User:Xerographica/Rational ignorance

Individuals are not, of course, omniscient, even those who think themselves to be. The securing of information about the predicted effects of alternatives is a costly process, even in a world with reasonable certainty. Recognizing this, individual utility-maximizing behavior remains “rational” when choices are made on the basis of less-than-perfect information. There is some “optimal” investment in fact-finding and analysis for the deciding individual at each stage of his deliberation. - James M. Buchanan, Public Finance in Democratic Process

This greater complexity of political choice is compounded by an inability to gain from any investment in knowledge. In a market setting, a person can gain by storing food during the boom periods; it is a simple task to profit directly from knowledge. In a political setting, however, even if a person has acquired knowledge about the more complex question of "why," there is no way that he can profit from his knowledge because a change in policy will take place only after a majority of people have come to the same conclusion. Consequently, it is rational to be considerably more ignorant about general policy matters than about matters of market choice. - James M. Buchanan, The Theory of Public Choice: II

In addition to the uncertainty factor, which can be readily understood to limit the range of rational calculus, the single individual loses the sense of decision-making responsibility that is inherent in private choice. Secure in the knowledge that, regardless of his own action, social or collective decisions affecting him will be made, the individual is offered a greater opportunity either to abstain altogether from making a positive choice or to choose without having considered the alternatives carefully. In a real sense, private action forces the individual to exercise his freedom by making choices compulsory. These choices will not be made for him. The consumer who refrains from entering the market place will starve unless he hires a professional shopper. Moreover, once having been forced to make choices, he is likely to be somewhat more rational in evaluating the alternatives before him.- James M. Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Individuality Rationality in Social Choice

Where citizens have little choice about the quality of public services supplied to them they will also have little incentive to do anything about it. The costs of attempting to do anything about the services they receive are likely to exceed any tangible benefit that they themselves will receive. As a result, individuals face situations in which anticipated costs exceed anticipated benefits. The rational rule of action in such cases is to forego the "opportunity" to accrue net losses. - Vincent Ostrom, Elinor Ostrom, Public Goods and Public Choices

Although choices in the private sector are also affected by advertising and other selling activities, rational individuals become reasonably well informed about most private decisions because they and their families usually bear the main consequences of their mistakes. The incentive to become well informed about political issues is weaker because each individual has only a minor effect on political outcomes decided by the majority (or by similar rules). Hence the average person knows far more about supermarket prices or the performance of cars than about import quotas or public wages. Although rational political behavior has appeared to be contradicted by widespread voter ignorance and apathy, the opposite conclusion is justified because rational voters do not invest much in political information. - Gary Becker, A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence

Not only does a consumer have better information than a voter, it is of more use to him. If I investigate alternative brands of cars or protection, decide which is best for me, and buy it, I get it. If I investigate alternative politicians and vote accordingly, I get what the majority votes for. The chance that my vote will be the deciding factor is negligible. - David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom

People employ what economists call rational ignorance. That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why more than half of us can’t name either of our U.S. senators. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. Even if a citizen studies the issues and decides to vote accordingly, he has a one in a hundred million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. - David Boaz, What Big Government Is All About

If anyone insisted on deliberating with maximum scrupulousness every one of the economic acts he undertakes every day, if he insisted on rendering a judgment of value throughout to the last detail concerning the most trifling good that he has to deal with by way of receipt or expenditure, by utilization or consumption, such a person would be too much occupied with reckoning and deliberating to call his life his own. The correct maxim and the one which would be observed in economic life is "Be no more accurate than it pays to be." In really important things, be really exact; in moderately important things be moderately exact; in the myriad trifles of everyday economic life, just make the roughest sort of valuation. - Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, p. 202