George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux offers some topical examples of irrational economic and political thinking, one related to this Wall Street Journal op-ed on environmental Catch-22s in Washington state, and the other, a Robert Samuelson column on price gouging and global warming. His general thesis:
When the personal material cost, at the time of individual action, of expressing one’s fantasies is near-zero, very little exists to check the expression of those fantasies. No matter how bizarre, inconsistent, or dangerous they might be if real-world attempts are made to act upon them, if a holder of such fantasies suffers no personal cost from advocating his or her crazy idea, lots of crazy ideas will be advocated. This fact is especially true for those crazy ideas that, when held and advocated publicly by certain people, fill those certain people with a personal sense of distinction, heroism, or self-satisfaction.
In the next issue of the Bacon’s e-zine, I’ll have an interview with Bryan Caplan, whose new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, discusses how and why democracies find themselves in such pickles (hint: it’s all our fault).