Ȃȁȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophypersonality out of whim.ȈHis position is different from that of people
who would reap concentrated benefits from particular programs and have
good prospects of promoting governmentactivismin their favor. Average
and special-interest voters alike, though, enjoy an apparent freedom from
personal responsibility in the voting booth; each is acting anonymously
along with many others.
It is doubtful that businessmen, as such, have any strong interest in
working to limit government intervention. Just because they are the key
actors in a free-market economy, it does not follow that the individual
businessman finds it in his self-interest to work to preserve such an econ-
omy. Businessmen can cope with regulation. Its burdens may not be much
worse than those of competition, which, anyway, some kinds of regula-
tion restrain. Ļe prospects for businessmen of ordinary ability relative
to the prospects of the most dynamic entrepreneurs may even be better
in a highly regulated economy than under substantial laissez faire; enjoy-
ing the quiet life may be easier. Hence the pointlessness of businessmen
exhorting each other to do a better job of communicating their case to the
public. Businessmen as such, rather than simply as human beings, are not
the main beneficiaries of a free economy.
With little personal incentive really to understand public affairs, the
average voter tends to work with ideas that are in the air. Ļe attitude does
seem to prevail widely these days that if anything is bad—pornography, or
small children’s eating medicine that they shouldn’t have, or junk food in
the schools—then it is the government’s job to suppress it. Similarly, if
anything is good—housing, arts, effective drugs, good nutrition—then
government ought to promote or subsidize it. Ļis attitude parallels the
doctrine of altruism, which receives wide lip service, the doctrine that one
ought to be primarily concerned with the (supposed) interests of other
people. It is wickedly selfish, then, to oppose a program for doing good,
even if it does cost tax money. (Government programs in one’s own spe-
cial interest can readily be rationalized in altruistic terms, as good for other
people also. It is a routine theoretical exercise for economists to concoct
“externality” arguments for government interventions.) Ļe altruist doc-
trine meshes well with the idea that it is slightly indecent to be a rightist
and the presumption that the decent and humane position on any issue is
at least a little left of center (EllulȀȈȅȇ, pp.ȁȀȄ–ȁȀȈ).
Ȉ“Rational ignorance” is a leading theme of Anthony Downs,An Economic Ļeory of
Democracy(ȀȈȄȆ).