What has gotten into me? I’ve finished 4 books within the last 2 weeks, if not the last 8 days. The good news is that I have fewer unread books lying around. Also, because I’m going to review those books, you’ll get to benefit from my experience. The bad news is that 2 of the books were received in the mail just this week, which means that my pile of unread books is still not much reduced. I’ll try to keep the reviews short and concise, because one thing worse than overly-long, boring book is an overly-long, poorly-written, boring review.
Today I’ll review my favorite of the 4, Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Caplan basically argues that, taken as a whole, people are biased, people are irrational when voting (which contradicts most modern theories), and that human irrationality is a function of cost. This seems like it should be common sense, but it is not. It then follows that since there is practically no cost to voting any given way, that democracies make bad decisions. Caplan compares the situation, to that of Oedipus; people want both programs that will lead to bad results as well as good results, which means that politicians are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. From this, among other things, it comes out that it’s a really bad idea to let encourage stupid people to vote.
All in all, I liked this book the most of the 4 because I feel it taught me the most. It has given me some things to think about. The book is somewhat dense which makes for slow and thoughtful reading. If your not just a nerd, but a nerd like me, then I recommend that you get your hands on the it, and quickly. Otherwise, I definitely don’t recommend buying a copy and warn you that you might just fall asleep reading it if you find it in your possession.
