Libertarian economist says the average citizen is too "uneducated" to be allowed to vote

[brentspeak]

This guy's name is Dr. Bryan Caplan. He's yet another neo-Ayn Randian young economist who pushes the "free" trade swill that has devastated so many of this nation's local economies. According to Caplan, the average American is "ignorant" of economics, and therefore, makes "irrational" voting decisions. His solution? Only "certain" people -- those who agree with whatever policies economists as a consensus push -- should be allowed to vote.

The idea that Americans don't vote the way Caplan says they should would come as a great surprise for the average American voter, as so many of the politicians whom are elected have, after all is said and done, inevitably adopted the very same economic policies that Caplan says they should adopt -- namely, allowing for free-trade agreements.

Seems like the "dumb" one is Caplan himself.

Caplan is currently the toast-of-the town for every two-bit libertarian and conservative media shill polluting our nation's newspapers and television stations, as this Campus Progress article explains:

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

[angrycarpenter]

1. there was a day when anti-democracy sentiment like that

was to be found mostly in foreign dictatorships. How can talk like that seem reasonable to anyone. These people would just love a dictator as long as they think they are on the side that is on top.

[Lasher]

2. Fuck libertarians

I got an email today from one who says his philosophy is "live and let die". He says he just wants the government to stay out of his life and out of his pocket. This is after he made a fortune in a society made possible by taxpayer dollars. They are all about greed. Everything else is window dressing.

[WinkyDink]

5. Yep. But he'll take his mortgage tax break and his Social Security check, and

he'll ride on the public roads, etc.

I hate his kind.

[Lasher]

6. A day in the life of Joe Republican

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

[warren pease]

15. What a great post! Thank you.

Did you write it? If so, do you mind if I steal it and send it around to some of my wingnut correspondents?

I get enough garbage about the perils of allowing a hint of humanism into federal policy. It only spoils the whining slackers, you see, so they need to sit down, shut up, get a good job, put in their time, wait for retirement and hope for a painless death.


wp

[Lasher]

17. No, I didn't write it and wish I would have initially said so.

It appears to have been initially published by John Gray from Cincinnati, Ohio at TVnewslies.org.

http://tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_middle-.html

I have seen it a few times over the past couple of years, including once recently here at DU, and thought it would be an appropriate reply here. I can't speak for Mr. Gray, but there seems to be no copyright notice either on the article or at the site's main page so I figured it would be OK to post it in its entirety.

You have inspired me to email it right now to some right wing friends of mine.

[warren pease]

18. Thanks a lot, Lasher. Over & out.

[ismnotwasm]

33. I'm bookmarking that

And thank you

[Lasher]

34. I appreciate that feedback.

I am always pleased if I can help another Democrat along the way here at DU. In an important way it is why I am here every day.

Lasher

[water]

8. That logic could go the other way, of course...

...a leftist doesn't want to be blamed for using the fruits of capitalism and the inventions of profit-seeking individuals every day (it's just the system he lives under), just as a capitalist doesn't want to be blamed for using taxpayer-funded infrastructure and benefiting from safety nets (it's just the system he lives under).

Each person can claim that his system would work better (you can't blame a communist for using money in the United States, you can't blame a capitalist for using the breadlines in North Korea).

[Lasher]

19. False dilemma

I'm a liberal and I'm not ashamed to embrace the benefits of both capitalism and our social programs, services, and infrastructure. There's good and bad in both sides. If someone insists it has to be 100% one way or the other they might be an extremist - or a libertarian trying to find moral justification in paying no taxes, by pretending (s)he does not benefit from anything that is funded by taxpayers.

[water]

23. It's not a false dilema... huh?

I never claimed it was those two choices. I simply said that it really isn't fair to blame someone from taking advantage of the economic system in which he/she lives.

[Lasher]

25. I agree with that.

When you said the logic could go either way I read it like it was an 'either/or' scenario. And when you said a leftist doesn't want to be blamed for using the fruits of capitalism - well it looked to me like you were saying you can't be a leftist who embraces the positive aspects of free enterprise.

Guess I musta read it wrong.

[brentspeak]

3. kick

[WinkyDink]

4. Being a citizen transcends being a consumer. Many people seem to me to have forgotten this.

[slor]

13. Thank you for that...

and you are right, people have clearly forgotten this.

