Positive Quiddity: It's Better Not to Vote than to Bluff

Here’s a startling but sensible idea: It’s better not to vote than to go to the voting booth and bluff your way through by voting on issues you don’t understand and for persons you haven’t studied.

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Much of the reasoning in this book is based on the analyses of Friedrich Hayek, especially in his work The Fatal Conceit.

John Stossel talked to Caplan and wrote an opinion article about it for Reason:
Caplan has a radical proposal for citizens: Be honest. If you know nothing about a subject, don't have an opinion about it. "And don't reward or penalize candidates for their position on an issue you don't understand."

And Stossel concludes:

"If Americans keep voting for politicians who want to pass more laws and spend more money, the result will not be a country with fewer problems, but a country that's governed by piecemeal socialism. Or corporatism. We can debate the meaning of those words, but there's no doubt that such central planning leaves us less prosperous and less free."
　Text of the article is available at:

http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/19/dont-trust-your-instincts [this link contains a link to an audio version of the article as well.]