The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, however the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. That is economist Bryan Caplan’s sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening audiobook. Caplan, a self-described libertarian/anarchist, argues that voters continuously elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies earning over and over about The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Poor Policies by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions on the subject of American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an evaluation of Us citizens’ voting behavior and views on a range of economic problems, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the knowledge of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the overall economy is certainly going from bad to even worse. Caplan lays out several bold methods to make democratic federal government function better-for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular myths and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take in the slack.

The Myth from the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote consuming false beliefs ultimately end up getting government that delivers lousy results. Using the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective program.