[water]

7. Let's be honest...

...have people voted well? We have Bush and a shocking national debt.

[flashl]

14. When was the last time that an election reflected the popular vote? n/t

[Ganja Ninja]

9. If that happened who'd be left to vote Libertarian?

They're even more hair-brained than the GOP.

[RedStateShame]

10. How's this for a compromise?

A new law to allow Americans to either vote for the President or the next American Idol, but not both.

[Echo In Light]

12. Ha :)

[HughBeaumont]

11. ReagaBushnomics works if you're a well-monied bastard like Jack Welch.

For everyone else, there's the lottery.

Right-leaning, Cabal-supporting economists need to be kicked in the jaw. How does the joke go . . . "What's the difference between an economist and an astrologer? The economist is the one holding a calculator."

[DutchLiberal]

16. Libertarians are too ignorant to vote.

[AngryAmish]

20. I don't think people in Florida should vote

They have proven, repeatedly, that they cannot handle the franchise. I imagine the state being some sort of protectorate with governors appointd federally to watch over the citizens.

[Marr]

21. Economists are, in my limited experience, some of the most arrogant

people on the planet. Ayn Rand fans are their only real competition. I can only imagine the heights of obnoxiousness that an objectivist economist might reach.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

22. Government by the educated means government for the educated.

I fully agree with Caplan that most people (including me) are incredibly ignorant of economics, without realising it, and base their voting patterns on things they believe to be true for no good reason.

But if you don't allow the ignorant to vote, you inevitably end up in a situation where their interests are not represented by the government.

[ieoeja]

27. The true answer is education, not voter supression.

John Adams first rose to fame as a result of his opposition to the new king's appointment of a new judge to the Court of the Admiralty in Nova Scotia (the supreme court over the North American colonies). Adams opposed the appointment because the new judge endorsed the elimination of public education. The reasons the judge cited for eliminating public education should be familiar to anyone listening to conservatives in the United States today: public education is failing, too expensive, could be better handled by the churches or private institutions, etc.

After the judge's death when his private correspondence became public it was learned the justice's true reason for advocating the elimination of public education was his belief that uneducated people would be less rebellious. One wonders what our recent presidential libraries will yield decades from now when their papers are made public.

This addresses the current attempts at privatization in two ways. Are the conservative elite really just trying to keep the masses in line? And the next time you hear some rightwing blow-hard on the radio claim all schools were private at the founding of the United States, you now know he is lying since John Adams fought to keep public schools open as far back as the 1750s.

[woodsprite]

24. I used to work with alot of economists with similar beliefs

and I am here to say that I think all the economists I knew were generally out of touch with true reality. It's scary that they would have any input on decisions that affect the general population of this world.

[mondo joe]

26. The sentiment that the people are "sheeple" or don't understand the issues, or are

simply tricked into thinking certain things is - unfortunately - not uncommon.

[Javaman]

28. only nazi's need apply. nt

[divinecommands]

29. Your interpretation of Caplan is simply wrong

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.

[brentspeak]

30. *cough*...*chuckle*

"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?"

No, I don't trust Caplan because he doesn't know he's talking about.

For one thing, he claims that the general public is "irrationally" opposed to "free" trade agreements, when actually, the general public is quite rationally opposed to the "free" trade agreements (which he and the consensus of "expert" economists support):

When a) one side (the United States) allows in almost every Chinese export; but b) the other other side (China) places heavy tariffs on almost every American export; and then c) the "experts" laughably mislabel such an arrangement as "free trade"; then d) the general public is completely justified to be opposed. They'd be stupid not to be.

It's funny you use the word "strawman" to describe my post, when Caplan's book is built on strawman arguments -- four specific ones, to be exact:

1) Caplan: The "irrational" voting public has an "anti-market bias".

Wrong. The public simply isn't gullible enough to buy the perpetual libertarian B.S. that the unfettered, unregulated free market works any kind of "magic" -- other than for Jack Welch types, who do nothing but lay-off thousands of employees at a time.

2) Caplan: The "irrational" voting public has an "anti-foreigner bias".

This is the classic neo-liberal strawman of painting the general public as xenophobic and racist for resisting "free" trade agreements (and also for resisting unfettered open immigration). The perfectly rational opposition to losing one's livelihood apparently isn't a factor in Caplan's/neo-liberals' equation; the only conceivable explanation that occurs to them is that the public must obviously be xenophobic and racist.

