Seems like a strong argument for the most limited government possible. The more that decisions are left to the individual, the more rational those decisions will be.
Re: "There are two reasons that voters do not engage in error correction. One reason is that one person’s vote almost never affects the outcome of an election. It does not pay to invest effort in figuring out what went wrong and trying to correct it."
A conundrum arises. Let me extend Arnold Kling's logic upstream. If a person has reason to believe:
(a) It doesn't pay to invest in error-correction after an election because her vote almost never affects the outcome of an election anyway;
then she also has reason to believe:
(b) It almost never pays to try and form accurate beliefs (about facts and social causality) when voting in an election.
One may then ask: Why does she vote at all? (Keep in mind that voting takes time and trouble. For example, there is evidence that weather affects turnout.)
Let me conjecture two partial answers:
1. A psychological explanation: cognitive dissonance reduction. "I have a duty to vote (and my peers expect me to vote). My vote won't change the outcome." This makes her head hurt. She finds peace of mind by voting (and talking up her vote with peers); and then unconsciously dodges the rest.
2. A rational-choice + counter-wishful thinking explanation. If a voter believes that the stakes are super-duper-high in the election, then she has a utilitarian reason to vote even if she believes that her vote has a super-low probability of determining the election outcome. (Multiply the super-duper-high stake by the super-low probability.) Now, it is plain that "the base" of voters in each rival party persuades itself that the stakes in major elections (esp. presidential elections) are super-duper-high. The psychological mechanism seems to be a deep desire to fear the worst (counter-wishful thinking). Another mechanism seems to be an irrational belief that the election is a "winner-takes-all" competition. However, these beliefs become partly rational, to the extent that they become self-fulfilling through polarization and raising the stakes.
Note: A sound polity will have a constitution and institutions (decentralization, separation of powers, checks-and-balances, individual rights, etc.), which tend to temper the stakes in any given election. But even the Founders failed to contrive adequate bulwarks against their nemesis, “faction” (partisan political parties).
Another important complication:
A voter rarely invests in careful belief-formation, and in error-correction, about complex facts and social causality. Instead, she invests in *deference.* Healthy democracy rests on wise deference (easier said than done). Alas, new information technologies and polarization dynamics favor pursuit (consumption) of moral outrage, rather than cultivation of wise deference.
Sometimes I get the sense that the author has not researched the topics he writes about and comes at these problems from first order principles that most economists find useful. While the principles are often useful, the insights seem lacking because there is undoubtably a vast literature on voting, preference aggregation, political systems, etc., which considers the problems presented above.
Another example is the post about welfare. There are welfare systems across the Western world, some much more successful (reintegrating workers into the economy after losing employment by supporting them while they look for work or retrain) than those found in the USA. Does the author's own prescription for the issues with American welfare align with the systems that are generally considered successful?
Your argument points to democracy itself as the problem. Or maybe democracy plus the shaky epistemological foundation as in todays society. There’s no going back to the mostly elitist democracy of the founding, and who knows whether that would even be better these days. What is the solution? Educational choice and reform? Anything else?
I believe my objection to your claim of voter irrationality is that it seems to undercut your point, which I agree with, that "collective choice is bad choice".
The distinction is important because if we assign the problem to the wrong place, we're likely to get the wrong solution. If we say, "voters are irrational", then we shouldn't get to vote. Period.
This is my point from that initial comment. Voters are irrational is a direct path to taking away power and rights from voters.
If we're rational, but we have clumsy methods of collective decision-making, or we're making decisions collectively that we should make individually, those are problems that rationality can address.
When I taught, I always gave the example of buying food. The more people you have to eat with, the more you have to compromise on what you want. If we collectively decide to have a class party and can only order one food, what do we get? Likely pizza... the most generic food that everyone likes. Maybe instead we could order tacos to be catered.
In any case, a class vote on the kind of food is, of necessity, going to be generic, crowd pleasing food. It's the median voter theorem. Maybe we get pizza. Maybe we get tacos. But we probably won't be getting steak au poivre with a side of freshly made pommes frites.
