RedStateEclectic

Rational Ignorance and the Science of Fortune Telling

The standard argument underlying the theorem of rational voter ignorance strikes me as more evidence for (a) academics mindlessly copying academics (including even the excellent Mark Pennington) and (b) academics ignoring the real world.

Mind you, the conclusion that voters are rationally ignorant is correct in my view, but not on account of the reasons habitually given (see "conclusion" below).

It is true, people know infinitely less than they ought to in order to make an informed choice. Hence, voting is based on nonsense. And I agree with Bryan Caplan (hat tip to Laura), who belongs to the last of three schools: (i) the first arguing that democracy works well in that it faithfully reflects the will of the people, (ii) the second school holding that democracy is not working well at all, since it is NOT faithfully reflecting the will of the people, and (iii) the third school suggesting that democracy is a bit of a catastrophe because it DOES represent the will of a highly uninformed and ideologically misled electorate. 

As for my introductory propositions (a) and (b), in contradistinction to the theory, virtually no-one is making probability-based cost-benefit assessments in order to decide whether to go to the booth or not. People participate in voting simply because they have been conditioned into a number of habits that encourage them to vote.

Elections are a festival, a virtual orgy of the unthinking, including the fact that few things are less likely than finding a voter who has ever seriously thought through the pros and cons of democracy. When I was allowed to vote for the first time, voting was to me like a rite of passage, a proof of my maturity; and for a long time I did think that my vote mattered - vaguely following the line of reasoning, if at all, whereby my party would have no chance to win if each of its supporters thought their individual vote was not significant enough to warrant participation in the election.

 

People are divided in their opinion about who is going to win the presidential election. Just compare here (Obama very likely to win), here (Romney sure to win), and here (intuiting Romney will win) - the latter with an interesting link to an article on the manner polling works and fails.

Concerning the first link, I immediately concluded that Obama was very likely to win, but do the permutational options really support my expectation?

I am an uninterested and very superficial observer of the presidential election. But, again, how much gain is there in more extensive efforts at being in the picture?

Conclusion:

Voting is simply a different form of cheap talk. You can get a big kick at very little expense. Finding out what is really going on would be prohibitively expensive and without commensurate reward, indeed depressing. It is better to dream of nicer things, as everyone else does. One votes in order to do the done thing, feel socially accepted, even important.

If voting helps you feel good about yourself, so much the better. If it does not, never mind - what cost is there involved? The rational ignorance tenet should perhaps be rephrased thus: It is rational to vote, despite being uninformed and misinformed, for it can make you achieve a desired state of mind at little expense. And since long-term consequences, indeed any kind of consequences can be made part of achieving "a desired state of mind at little expense", they need not bother the voter.

PS

Bryan Caplan as well as his rather short, yet still too long book ("The Myth of the Rational Voter") are overrated, however I do not regret having read the book, and his main conclusion, reported above, alone is worth the reading. Mind you, Caplan seems to dream of a world ruled by economist kings (like himself), rather than representatives of 'the plebs' (i.e. people who do not know as much economics as he does). However, in his exorbitant confidence in the wisdom of economists, he comically fails to recognise the wide spectrum of divergent and incompatible views among economists and the fact that large numbers, probably the majority of them support the same irrational world for which 'the plebs' is casting their votes.

Health Care - An Introduction

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

Part 3

 

Part 4

 

Part 5

 

Part 6

 

See also Reading List on Health Care and Getting Fit- 

No Encouraging Words At All

17,500 words were spoken at last night's debate. The word "liberty" was not. The word "freedom" was not.

The word "free" was mentioned 3 times: "tuition-free", "free trade agreements", "free enterprise".

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon

Hey Big Spender

Voting for Dummies

Voting for lesser evil can prove difficult when such evil has become too great in its own right. Columnist Conor Friedersdorf from ‘The Atlantic’ writes how he will vote third party:

I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.

Nope.

There are folks on the left who feel that way, of course. Some of them were protesting with the Occupy movement at the DNC. But the vast majority don't just continue supporting Obama. They can't even comprehend how anyone would decide differently. In a recent post, I excoriated the GOP and its conservative base for operating in a fantasy land with insufficient respect for empiricism or honest argument.

I ended the post with a one-line dig at the Democratic Party. "To hell with them both," I fumed.

… There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won't win. I am supporting him because he ought to.

… If I vote, it will be for Johnson. What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn't as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? By actually carrying out such a killing? Obama did that too. Would Romney? I honestly don't know. I can imagine he'd kill more Americans without trial and in secret, or that he wouldn't kill any. I can imagine that he'd kill more innocent Pakistani kids or fewer. His rhetoric suggests he would be worse. I agree with that. Then again, Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret.

To hell with them both.

I’ve written many times that “If you don’t vote your conscience, why should your representatives?”. The political transgressions appear far more grave than in the past; their existence due, in large part, to a perceived immunity from backlash. Such worrisome traits are then buried under election rhetoric by both parties, who offer up their best argument for victory by pointing out the impending consequences of their loss! Is that any way to run a country?

The trends and precedents mentioned show that elections are not about one president, per se, but the ratcheting effect of government power over time, achieved by a duopoly perpetuated by two opposing camps; very similar to one another but containing just enough variation to entrench the cycle. My hat is off to the system designers. It’s a tough nut to crack. And getting nuttier by the day.

