Mises and Bastiat on How Democracy Goes Wrong, Part I
Author(s)
Caplan, Bryan
Abstract
Economists are habitually disappointed by what governments do. Dictatorships are the worst offenders, featuring a rogue’s gallery of impoverishing policies from farm collectivization to backyard steel mills to expulsions of minority merchant classes. But democracies also frequently pursue policies-like protectionism and price controls-that every introductory economics textbook concludes are a costly burden upon the general public. How is this possible? How can majoritarian politics durably sustain policies harmful to majority interests? The most popular way to resolve this puzzle is to blame special interests for undermining the democratic process.