My point is that given the collective action framework, the pizza/taco vote is still rational. If we declare the class to be irrational, then I just commandeer the money and order something myself. The collective action problem just gets replaced by an authoritarian paternalism.
On the other hand, if we use our heads, we suggest a Bring Your Own Food party. We wouldn't suggest this, if we said people were irrational though, because we'd expect them to be eating the chalk.
Again, I don't think there's disagreement that our other rights are being taken away and that's bad. What I'm saying is that the consistent trend behind taking away those rights is to say that we're incompetent to exercise them. Claiming voter irrationality is just another step in this direction.
Nor is there disagreement that voting is often ineffective. But the problem here is that voting has become more ineffective, not that it ceases to be rational. Make voting more effective and it will be more rational.
Most (all?) voters do not research the candidates, their Party policies, weigh the pros and cons of each in order to reach a reasoned conclusion on which will provide the greater benefit. The cost would be too high to do so. Voting without knowing the benefit, is irrational. Since the voter has incurred no cost however, a vote which might/might not produce a beneficial outcome is like gambling without having to put up any stake money. If you win, great, if you don’t no loss. I suppose that is rational.
I personally don’t incur the cost of research because the chance of my vote making any difference and gaining me any benefit to balance against the cost, is zero. If I don’t vote and get my preferred candidate, then my vote wasn’t necessary, and if I do vote but don’t get my preferred candidate, it was a waste of time. So the outcome for me preferred or not, is irrespective of whether I vote or not, therefore I don’t vote - it makes no difference. I consider by not voting I am rational; anyone voting in my view is irrational. Of course some might say if everybody chose not to vote what then, to which I would reply, in that case I would vote as my one vote would get me what I wanted. If we were rational as a Body Politic, nobody would vote and that would get rid of Government.
Friedman does a version of this "four ways to spend money" in "Free to Choose".
Seems like a strong argument for the most limited government possible. The more that decisions are left to the individual, the more rational those decisions will be.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/toilet-paper-and-milton-friedmans-four-ways-of-spending-money
Re: "There are two reasons that voters do not engage in error correction. One reason is that one person’s vote almost never affects the outcome of an election. It does not pay to invest effort in figuring out what went wrong and trying to correct it."
A conundrum arises. Let me extend Arnold Kling's logic upstream. If a person has reason to believe:
(a) It doesn't pay to invest in error-correction after an election because her vote almost never affects the outcome of an election anyway;
then she also has reason to believe:
(b) It almost never pays to try and form accurate beliefs (about facts and social causality) when voting in an election.
One may then ask: Why does she vote at all? (Keep in mind that voting takes time and trouble. For example, there is evidence that weather affects turnout.)
Let me conjecture two partial answers:
1. A psychological explanation: cognitive dissonance reduction. "I have a duty to vote (and my peers expect me to vote). My vote won't change the outcome." This makes her head hurt. She finds peace of mind by voting (and talking up her vote with peers); and then unconsciously dodges the rest.
2. A rational-choice + counter-wishful thinking explanation. If a voter believes that the stakes are super-duper-high in the election, then she has a utilitarian reason to vote even if she believes that her vote has a super-low probability of determining the election outcome. (Multiply the super-duper-high stake by the super-low probability.) Now, it is plain that "the base" of voters in each rival party persuades itself that the stakes in major elections (esp. presidential elections) are super-duper-high. The psychological mechanism seems to be a deep desire to fear the worst (counter-wishful thinking). Another mechanism seems to be an irrational belief that the election is a "winner-takes-all" competition. However, these beliefs become partly rational, to the extent that they become self-fulfilling through polarization and raising the stakes.
Note: A sound polity will have a constitution and institutions (decentralization, separation of powers, checks-and-balances, individual rights, etc.), which tend to temper the stakes in any given election. But even the Founders failed to contrive adequate bulwarks against their nemesis, “faction” (partisan political parties).