3) Caplan: The "irrational" voting public has a "make-work bias".

Yet again, here's where the average Joe and Jane has a 100% more intuitive grasp of economics than the economics Ph.D's will ever have: who the hell's going to buy all the stuff which is so "productively" made when there's fewer-and-fewer people out there who can afford it to buy it? (i.e., those with a steady income well-above the living wage level).

4) Caplan: The "irrational" voting has a "pessimistic" bias that overestimates the severity of economic problems.

Ha, ha, ha. :eyes:

Go to the many now-run-down areas of Michigan (just as one example), and tell the countless thousands of newly-poverty-stricken people that they're being "overly pessimistic" concerning the economy. Please, be my guest.

[divinecommands]

31. Still got it wrong

There is a reason the consensus of economists overwhelming supports freer trade. Take your example. Suppose China makes it more expensive for Chinese citizens to buy American goods. The effect of this will be to artificially inflate the price of Chinese goods that would otherwise have to compete with the (presumably) cheaper American goods.

(If the American goods are more expensive in China without tariffs, then the Chinese aren't going to buy them, and a high tarrif on such goods would be unnecessary.)

So the Chinese are paying more for goods than they'd otherwise have to. That means they have less left over to buy other things. Meanwhile, the cheaper American goods can be sold to other countries that don't employ protectionist policies.

Across the ocean, American citizens get to buy cheap Chinese goods, and have more left over to buy other things (maybe more cheap Chinese stuff, or maybe not. I hope you're not just critiquing the taste of the American consumer.)

China makes it harder for Chinese citizens to get American goods (which is their loss.) So we should make it harder for Americans to get cheap Chinese goods? We should leave the American consumer with less money in his pocket, rather than more? This makes sense to you?

Here. Do me a favor. Find an article in a peer reviewed economics journal arguing that free trade, even when the trading partner employs protectionist policies, is a net _negative_ to the average American, and that as a result the U.S. should increase tariffs and de-liberalize trade. And I don't mean a survey showing that people _think_ free trade is harmful to them. Without an actual causal connection between free and open trade and the negative effects, such a survey would merely prove Caplan's point (which is why your heart-wringing appeal to the poverty-striken people of Michigan shows nothing -- but nice try, anyway.)

No one -- and I mean, no one -- is saying that free trade doesn't create groups of winners and losers. But even Paul Krugman warns against "destructive protectionism." He does think that open trade policies should be combined with a strengthening of the social safety net, and I don't disagree -- but increasing spending on health care, job retraining, etc is not like imposing a counter-tariff on China.

[brentspeak]

35. Basically, it someone is in favor of these "free" trade agreements...

...then they are either a) highly gullible; or b) dishonest.

The cheap Chinese crap that's been flooding our ports saves American consumers maybe only a few pennies, if at that. Why? Because the savings of paying the slave-labor wages are not passed onto the consumer. Some Chinese worker is paid 40 cents/hour to make the crap; the piece of crap is then shipped over the United States; the piece of crap is then sold in a Toys R' Us or a Wal-Mart or a Best Buy at just a few pennies less than for what an American-made product would be priced at; the corporation which is selling the piece of crap makes off like bandits with a gigantic profit.

In other words, the "low Chinese wages = low prices for American consumers" argument is a flat-out lie.

BTW, can you explain just why anyone should give a rat's-behind what the majority of economists think on this matter -- or for any economic matter, for that matter? Their track-record is pretty dismal.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. The mask is off

I've gotten into arguments with Libertarians, particularly on the subjects of transit and education, and in the end, they always reveal the underlying attitude that they're the world's aristocrats and that anyone who isn't rich or powerful doesn't deserve even their crumbs. It's always "I got educated for a good job. What's wrong with those people?" Yeah, man, it was your daddy who sent you to a prestigious college and then introduced you to people who could give you a cushy job in a growing company.

That's why I refer to Libertarians as "grown-up brats." Their views on civil liberties (great for issues that might affect them personally, like drugs and abortion) collapse when it comes with the rights of workers to organize.

[LanternWaste]

36. My grandfather called them...

My grandfather called them "Republicans lacking the strength of their own convictions..."

I simply bottom line it and call them for what they appear are-- worshipers at the altar of greed and selfishness...