George Mason’s randroid in residence Bryan Caplan recently released his latest tract, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics” to an attentive, largely uncritical audience. For those of you unaware of his work or the ideological currents in that popular pseudoscience called economics*, he basically argues that democracy fails to pursue the most rational policies because voters cling to their own backward beliefs about protectionism, economic security, and their fear of all things foreign. I’ll be the first to admit that the voting public in this country tends to be uncritical and irrational, but disagree sharply with his contention that this is an innate and irreversible condition, and I take strong offense at his contention that economists are uniquely positioned to govern the unwashed masses.

I’ll stand by the rather less cynical idea that the public can and should be educated on public matters- I’m somewhat old fashioned in my belief that humans are unique among animals in their desire to know, and that political education is not naively old fashioned, but essential in building a better society.

Caplan uses the United States as his primary example of democracy’s failures, but since his argument fails to deeply consider working parliamentary systems, using the uniquely American system to make an argument against democracy is somewhat disingenuous. Large states in Europe do just fine with public largess and mixed economies.

Just because American voters tend to be ideological and inconsistent (I would argue that most Americans are actually closer to his economic outlook in their unqualified armchair support of lower taxes and free trade- it’s only when it adversely affects them that they reach for nationalism and protectionism), doesn’t mean that all voting people are uneducated, slovenly creatures incapable of governing themselves. Democratic societies should be comprised of different competing associations representing the varying and often conflicting views of their constituencies. Democracy isn’t about universal consensus or breakneck efficiency.

I don’t believe, as Caplan does, that it’s inherently irrational for voters to be afraid of downsizing, unregulated capitalism, or a small largely apathetic government. Caplan, being the free-market true believer that he is, apparently doesn’t understand that many people are, and should be, wary of sacrificing economic security for a faster, more “dynamic” capitalism. In the real world, the one most economists don’t inhabit, people actually have day to day bills, family members to feed, and extremely low job security. People don’t automatically become rational, dynamic actors because the rug is pulled out from under them, because unemployment forces them to be more flexible workers, as Caplan contends. There’s an old word for workers moving from job to job: migrants.

Which brings me to my next point. Caplan argues that the government should be run by economists and that voters should be required to pass economics tests in order to vote. In his view, all politics are stubborn backward ideologies and only the “rational” economics minded should have a say in the workings of the state. Another word from history he fails to use but can be aptly applied is technocrat, which is what the free market liberals given carte blanche to run the economy used to be called in Latin America and elsewhere in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth. The last famous technocrats were the Chicago Boys, Milton Friedman’s army of wunderkind economists out of the University of Chicago who, with dictatorial authority changed the economic landscape of Chile overnight, causing soaring growth rates before a nasty crash in the 1980s put an end to the “Chilean miracle.”

And that’s what Caplan is, a technocrat, a believer in the idea that rational economists toting the party line (i.e. his) should dictate all economic and political policy. A fascinatingly political and elitist idea, we can actually see it operating in exotic locales like China, where the economic system is literally run by economic and business elites while the day to day work of the state is carried out with authoritarian gusto by a economically weak and politically strong central government. The fact that Caplan devotes large swaths of his website to the crimes of communism makes for a delicious irony. Now the people who suffer in China suffer because of their government’s reckless pursuit of market power instead of the Cultural Revolution Caplan laments.

Oh sure, Caplan just wants a test to determine who votes, one that he claims would show the peoples’ proclivity for rational economic choices, but we all know it would look more political in reality- based on nice abstract economic models that seem very nice and rational on paper but would adversely affect most Americans, who benefit in some way or another from economic regulations. Yes, even those that slow the economy down or put brakes on development. What Caplan and others like him don’t realize is that most people want regulation because it benefits them directly. They make contradictory choices, but wanting minimum wage hikes, policies that favor US exports, and some modicum of economic security are not irrational desires. There is more to life than a fast, rapidly growing economy. The Social Democrats in Europe understand that.

But what Caplan really wants is a system that delivers exactly what he wants: a brutally efficient and competitive country that lets you fend for yourself for your own good. Fine, that’s what you want Mr. Caplan. I don’t want that, and I have to go out there in the marketplace of ideas and hope that my model for an ideal society is heard. And you know what, my model will not necessarily be embraced outright, and in the process of debating its merits and flaws, my ideas will begin to resemble something a little more in sync with broader public opinion. That’s what democracy is all about: letting different interests compete for a part of the pie. And if economists don’t understand that then I guess economists simply do not understand democracy. The failure of US democracy is a result of cynics like Caplan who see policy as separate from the polity.

Caplan, like many libertarian economists, claims the credentials of a scientist but is really far too ideological to be called one. Any sensible scientist could tell you that different societies have different priorities and organizational methods, that culture affects the way business is done, that the ideal of a perfected way of doing things is in the eye of the beholder. Latter day free marketeers have become as arrogant as the communists before them, believing that they alone know the way things should be at the end of history. They’ve become so headstrong and out of step that they’re even willing to put an end to the democratic part of the liberal tradition and place themselves on the throne of government. This kind of thinking is, along with neo-conservatism and the religious right, part of the latest challenge to the idea of fair, accountable, and working democracy.

The New Yorker’s review can be found here.

*To be fair, I don’t consider all economics to be pseudoscience. In fact, some economic models are extremely useful, falsifiable, and have predictive power. However, this book and books like it are not science. This book is more in the tradition of Milton Friedman’s more politicized popular writing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 8:38 pm and is filed under The Culture, Political Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.