Another important complication:
A voter rarely invests in careful belief-formation, and in error-correction, about complex facts and social causality. Instead, she invests in *deference.* Healthy democracy rests on wise deference (easier said than done). Alas, new information technologies and polarization dynamics favor pursuit (consumption) of moral outrage, rather than cultivation of wise deference.
Sometimes I get the sense that the author has not researched the topics he writes about and comes at these problems from first order principles that most economists find useful. While the principles are often useful, the insights seem lacking because there is undoubtably a vast literature on voting, preference aggregation, political systems, etc., which considers the problems presented above.
Another example is the post about welfare. There are welfare systems across the Western world, some much more successful (reintegrating workers into the economy after losing employment by supporting them while they look for work or retrain) than those found in the USA. Does the author's own prescription for the issues with American welfare align with the systems that are generally considered successful?
Excellent post....one of your best in my humble opinion
Your argument points to democracy itself as the problem. Or maybe democracy plus the shaky epistemological foundation as in todays society. There’s no going back to the mostly elitist democracy of the founding, and who knows whether that would even be better these days. What is the solution? Educational choice and reform? Anything else?
I believe my objection to your claim of voter irrationality is that it seems to undercut your point, which I agree with, that "collective choice is bad choice".
The distinction is important because if we assign the problem to the wrong place, we're likely to get the wrong solution. If we say, "voters are irrational", then we shouldn't get to vote. Period.
This is my point from that initial comment. Voters are irrational is a direct path to taking away power and rights from voters.
If we're rational, but we have clumsy methods of collective decision-making, or we're making decisions collectively that we should make individually, those are problems that rationality can address.
When I taught, I always gave the example of buying food. The more people you have to eat with, the more you have to compromise on what you want. If we collectively decide to have a class party and can only order one food, what do we get? Likely pizza... the most generic food that everyone likes. Maybe instead we could order tacos to be catered.
In any case, a class vote on the kind of food is, of necessity, going to be generic, crowd pleasing food. It's the median voter theorem. Maybe we get pizza. Maybe we get tacos. But we probably won't be getting steak au poivre with a side of freshly made pommes frites.
My point is that given the collective action framework, the pizza/taco vote is still rational. If we declare the class to be irrational, then I just commandeer the money and order something myself. The collective action problem just gets replaced by an authoritarian paternalism.
On the other hand, if we use our heads, we suggest a Bring Your Own Food party. We wouldn't suggest this, if we said people were irrational though, because we'd expect them to be eating the chalk.
Again, I don't think there's disagreement that our other rights are being taken away and that's bad. What I'm saying is that the consistent trend behind taking away those rights is to say that we're incompetent to exercise them. Claiming voter irrationality is just another step in this direction.
Nor is there disagreement that voting is often ineffective. But the problem here is that voting has become more ineffective, not that it ceases to be rational. Make voting more effective and it will be more rational.
Most (all?) voters do not research the candidates, their Party policies, weigh the pros and cons of each in order to reach a reasoned conclusion on which will provide the greater benefit. The cost would be too high to do so. Voting without knowing the benefit, is irrational. Since the voter has incurred no cost however, a vote which might/might not produce a beneficial outcome is like gambling without having to put up any stake money. If you win, great, if you don’t no loss. I suppose that is rational.
I personally don’t incur the cost of research because the chance of my vote making any difference and gaining me any benefit to balance against the cost, is zero. If I don’t vote and get my preferred candidate, then my vote wasn’t necessary, and if I do vote but don’t get my preferred candidate, it was a waste of time. So the outcome for me preferred or not, is irrespective of whether I vote or not, therefore I don’t vote - it makes no difference. I consider by not voting I am rational; anyone voting in my view is irrational. Of course some might say if everybody chose not to vote what then, to which I would reply, in that case I would vote as my one vote would get me what I wanted. If we were rational as a Body Politic, nobody would vote and that would get rid of Government.