#caplan

Bucky!!!

So this got me thinking about a boyfriend!Bucky...

Bucky doesn't really wear sweatshirts or hoodies.

Until he becomes boyfriend!Bucky.

give me impotent obsession

and disregard for laws

I want the trees in single file

bring me the corpse of something rare

YOU GOT ME THERE!

Also lemme clear that up: I like Chris Evans (he's a great actor) but I'm not a fan of Cap. Idk why but I can't do it

OKAY BACK TO THE QUESTION this is hard but I'm gonna have to say Tony/loki. I can't decide so it's gonna be both <33

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.

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

This book develops the thesis that voters are irrational (not just misinformed). Voters remain irrational because it's WORTH IT to them; they gain emotional pleasure from being vehement or irrational (or from sticking to comfortable beliefs) and that pleasure outweighs any costs to them of those beliefs. Voters would change their minds about irrational opinions if they faced any serious consequences for those opinions. However, there are no serious consequences for irrational political opinions, so people feel free to "let their hair down" so to speak, and engage in childish or irrational thinking which is far below what they're capable of doing. Caplan talks like an economist when describing this phenomenon. He claims that irrationality is IN DEMAND and is essentially costless, so we get a lot of it. Caplan provides two lines of evidence to support his thesis. First, Caplan cites the fact that people make SYSTEMATIC errors (not just random errors) which suggests something more than simple ignorance is at fault. Second, Caplan provides anecdotal evidence of groups of people who are perfectly rational when it comes to their profession or something that affects their well-being, but who revert to irrational belief as soon as there are no consequences for doing so.

Caplan's thesis is interesting insofar as it directly contradicts the "rational ignorance" hypothesis put forth by public choice theorists like James Buchanan etc. Whereas Buchanan states that voters are ignorant because it's not worth the expense or effort to acquire more information, Caplan claims that voters are outright irrational and enjoy entertaining absurd or vehement opinions. This book is good but it has several drawbacks, as follows. 1) The book does not include enough evidence to support its main contention; it includes some empirical evidence but that evidence is not definitive. 2) The last few chapters of the book are filled with meandering thoughts which are less interesting and are not fully supported. It seems like Caplan ran out of material (he laid out his full thesis in the first half of the book) and so filled in the rest of the book with filler.

I want to write for Clark Kent. I know most people are here for my Seb and CE characters, but I'm not worried so much the no one would read him if I wrote him because I've seen some of my friends read AND reblog CK stuff, but... idk. And I'm not disappointed no one's requesting him because it's certainly reasonable that no one would know that I had this tiny itch to write him.

I think now at this point it's more that it's been far too many weeks since I watched the new Superman movie, and so I'd be writing my idea of him more than him?

Also, the itch was only an itch. We all know when I get carried away with an idea, nothing stops me from writing it.

I think I'm more just disappointed that the idea I wanted to write didn't catch enough with my muse to take flight. I was thinking about a story where Clark gets thrown from his dimension into one with the MCU heroes, after Infinity War and End Game, and he's working with Avengers and their allies to get back to his own time and place, and Steve is helpful, but he kind of ... takes issue with Clark. Is bugged by him. And you call him out on it because you can see the many parallels that run between them - similar characteristics and motivations - and you think that's why Steve has this weird beef with him. Because Clark is on the less jaded, less burdened end of things, where Steve has lived through so many rough and trying things that chipped away at the unvarnished hopeful pieces he used to have, and he still has them, but they're smaller pieces and he keeps them much more guarded.