Markets and Their Importance to the Electorate

I have argued for many years now that free markets are intrinsically good. I have tried to engage this issue with Christians but many are either not interested or do not see any importance in the pursuit. I know markets can become bad masters when people lack virtue. I also know that the alternatives to free markets have littered the twentieth century with more death than any single cause in human history. (Think socialism, facism and Marxism.) And representative democracy, a republic of just laws, is not perfect either but it sure beats the alternatives. Shared power is always better than control by the one or the few. Social engineering and economic planning by an elite and powerful few strips us of both human dignity and true freedom.

Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, is the author of a new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics, that has a significant bearing on how we should think about the political side of economic concerns in America. Professor Caplan concludes, in words that are not at all comforting to me personally, that most Americans cast their votes on the basis of irrational biases about economics. This, he reasons, is why candidates who oppose free markets, free trade, profits and immigration win. Sadly, I am quite sure that he is right about this point.

Creators Syndicate writer John Stossel, in reviewing the professor’s new book, says: "People tend to acquire wrong opinions about economic policy packaged in worldviews they inherited while growing up." Since people resist, and often strongly, having their own worldview challenged or changed they will vote for those candidates who make them feel good. Stossel concludes that this means "They will vote irrationally." I have long sensed that this was true on an intuitive level but the professor’s argument tends to fortify what I had only sensed but not quite had a handle on how to argue my case well. Simply put, most voters see no compelling reason to vote otherwise since their choices in elections bear no direct consequence on their lives, at least as they understand their lives. Gloomily Stossel concludes, "When irrationality is free, people will indulge their biases."

Caplan creates four categories in his book which show how this irrationality demonstrates itself. First, he writes about an anti-market bias. Second, he says there is an anti-foreign bias. (This is far more prevalent than most of the debates on the right and left realize, especially in our present heated context.) Third, Caplan says there is a make-work bias. And, fourth he says there is a pessimistic bias. (This one surprised me a good deal but he makes sense here too.)

In the first category, the anti-market bias, Professor Caplan underscores what we call the zero-sum game argument. He shows how it captures people’s common ideas about how markets really work. The truth is that profit comes from expansion and cost-cutting. The idea that there is just so much money and that I need my share of it is so common that most people do not even know they actually believe it.  They do not realize that larger pies can be made thus making more slices and more benefits for a wider number of people.

The second category, the anti-foreign bias, leads to a great distrust of all things non-American. The "them" here is anyone outside of America. Even though our prosperity is now directly connected to the global economy, and everyone can prosper in this economy, we keep thinking that all these foreigners want is our money, thus our piece of the one small finite pie. As Stossel correctly notes what they really want is to sell us their goods, goods that are useful to our lives.

The third category Caplan uses is widely misunderstood as well, perhaps even more than the first two. In this bias we believe a myth which says that what makes us stronger is jobs, not goods and services. Thus, anything that takes American jobs overseas will result in ultimate harm to many Americans, if not to all. Stossel humorously concludes, "If this were true, we could prosper by outlawing all inventions created after 1920. Think of all the jobs that would create." Indeed.

The fourth bias Caplan refers to as “the pessimistic bias.” This bias believes that any economic problem provides proof that there is a general decline in the economy. Any bad news is complete bad news! This one is widely at work right now. Even though our economy is growing some people are not profiting from that growth so the growth is not real growth at all and it only benefits the rich. (Robin Hood theology is alive and well!) Question: Are we richer or poorer than our grandparents? You know the answer. But this "pessimistic bias" leads to public support for things like price-controls, foreign-trade barriers and efforts to stop outsourcing. And this is where the anti-immigration fear also shows up, combined with some other American fears about race and ethnicity. You can argue, and you can even argue well, that immigration will help the economy and thus, in the long run, it will help all of us but people will not believe you no matter what evidence you provide for them. (There is a load of good evidence that this conclusion is really true!)

Remember the NAFTA debate and Ross Perot’s popularity. When President Clinton promoted and signed NAFTA many unions and workers felt betrayed by their president. Why? NAFTA, they believed, was a “great sucking sound” (Ross Perot’s words) which they heard taking jobs out of America. This is why protectionism is alive and well in the general electorate, even though it does not deliver what it promises at all.

Stossel concludes that Caplan’s research will not cheer up those who favor the free market and fewer democratic attempts by the general public to control the market. Caplan suggests that only the economically literate should vote. Fat chance that will happen any time soon. (Caplan also includes some other solutions that are even less likely to happen.) The one practical strategy that he offers is one that I believe we can pursue in every way possible. He says everyone who understands these economic issues should take every opportunity that they can to teach these principles to others. This is what motivates me to write and teach as I do.

John Stossel, from whose syndicated column I have drawn the essential facts for this brief review of Caplan’s book, notes that until about age 40 he had no real idea about economics either. It was then that “he started to believe