I’ve been trying, just for fun, to sum up Bryan Caplan’s book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, into just one short phrase.
For those who’ve read it, how about this:
The problem is that not enough people vote with their wallets.
The Myth of the Rational Voter
In
8 responses
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I don’t know about the book, but in terms of the problem at large, I’d suggest “with their wallets” is redundant.
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So what must be done to get them to do so?
Threaten to decimate them? Lobotomise them?
Fuck Caplan. He’s a superannuated teenage fool. -
If that is the case, the answer is clear:
Less Tax
Less government
Smaller State
Focus on voluntary/charity with a link between giver and receiver.
I read somewhere that: People who spend their own money make the best decisions in the compromise between quality and price. Those who spend other peoples money on themselves make good choices in quality but with poor value. Those who spend other peoples’ money on others make poor choices in both quality and value. -
“Don’t ask what you can do for your country; ask what you can do for yourself”
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Unfortunately plenty of people do vote with their wallets – it’s called the payrol/welfare vote and it’s going up.
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I’d go for “Why won’t you idiots do what I tell you?”.
Tim adds: Have you read the book? -
“Have you read the book?”
Of course not. Why, as the rational consumer I am, would I shell out for the book when the author has so kindly posted detailed summaries for free online?
Your passion for checking original source material is inspiring, though. I’ll remember that when reading your next five hundred posts based on warmed-over hearsay from the Torygraph.
Tim adds: You’ll be glad to hear then that the next one from my pile donated by the Princeton Press is Milanovic. -
Honestly I found the book maddening. It’s full of illogical and contradictory arguments, mangled terms, cultural prejudice, and a whole lot of other weaknesses. It’s also pretty scary when you really think about what he is arguing for. Like a lot of cloistered academics, he’s hermetically sealed inside his own thinking and theories, and totally unhinged from the real world… past and present. I won’t recap the whole list of objections here… but it’s on my site. (literalmayhem.com)
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