The study of human institutions is always a search for the most tolerable imperfections.
Richard A. Epstein
The Classical Liberal Constitution (1/2), The Case for Classical Liberalism, Classical Liberal vs.Libertarian vs. Anarcho-Capitalist, Cheese and Liberty.
Image credit.
I cannot find the post written, I suspect, at the beginning of Obama's first term, in which I prognosticated that the political mood in America was soon going to experience a depressive dent from stark disillusionment about the character of Obama and his policies. Much later than I had expected the disillusionment seems to be setting in.
Remember President Barack Obama's mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with his vow "If you like your plan . . ." I keep remembering Obama's account of his mother being denied coverage by her insurance company as she lay dying of cancer.
The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a "pre-existing condition" and refused to pay for her treatment. In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: "For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that."
There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president's mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan that would have paid some of her other expenses.
The White House did not deny Scott's account, but shrugged it off as something that had happened long ago. Not so long that it couldn't be milked one last time though, for a 2012 campaign film. In "The Road We've Traveled," the message remained unchanged -- a greedy insurance company had cut off Obama's mother at her moment of maximum vulnerability, and it cost Dunham her life.
Glenn Greenwald has revealed that a man named Edward Snowden is the NSA whistleblower. You can read the article on the Guardian's site.
My small discovery? He donated to Ron Paul in the 2012 campaign, which will no doubt be used in the savage smear campaign scheduled to begin shortly.
*********
This is an interesting election story, from my standpoint, because it happened in my back yard. In South Carolina politics, one can find the goodest of the Good Ol’ Boys. One in particular found himself too good to be true. Enter the antagonist of our tale: State Senator Jake Knotts, who’s held the seat since 2002.
Senator Knotts found himself in a rather unusual position heading into the election due to his boastful display of resistance to a cause. What cause? Only the reinstating of between 180 and 250 state and local candidates who were removed from South Carolina ballots due to a filing technicality. In SC, you have to submit an ethics statement at the same time you file your declaration for candidacy. Apparently, this was unknown to the hundreds of filers, while the incumbents already had theirs on file.
It is believed the blocking maneuver was orchestrated in part by Sen. Knotts, and made even more believable when one learns that his popular opponent was kicked off the ballot because of it. Enter our protagonist: Katrina Shealy, long-time Midlands resident and tea-party activist who challenged Knotts back in 2008.
When news of this red-taped gatekeeping ploy started spreading, an effort was made to bring forth a resolution for reinstatement. Such a move would require senators to suspend the rules. Senator Knotts responded that if senators did suspend the rules, he would introduce a pile of irrelevant amendments in order to stall the bill permanently. It is at this point that he went too far, because he let fly a boast of such magnitude that it became an instant classic – not to mention a rallying cry for Shealy’s supporters. Senator Knotts declared himself “in the catbird seat”.
"The catbird seat" is a phrase which means to be in an advantageous or prominent position. The catbird is real, and it always seeks out the highest point around from which to bellow a tune at sunrise, thus staking its territory. It is from this lofty height that Senator Knotts set himself up for the fall; from catbird to sitting duck with but one utterance too many.
While many candidates could not get on the ballot, Katrina Shealy whipped up a successful effort to become a petition candidate, foiling Knotts’ plan to coast into another term.
Along with the pertinent emails crisscrossing the state could be found this picture from the old “Dukes of Hazzard” show:
It was a perfect storm of political misstepping. Boy, did he step in it. Mrs. Shealy won the election with 51% of the vote.
I can’t help but wonder what will become of the catbird, now ousted by the Kat. It’s not as if all the candidates got back on the ballot. Incumbents from both sides of the aisle in South Carolina benefitted from Senator Knotts’ shenanigans. He was the fall guy, but I get the feeling he’ll do alright. In a certain sense, he’s still singing.
The 2012 presidential election numbers:
% of eligible voters voting for No One: 46%
% of eligible voters voting for Obama: 28%
% of eligible voters voting for Romney: 26%
% of U.S. population voting for No One: 63%
% of U.S. population voting for Obama: 19%
% of U.S. population voting for Romney: 18%
By all accounts, this 'No One' fellow should be president.
Looking at it a different way, 2/5 of the population fought to become the 1/5 empowering their candidate to rule over the remaining 4/5. Or, by voter-eligible population, roughly 1/2 of the eligible voters fought to become the 1/4 empowering their candidate to rule over the remaining 4/5 of us.
S
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.o, we have tyranny of the minority. Probably differs very little from majority rule.
11/07/2012
11/04/2012
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. 11/01/2012
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