Reply #29: Your interpretation of Caplan is simply wrong

[divinecommands]

From http://campusprogress.org/rws/1909/revenge-of-the-nerd-bryan-caplan

"You don’t instinctively understand the market, you distrust unfiltered free trade, and you care too much about equality at the expense of growth. Your concern with corporate responsibility is misguided and your pessimism is just a psychological marker completely lacking reason. And because of this, we’d all be better off if you didn’t participate in economic decision-making."

You could look on Caplan's website, too, or just do a search. Caplan isn't arguing for authoritarianism. Instead, he's saying that a wide swath of the economic sphere should be removed from the auspices of majority vote. Unless you think majority opinion ought to hold sway everywhere, you probably believe this, too. We normally don't let majorities decide on the best way to build roads, etc. Instead, that's left to the experts.

Now shouldn't the political authority of experts be _delegated_ to them by the majority? Sure. Unless you think Caplan's recommending an economist-led coup, he agrees with you.

So, basically, your post was an ad hominem (don't trust Caplan because he likes Ayn Rand!) followed by a strawman (Caplan doesn't think people should be allowed to vote!) Care to make a third blunder and prove yourself to be the kind of reactionary left-wing thinkers that gives other thoughtful leftists a bad name?

Oh yeah. You already did. Caplan and other economists are highly critical of so-called "free trade" agreements because they don't think they're really all that free. Otherwise, why would this survey of economists (http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol3/iss9/art1/) reveal that an overwhelming proportion of them want the U.S. to eliminate the remaining barriers to trade?

Hm, maybe this means that the government isn't following the consensus of economists after all.