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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Sat May 10, 2014, 08:17 AM May 2014

Libertarians’ scary new star: Meet Bryan Caplan, the right’s next “great” philosopher

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/10/libertarians_scary_new_star_meet_bryan_caplan_the_rights_next_great_philosopher/


Bryan Caplan (Credit: Fox News)

n the last few years, social science has provided documentation for what has long been obvious to informed observers: the degeneration of American and Western democracy into a species of plutocracy. In his bestselling “,” Thomas Piketty has documented the decline and rise of inequality and the prospect of a return to “patrimonial capitalism,” or political and social domination by possessors of great wealth. At the same time, scholars like Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright have demonstrated that U.S. public policy tends to reflect the preferences of the rich, even when these contradict the preferences of most Americans.

Some on the libertarian right have responded to this research by welcoming our new plutocratic overlords. Among these is Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University and blogger for EconLog. Even though I disagree with him, Caplan may turn out to be one of the most significant thinkers of our time.

My evidence for this bold claim is a 2012 review by Caplan of a book by Martin Gilens entitled “Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.” In a follow-up paper, Gilens and co-author Benjamin Page recently provided further evidence that American politicians respond more to the preferences of the rich than to those of most voters when the two sets of preferences conflict.

In his original review of “Affluence and Influence,” entitled “Why Is Democracy Tolerable?” Caplan greeted the findings by Gilens with a sigh of relief. Caplan wrote:

Before I studied public opinion, I often wondered, “Why are democracies’ policies so bad?” After I studied public opinion, I started asking myself the opposite question: “Why aren’t democracies’ policies even worse?” The median American is no Nazi, but he is a moderate national socialist–statist to the core on both economic and social policy.
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Libertarians’ scary new star: Meet Bryan Caplan, the right’s next “great” philosopher (Original Post) xchrom May 2014 OP
Another nutterbutter out of the woodwork. giftedgirl77 May 2014 #1
Just another punk clown in the Repuke circus. mindem May 2014 #2
Rational irrationality FarCenter May 2014 #3
'new' is a bit of a misnomer - he was saying the same in 2007: muriel_volestrangler May 2014 #4
most significant thinkers of our time! Johonny May 2014 #5
 

FarCenter

(19,429 posts)
3. Rational irrationality
Sat May 10, 2014, 09:20 AM
May 2014
The concept known as rational irrationality was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior (particularly in the realms of religion and politics) with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter.

The original purpose of the concept was to explain how (allegedly) detrimental policies could be implemented in a democracy, and unlike conventional public choice theory, Caplan posited that bad policies were selected by voters themselves. The theory has also been embraced by the ethical intuitionist philosopher Michael Huemer as an explanation for irrationality in politics. The theory has also been applied to explain religious belief.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Irrationality

It would seem to have some explanatory power.

muriel_volestrangler

(101,154 posts)
4. 'new' is a bit of a misnomer - he was saying the same in 2007:
Sat May 10, 2014, 10:26 AM
May 2014
What the people want, according to Caplan, is economic bollocks. To establish this point, he devotes a chapter to the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy (SAEE). Conducted in 1996, the survey asked economists and members of the general public questions about the economy, and found a divergence of opinion on almost every principle of policy: whether taxes, immigration and foreign aid are major or minor contributors to the nation’s economic health, whether “business profits are too high,” and whether “downsizing” is hurting the economy.

...(snip)...

Caplan’s willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important: It articulates in lurid detail the obscene id of Chicago-school, Grover-Norquist-style, free market fundamentalism (a term Caplan spends a chapter rebutting). Given a choice between democracy without free markets or free markets without democracy, many conservatives would gladly choose the latter. Hence Milton Friedman advising Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the Bush administration’s support of a coup in Venezuela.

And the book’s manifest elitism is not fringe. It is blurbed by economist Alan Blinder, who advised President Clinton, and N. Gregory Mankiw, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush. Over the last 30 years, conservatives have made political hay by railing against liberal “elitists” who want to substitute the judgment of faceless bureaucrats, activist judges and pointy-headed intellectuals for that of the common man. Yet if you got some prominent conservatives off the record—after plying them with a few drinks—I bet more than a few would agree with Caplan: Voters are fools. .....(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/3185/whos_afraid_of_democracy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x283546

Johonny

(20,683 posts)
5. most significant thinkers of our time!
Sat May 10, 2014, 10:49 AM
May 2014

He sounds like an idiot that can push numbers around a computer until they reify as actual reality. Aren't those a dime a dozen in the economics field. If he's so good at economics why doesn't he understand the leaders of the Nazi's gave not a crap about economics and their "socialist" ideals went bye bye as soon as Hitler came to power. Schacht the brain child of the German economy ended up in a prison camp for his effort. That's how much the Nazi's appreciated national socialist mixed Keynesian economics. Oh, well he's a genius so who am I to argue

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