Book Review: The Myth of the Rational Voter
Recently I read The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan and I feel like I got a lot out of it, but from a very surprising direction. Like many people who are interested in economics, I'd long been aware of the idea of rational ignorance, that because it takes time and effort to become informed many people won't in situations where there is no direct benefit to them. Because the effect any given person has on national elections is utterly tiny it doesn't make much sense for individuals to invest much time and effort on learning about political issues since any good they do is further spread out among 300 million of their fellow citizens. This was my explanation for what problems there are in the US political system before reading the book and though it came strongly recommended (1) I figured it would just be an elaboration on this theme. I was very wrong, because Caplan spends a few pages near the start of the book utterly demolishing this argument as a sufficie...