Get Out the Vote

Hilarious satire from J. R. Hammond in response to Breitbart’s attempt to argue in favor of a Romney vote:

That’s why it’s silly to dismiss Romney as no different than Obama. Some wave off their obligation to choose with a cliché, that Romney is just “the lesser of two evils.”

That’s true, but the key is “lesser.” If you have to choose between pissing off Stalin or Hitler, you’d be a fool to shrug your shoulders and risk some face time with the dude with the funny mustache (no, the other one with the funny mustache). Make no mistake, you are obligated—obligated, I tell you—to choose between one of two pro-establishment candidates! Don’t throw away your vote by denying that obligation and refusing to lend legitimacy to the perpetuation of the status quo!

This is no time to “make a statement” or pout that Ron Paul got treated badly in Tampa. He did get treated badly in Tampa, and that was stupid and unnecessary. Again, let’s put that behind us! If you are truly dedicated to the Constitution you won’t let it be trampled on by a Democratic president in order to make some soon-to-be-moot point to the anonymous GOP party hacks responsible for not giving Ron Paul a primo speaking slot because they knew he would just repeat truths we really just don’t want to hear.

Priorities, people. Nothing less than the Constitution is at stake here. And I think we can all agree that it would be much better to have a Republican president trampling the Constitution.

Bravo, Mr. Hammond. Bravissimo.

George Obama: Barack’s Little Brother

Dinesh D'Souza writes about helping the president’s kin due to a dearth of big-brother charity:

A few days ago I received a call from a man I recently met named George.  He was a bit flustered, and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition.  He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to cover the medical bills.

… Actually, George has a real life brother who just happens to be the president of the United States.  (George Obama is the youngest of eight children sired by Barack Obama Sr.)

…Obama’s refusal to help George is especially surprising because George doesn’t just live in American-style poverty but rather in Third World poverty.  He lives in a shanty in the Huruma slum in Nairobi.  He gets by on a few dollars a month.  Obama also has an aunt named Hawa Auma, his father’s sister, who ekes out a living selling coal on the streets of a small village in Kenya.  She says she would like to have her teeth fixed, but she cannot afford it.  Obama hasn’t offered to help her either.

… Incredible though it seems, George Obama is, within the context of his own society, a conservative.  He doesn’t worship at the shrine of Barack Obama Sr. and he espouses an ideology diametrically opposed to that of his father and his famous brother.  George has experienced first-hand the empty rhetoric of the two Baracks, and he rejects it based on his actual experience of Third World poverty. No wonder President Obama despises George, doesn’t want him around, doesn’t care to hear George’s views circulated in America, and won’t lift a finger to help him even when George’s son is in the hospital.  (Read the rest.)

Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses. Are they still in operation?

Keeping Dirty Capitalists at Bay

The source.

See also The Red Tape Horse of Australia.

Death Keeps Droning On

From a Glenn Greenwald article:

In a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama’s wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey. . . .

On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them. . . .

On Monday, [Tariq] was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.

But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.

And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

The Other Class Conflict

Frau Holle of the eponymous fairy tale, with Gold Mary (Goldmarie) and Pitch Mary (Pechmarie).

Richard Ebeling, whose book I would love to read but am not prepared to buy at a price of more than € 100, has published another insightful post at his blog, where he takes up a pre-Marxian notion of class conflict - emphasis added:

The only reasonable meaning to the “common good” or the “general welfare” is when each individual is free to peacefully live is life as he chooses, and is at liberty to voluntarily associate and interact with his fellow men for mutually beneficial improvements to their lives.

Whenever the political authority goes beyond a “defensive role” in society, it inescapably ends up using its police powers in ways that benefit some at the expense of others. It is virtually inevitable that those who use political power for their own gain at their neighbor’s expense will vehemently resist and oppose any attempt to stop them from feeding at the government trough. [...]

In the United States we are in the midst of a most serious “class conflict.” I do not mean a class conflict in the bankrupt Marxian sense. I mean it in the sense that was understood by a number of early nineteenth century French classical liberals, such as Charles Dunoyer, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Frederic Bastiat.

There is on the one hand, as Dunoyer expressed it, a class of “industrious peoples” everywhere who wish nothing more than to peacefully go about their private business of working, saving and investing, and trading with their neighbors for mutual improvements in their lives in an arena of free market exchange.

On the other hand, there is everywhere a class of plundering peoples – politicians, bureaucrats, special interest groups – receiving tax-based income redistribution and subsidies, and benefiting from anti-competitive regulations and protections against and at the expense of their fellow human beings.

This is the great battle of the twenty-first century; it is what is really at the basis of all the current financial and debt crises confronting so many countries around the world. Its outcome will determine the fate of mankind for the remainder of this century and then into the next.

Austrian Economics, not surprisingly, has been attacked precisely because of its insightful and cogent analysis of how it was government intervention and central bank monetary manipulation that generated the unsustainable boom in the last decade that set the stage for the inescapable bust, which the world is still suffering from. The Austrians have also shown why it is the continuation of such political interventions and monetary mischief by central banks that have prevented and delayed any normal recovery out of the current recession.

How can the members of that plundering class, to which I referred, admit that they caused and have prolonged this boom and bust cycle without confessing the bankruptcy of both the ideas that rationalize and the policies that perpetuate their plundering ways?

The source.