Prominent political blogger Matthew Yglesias recently wrote an interesting post arguing that the proliferation of elections increases the difficulty of acquiring enough information to vote in an informed manner. He quotes a post by Jonathan Bernstein, which expresses bewilderment at the range of offices he voted on in a recent Texas election: Yesterday was election […]
Archive | Political Ignorance
Are More Intelligent People More Likely to Be Liberal?
This new article by psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa concludes that more intelligent people are more likely to be politically liberal [HT: Ronald Bailey]. It has gotten a great deal of media attention, for example from CNN and Time. In reality, the article doesn’t actually prove any such thing. It has several significant methodological flaws. I. Conflating […]
Is Repealing McCarran-Ferguson Health Reform?
H.L. Mencken once observed that for every human problem, there is a solution that is “neat, plausible, and wrong.” Exhibit A is the “Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act” – also known as H.R. 4626. This bill seeks to repeal the antitrust exemption granted to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. The Obama Administration […]
Ignorance is Not Stupidity, Redux
Co-conspirator Ken Anderson draws my attention to Alan Wolfe’s statement that “Americans are most certainly misinformed. Dumb they are not.” This of course is exactly what I have been saying for years: political ignorance is widespread, but isn’t necessarily a sign of stupidity. To the contrary, being ignorant about politics is, for most voters, actually […]
Rational Ignorance Alert! Rational Ignorance Alert!
I hereby respectfully draw Co-Conspirator Ilya’s attention to Alan Wolfe’s witty and insightful book review in today’s New York Times of Derek Bok’s The Politics of Happiness. In particular to the following two sentences; should we call this rational political ignorance or not? Americans are most certainly misinformed. Dumb they are not.
My Forbes Op Ed on Political Ignorance
Forbes has just published my op ed explaining how political ignorance and irrationality cut across both sides of the political spectrum: A recent poll sponsored by the liberal Daily Kos Web site shows that many self-identified Republican voters hold irrational and extremist views–a finding that Kos founder Markos Moulitsos deems “startling.” Unfortunately, too many commentators […]
Did Political Ignorance Help Cause the Financial Crisis?
Political scientist Jeffrey Friedman has an excellent article arguing that political ignorance by both regulators and voters played a key role in causing the financial crisis: You are familiar by now with the role of the Federal Reserve in stimulating the housing boom; the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in encouraging low-equity mortgages; […]
Republican Voters Often Have Ignorant and Irrational Views – And so do Democrats
This recent Daily Kos-sponsored poll showing that large proportions of self-identified Republican voters hold irrational and extremist views has gotten a lot of attention recently. In the above-linked post, Markos Moulitsos writes that the results are “startling.” There are some methodological problems with the survey (see here and here). In my view, the most important […]
Obama Perpetuates the Myth of Bush as Free-Marketeer
In the State of the Union, Obama continued to blame Bush and the Republicans for our current economic problems. This is understandable for two reasons. First,the GOP does deserve a good deal of blame, though my list of their misdeeds would probably look different from Obama’s. Second, pretty much any president in Obama’s position would […]
The Libertarian Vote
David Kirby and David Boaz have published a new Cato Institute study estimating the size of the “libertarian vote.” They conclude that about 14% of American voters are libertarian in the sense of broadly opposing government regulation in both the economic and social realms. As a libertarian think tank, Cato obviously has a strong interest […]
Coakley vs. Curt Schilling
Former Boston Red Sox star Curt Schilling has been campaigning for Republican Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown. In response, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley called Schilling “another Yankee fan.” Schilling responds here: I’ve been called a lot of things…. But never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee […]
How Markets Make Us More Rational
By Ilya Somin on January 6, 2010 8:36 pm in Libertarian Paternalism, Paternalism, Political Ignorance
Advocates of “libertarian paternalism” cite experimental evidence showing that people often make irrational decisions, and argue that we need government regulation to guard against such problems. Economist Richard McKenzie challenges part of this rationale by citing experimental evidence showing that markets actually give people incentives to act more rationally than they would otherwise, thus undercutting […]
Do Politicians Have Good Incentives to Promote Airport Security?
In a response to my post arguing that politicians have strong incentives to not enact good security measures before terrorist attacks and engage in “security theater” afterwards, Orin argues that politicians actually do have good incentives: In my experience, politicians have the right incentives in this area. The American public consistently cares very passionately about […]
Public Ignorance and the Political Economy of Airport Security: Why Governments Don’t Take Enough Precautions Before Attacks and Engage in “Security Theater” Afterwards
Co-blogger Orin Kerr points out that some people claim that governments fail to take proper airport security precautions before an attack happens, while others worry that they will overreact once an attack does occur. Unfortunately, these two problems are not mutually exclusive. It could well be that governments both fail to take proper precautions before […]
Beauty and the Political Beasts
Australian economists Amy King and Andrew Leigh have an interesting article showing that the perceived beauty of candidates has a major impact on electoral success [HT: Prawfsblawg]. By their analysis of data from Australian parliamentary elections, one standard deviation of candidate “beauty” (the difference between a candidate at the 84th percentile of attractiveness relative to […]