The Modern Republican Wingnut View in a Nutshell II
Chris Hayes:
Who’s Afraid of Democracy?: Given the choice between democracy without free markets or free markets without democracy, many conservatives would cheerfully opt for the latter.... This central tension between laissez faire capitalism and the redistributive whims of a democratic electorate isn’t discussed much. But it can poke through the surface during moments of clarity, such as the last election, when minimum wage increases passed in every state—red and blue—where they were on the ballot.... Democracy fails to produce good policies precisely because it reflects the will of the majority. Or, as H.L. Mencken once put it: “Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”... “If people are rational as consumers and irrational as voters,” [Bryan] Caplan writes, “it is a good idea to rely more on markets and less on politics.”... [T]he book eats its own tail. Caplan wants to grant a presumptive authority to the consensus view of economists, but the consensus view of economists is that voters are rational, which is, of course, precisely the position he wants to convince us is wrong.... Caplan’s willingness to embrace the darkness, however, is what makes this book so important.... Given a choice between democracy without free markets or free markets without democracy, many conservatives would gladly choose the latter. Hence Milton Friedman advising Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the Bush administration’s support of a coup in Venezuela. And the book’s manifest elitism is not fringe...
