good luck for the exams.

I dunno, there’s me and Chris Dillow, although he’s stopped posting of late, gone back to his more long term project of persuading Tories I suspect. It’s on my wish list, might put the priority higher and remind myself to buy it next time I’ve cash.

Caplan’s book is great, but I doubt many posters at LibCon would approve much of Caplan’s proposed remedy which is more markets and less government.

Nor is it a book that proves economists all wrong. Only a certain strand of public choice theory which says that voters should be rational is wrong. In fact, Caplan argues very convincingly that economic theory properly analysed tells us that voters are irrational.

In a nutshell, the argument is that people are rational in a market environment because it is very costly to behave irrationally. If, for instance, you believed that gold is more plentiful than tin you would find yourself out of pocket very quickly. In the polling booth you can afford to be irrational precisely because your vote makes almost no difference to the final result, so you can afford to make the wrong decision. “Rational irrationality”, he calls it.

Been meaning to get hold of the Caplan for ages, after I read about it in a “look, these economists are all wrong” review at maybe Liberal Conspiracy (was Natalie Bennett, remember that). Is it actually any good? The Schuessler looks interesting anyway, might try to dig that out from somewhere.