Narrator: Why do democracies, systems designed to reflect the will of the people, so often choose policies that are demonstrably harmful to the majority? We see it in protectionist trade policies that raise prices for everyone to save a few specific jobs, or in regulations that stifle innovation in the name of safety. For centuries, economists have pointed out the folly of these policies, yet they persist. The common explanations—that politicians are corrupt or that voters are simply ignorant—don't quite hold up. If voters were just randomly ignorant, their errors should cancel out, allowing the informed to guide policy. But they don't. This deep and troubling puzzle sits at the heart of modern governance. In his provocative book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, economist Bryan Caplan presents a different, more unsettling answer: democracy doesn't fail because it ignores the people; it fails because it does exactly what they want.

Narrator: The most common explanation for bad policy is voter ignorance. Surveys consistently show that the public has a poor grasp of basic political and economic facts. But this explanation runs into a powerful counterargument known as the "Miracle of Aggregation." This idea was famously illustrated by Francis Galton in the early 20th century. At a county fair, 787 people were asked to guess the weight of an ox. While individual guesses were all over the place, the average of all their guesses was astonishingly accurate, off by only a single pound.

The same logic, proponents argue, applies to democracy. Even if most voters are ignorant, as long as their errors are random, they should cancel each other out. The candidate who is truly better will get slightly more than 50% of the vote from the ignorant, plus the full support of the informed minority, leading to a sound collective decision. This is why the "Ask the Audience" lifeline on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was correct 91% of the time.

However, Caplan argues this miracle only works if voter errors are random. What if they are not? What if voters don't just lack information, but are systematically biased in the same wrong direction? If everyone at the fair believed the ox was made of lead, the average guess would be wildly inaccurate. Caplan contends this is precisely what happens in politics. Voters don't just make random mistakes; they hold deeply ingrained, systematically biased beliefs about how the world works, particularly when it comes to economics. This means the "wisdom of crowds" fails, and democracy can steer a country directly toward policies that are predictably harmful.

Narrator: Caplan identifies four key systematic biases that lead the public to favor policies that economists almost universally condemn. These aren't random errors; they are predictable patterns of thinking that shape public opinion.

First is antimarket bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits of the market mechanism. The public is often suspicious of the profit motive, viewing it as a form of greed that harms society. They fail to see how competition disciplines businesses to serve the public good. This bias leads to support for policies like price controls, which often create shortages and inefficiency.

Second is antiforeign bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits of interacting with foreigners. People often view international trade as a zero-sum game, where another country's gain must be our loss. This fuels support for protectionism, which, as Caplan illustrates with a famous parable, is like choosing to grow cars in Iowa. Imagine a technology where you plant seeds, wheat grows, and you ship the wheat out to sea, only for the ships to return with Toyotas. That technology is called international trade. It's simply a more efficient way of producing things, yet the antiforeign bias makes us suspicious of it.

Third is make-work bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits of conserving labor. People often see jobs as the end goal, not production. This leads to the fear that technology and automation, which save labor, are a threat. They miss the lesson from history: when technology eliminated 95% of farm jobs over the last two centuries, it didn't lead to mass unemployment. Instead, it freed up that labor to build the modern world of homes, computers, and medicine.

Finally, there is pessimistic bias, a tendency to overestimate the severity of economic problems and see a world in constant decline. Despite overwhelming evidence of long-term progress in living standards, health, and safety, the public often believes things are getting worse. These four biases together create a powerful force for harmful economic policy.

Narrator: If voters are so biased, why don't they learn? Caplan's answer is the theory of "rational irrationality." He argues that people have preferences not just over material goods, but over their beliefs. We enjoy beliefs that make us feel good, that flatter our worldview, or that fit a compelling narrative. Being rational and objective takes effort, and we often have to abandon comforting ideas.

In our daily lives, the cost of being irrational is high. If you believe your car runs on sand instead of gasoline, you'll quickly face the consequences. The market imposes a direct "user fee" for error. But in politics, the cost of irrationality is practically zero. The chance that a single vote will decide a national election is infinitesimal. Therefore, a voter can indulge in their favorite biases—blaming foreigners for economic problems or believing that profits are theft—without bearing any personal cost for being wrong. They get all the psychological satisfaction of their belief for free.

Caplan illustrates this with a thought experiment about Robinson Crusoe. Imagine an island with a thousand Crusoes who vote on whether a thousand Fridays are allowed to farm. The Crusoes harbor a prejudice that Fridays are unfit for agriculture. If they indulge this belief and vote to exclude the Fridays, the island's total production falls, making everyone poorer. But for any individual Crusoe, the cost of his single, irrational vote is minuscule, while the psychological benefit of affirming his prejudice feels significant. So, he rationally chooses to be irrational. This is the tragic logic of democracy: when the private cost of error is zero, but the social cost is enormous, society gets policies that everyone, in the end, will suffer from.

Narrator: One might think that self-interest would be a check on this irrationality. Wouldn't people eventually realize that bad policies are hurting their own wallets? Here, Caplan delivers another counterintuitive blow by dismantling the Self-Interested Voter Hypothesis (SIVH). Decades of political science research show that voters are not primarily selfish. The rich don't consistently vote for tax cuts, and the elderly are no more supportive of Social Security than the young. Instead, voters are "sociotropic"—they vote for what they believe is best for the country as a whole.

This sounds noble, but Caplan argues it makes the problem of irrationality far more dangerous. If voters were selfish, their biases might be held in check. A voter might believe protectionism is good for the country, but vote against it if it means paying more for a new car. But because voters are altruistic, they are willing to bear personal costs to support what they believe is in the national interest.

When this altruism is combined with systematic bias, the result is disastrous. An unselfish voter who wrongly believes that protectionism helps the nation will enthusiastically vote for it, feeling a sense of moral rectitude for making a personal sacrifice for the common good. Selfishness could have been a brake on bad policy, but altruism becomes an accelerator. This is how democracy ends up with policies that are not only inefficient but are actively supported by a well-meaning but systematically mistaken public.

Narrator: The central, and most challenging, takeaway from The Myth of the Rational Voter is that democracy's failures are not a bug, but a feature. The system is not broken; it is doing precisely what it's designed to do: enact the will of the people. The problem is that the will of the people is often rooted in systematic, predictable, and harmful economic misconceptions. Caplan's work forces us to confront a deeply uncomfortable thought: the greatest threat to democracy may be the voters themselves.

This leaves us with a profound question. If the public consistently demands policies that make them worse off, what is the solution? Caplan suggests that we have become "democratic fundamentalists," blindly believing that more democracy is always the answer. He challenges us to consider that perhaps the optimal path forward involves relying less on collective political choice and more on private market mechanisms, where the price of irrationality is too high for most people to afford.