Government 1B: Lesson 85 Essay – (1) “Are voters informed? If not, why not? According to Professor Caplan, is the problem ignorance or irrationality?” (2) “Professor Casey claims that the idea of political representation is an empty one. How does he defend his argument?”

More than 9 out of 10 voters are uninformed. Voters are uninformed because they would rather spend their time doing other things than educating themselves on politics. This is because they are not immediately and directly affected by their votes. Caplan said irrationality was the problem. It is obvious that an uninformed voter won’t flip a coin to decide who they vote for. They vote with bias. Most Americans are poorly educated on markets, so they will tend to vote against the free market.

“Political representation” is meaningless. A politician can’t represent more than 50,000 people, or even 1,000. How can a person represent people he has never met? He can’t. A representative must do exactly as his principle tells him to. This is impossible if you have 100 different principles.