interesting.