Caplan, Bryan. (1971) 'The Myth of the Rational Voter'. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Caplan, Bryan. (1971) 'The Myth of the Rational Voter'. Princeton: Princeton UP.

• Some theorists argue that the present democratic malaise is just a passing trend associated with slick monied politics, and will pass if more direct democratic mechanisms are introduced. However, Mr. Caplan argues that voter apathy is a consequence of modern democracy in the form of 'rational ignorance' (5).
  
  
• The author notes that democracy with 99% ignorance functions a lot like democracy with a fully informed populace, because since everyone else's vote is random the candidate who convinces the most intelligent people will win most of the time (7).
  Mr. Caplan refers to this phenomenon as the 'Miracle of Aggregation'. This argument has an enormous number of problems, including the fact that voters are gradations of ignorance, people are not exact randomizers, and the fact that intelligent people can reasonable disagree on fundamental policy points.
• The author argues that the only reason democracy does not match the miracle of aggregation is because voters do make systematic errors (10). The author identifies four main areas of systematic bias:
  Anti-market bias, in favor of government intervention  and against deregulation.Anti-foreigner bias, against interactions with the outside world and international trade in particular.Make-work bias, which equates prosperity the numbers of people employed rather than production or actual value of work done.Pessimistic bias, which predicts situations will become worst than they presently are.
  
  
• The author includes several lengthy segments reconciling his theory with other theories and showing how ignorant everyone is in general. Additionally, he quotes a great number of libertarian thinkers.
• Useful statement that "The difference between one’s potential living standard and his actual living standard is the full price of his ideological stance" (17). The example of Crusoe's racism excluding natives from farming is used as an example of these ideological costs.
• The lack of individual choice in the face of mass politics -- basically the fact that individual votes don't matter -- means that ideological costs are borne by a massive amount, leaving individual cost small and insignificant in choice making (18).
• Bryan Caplan can bite me