Saturday, May 26, 2007

Who’s Afraid of Democracy? Capitalist Conservatives


In several recent experiments it has been shown that mammals object to inquality and desire fairness, sorry, only one human experiment is discussed in this article. Some economists are developing a theory that voters make bad and illogical political decisions while they make rational personal economic decisions. "Believing that “people are rational as consumers and irrational as voters,” many conservatives would favor free markets without democracy."

Conservative economists are leaving many holes in developing that argument. You can start with considering how many of your friends, relatives and neighbors generally make good personal economic decisions. Always? Then think about the supposition that logical and rational voting for the majority of the voters should promote more unfettered capitalism and more inequality.

More questions - how free are our markets? Would freer markets be better - refer to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and life before the FDA in your answer. Do Libertarians ignore the loss of liberty economic inequality can cause? Are all conservative economists unbiased researchers? Can you demonstrate that with economic arguments?

A recent conservative blog post proposed that undocumented workers perhaps could remain as permanent residents, if they lost the right to vote among other conditions. How can you tell if this is more an economic argument or a social argument or a prejudiced argument?

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