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1-Page Summary of The Myth of the Rational Voter
Overview
In the Western world, democracy is considered to be the best form of government. It has brought freedom and equality along with it.
Democracy is in crisis. Western economies are at a standstill, unemployment is skyrocketing and it’s becoming more apparent that democratic governments aren’t handling the challenges they face. How did this happen? The answer lies with democracy itself. In these key points, you will discover how widespread biases affect our democracies and prevent them from functioning correctly. You’ll find out about the hidden principles of democratic political systems and why we should trust in free markets more than we do now.
The author also explains why democracy is based on a miracle, why free trade only benefits everyone involved, and how selflessness can be dangerous to society.
Big Idea #1: The averaging of extremes is fundamental to democracy and is what makes it such a functional system.
Democracy and democratic governance are two of humanity’s greatest achievements. They’re based on the miracle of aggregation, where an average answer tends to be correct. If you ask a group of people how many beans are in a glass, some will guess too high or low, but when you average out their answers, the deviation in either direction will balance out and give you the right number.
When applied to politics, this idea shows that the average voter is not well informed and tends to have opinions that are wrong. However, when a large group of voters has diverging opinions, they tend to cancel each other out. This results in more moderate views being expressed through democracy.
The best system is a democracy, where people have free speech and can vote for what they want. It’s better than a dictatorship because extreme ideas are canceled out by the other side.
This is why democracies are better than dictatorships, because only certain people have a say in the latter. For example, when East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961, that decision stood in stark contrast to what most East Germans wanted. If it had been a democratic country, its government could not have made such a decision.
Democracy is a miracle because it works despite its flaws. The author will discuss the reasons why this happens.
Big Idea #2: Widespread biases prevent the miracle of aggregation, and therefore democracies, from working.
There are many democratic governments that implement protectionist policies. However, this is not in the best interest of their citizens. In order for the miracle of aggregation to work effectively, there can’t be any bias or a single opinion that prevents it from working properly.
For example, if people guess how many beans are in a glass, the average will be close to accurate because some people will overestimate and others underestimate. However, if we give them biased information, this principle won’t work.
Imagine you’re part of a society where people heard that most people guess low when estimating the number of beans in the jar. They’d probably adjust their guesses accordingly, resulting in an average estimate that’s too high and not reflective of reality.
That’s a hypothetical scenario, but the same kind of thinking is very popular in many people. For example, a 1996 survey asked Americans and economists about the US economy. One question was whether high spending on foreign aid was a big reason why the economy wasn’t better.
A majority of people believe that foreign aid is a major reason why the economy is bad, but most economists disagree. In fact, there are many instances where everyday citizens have incorrect assumptions about political topics and opinions on those topics differ widely from those of experts.
