Bryan Caplan wrote:
> Now maybe you accept this, and think yourself part of, or advisor to, an
> elite empowered to make ordinary people do things that are good for them,
> whether they like it or not.
I think that what Bill might say is that even though people under-invest
in their own education, they are in fact quite willing to vote for
education spending. He might even suggest that qua voters, people
recognize and adjust for their failings as consumers. Akerlof and
Dickens make a similar argument about retirement savings in *An
Economist's Book of Tales*.
I know that Bryan Caplan would say that people as consumers and people as
voters are just two different sets of preferences, and there is no particular
reason to expect much consistency between them. But that's a pretty unusual
position, so I didn't necessarily expect Bill to agree with it. The theory
that people as voters recognize and adjust for their failings as consumers
works a lot better for self-control problems than for ignorance problems.
If people as voters know that people as consumers should get more college,
then why don't they just go get more college as consumers?
> But here's the
> crucial question: how sure are you that you and your fellow advisors, and
> the elites you advise, are substantially less irrational in this process of
> making ordinary people do things that are good for them? Can't elite
> advisors be irrational too?
I think Bill would say that he's pretty sure. He's seen the data,
crunched the numbers, read the literature, etc. If you feel comfortable
failing people on their exams, why shouldn't you feel comfortable giving
them a failing grade on their decision-making outside of the classroom?
But under the theories of irrationality that the topic here, people can be
quite wrong, and irrationally wrong, even when they feel comfortable and
feel pretty sure. If you're going to posit an irrational ability to reason
and accept advise in ordinary people, you must be willing to posit such
phenomena in elites and their advisors. At which point just feeling sure
is not enough.
Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
