If People Can't Be Trusted with Market Freedom, They Also Can't Be Trusted with the Vote | Mises Wire

"It is not difficult to find examples confirming Caplan’s analysis. Suspicious treatment of the wealthiest members of society (see Oxfam’s annual reports) is anti-market prejudice. Recent populist tendencies — the US-China trade war and the aversion of the supporters of Brexit toward immigrants — result from anti-foreign bias. The common fear of robotization is the next incarnation of make-work bias. Fear of secular stagnation, ecological catastrophe or income inequalities results from pessimism bias. Voters’ beliefs about economics are systematically wrong.

Why is this a problem? People take part in elections and choose irrational solutions that harm the society. Voting practically costs nothing, but gain significant psychological benefits in the form of virtue signaling, expressing their patriotism, concern for the environment, or simply support for a given group. This is quite different from action in the marketplace, in which pursuit of gain motivates to limit irrationality and behave reasonably.

What is the conclusion? Simply put: since the electoral mechanism leads to irrational results, we should reduce the scope of political power and expand the scope of the market. And it is not necessarily about eliminating democracy, but about ensuring that the government does not deal with almost everything as it does today...."