Brad DeLong passes along a book recommendation.
Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter is, [David Romer] says, brilliant: everybody should read it.
But you already have ordered your copy, right?
May 17 2007
Further down the comments on Tyler's piece on education, Steve Sailer asks a (seemingly) pointed question: Tyler, If you came flat out and told the truth -- that IQ matters a lot in terms of overall economic productivity and that importing a lot of 90 IQ average illegal immigrants is the surest way to drive down econo...
May 17 2007
I haven't had a joint lunch with Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen for two weeks, but we're having a substitute meal (minus food) in the MR comments section. Tyler: Income distribution thus depends on the balance between technological progress and access to college and postgraduate study. The problem isn’t so much capit...
May 17 2007
Brad DeLong passes along a book recommendation. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is, [David Romer] says, brilliant: everybody should read it. But you already have ordered your copy, right?
READER COMMENTS
Biomed Tim
May 17 2007 at 9:39pm
Two Questions:
1) Why aren’t there any reviews on Amazon yet?
2) When will the paperback come out?
Constant
May 18 2007 at 1:40am
I’m waiting for the audio edition read by the author.
Tim Worstall
May 18 2007 at 5:06am
Err, well, yes, I have “ordered” a copy but not in the actual paying sense, I have to admit.
I’m supposed to be reviewing it for one of the UK papers so I hope Bryan will accept the loss on one copy’s royalties for the greater gain?
Andrew
May 18 2007 at 7:39am
[Comment removed for supplying false email address. To restore this comment, email the webmaster@econlib.org from a valid email address.–Econlib Editor]
SteffenH
May 18 2007 at 11:29am
We poor germans. The book isn’t out yet at amazon.de.
Bryan Caplan
May 18 2007 at 2:25pm
1. I don’t know. Who wants to write one?
2. 1-2 years, I think.
R. Richard Schweitzer
May 19 2007 at 11:28am
Here follows a post made on the VC Blog:
Governments as “institututed among men,” are only part of the social order, and the functions and composition of governments are only part of the many and varied decisions required of those comprising the social order.
It has been pretty well established (and acknowledged by a Nobel Prize) that practically all decisions are made with incomplete (and often inadequate) information.
What Hayek (and others) have inferred is that, for their functions in a social order, actors seek and use as much information as they perceive necessary for the decisions (choices)they determine as affecting their individual conditions (which include many various relationships).
How much effort (time especially) individuals apply to seeking sources for information, evaluating it, and comparing conflicting information, is probably a function of perceived impact of the resulting decision on the individual’s concern with the effects and results of the decision to be made.
The greater benefit for individuals in an open society seems to be to limit the functions of government so that those individual concerns, and the related importance to individuals of decisions are also limited.
To provide an substitute “expertise” that lubricates enlarging the limits on governmental functions, to increase the “efficiencies” of those processes, is contrary to the concept of an open society, and the decision processes within it.
There is not much “irrational” about that.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
Comments are closed.