The PUMA strategy

Between the  hissy dissatisfaction of Hillary Clinton supporters with the Obama nomination and the increasingly credible notion that there’s a non-zero probability that such disgruntled hillaryites  will switch over to  the McCain-Palin side, there’s a creeping sense of surrealism that is the fodder of conspiracy theories. This is one; I don’t have a shred of positive evidence to back it up, instead threading on the side of the motive-opporunity-means school of producing lines of investigation.

First of all, let us put the Hillary campaign in context. Though she was eager to play the gender card in rallying her “sisterhoods” (as worded by her at the DNCC), it’s far more likely that both the campaign and the unyielding resistence to give in after her probabilities  mathematically lost, even, maybe hoping for a last-minute kendo coup — is a dynastic effort. While the GOP is much more likely to go by-any-means-necessary and unite instantaneously at any dominant strategy (much to the chagrin of fringeniks like Ron Paul), the Democratic Party has strands in far-out progressives like Kucinich, realists like Obama, populists like Kerry and so on. And at a time where the last of the Kennedys struggles for life, the space for a new democratic dinasty is open.

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Bryan Caplan ataca novamente

Bryan Caplan, que irritou a ala terceiro-mundista há alguns anos ao sugerir no seu The Idea Trap que o havia um canal de crescimento endógeno no fato de que povos subdesenvolvidos votam por políticas econômicas piores, entra de sola no tema da democracia. Apesar do título dork, seu novo livro The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies parece firmar a reputação do autor de enfant terrible entre os enfant terribles. Vede o que diz a resenha do NYT:

Caplan argues that “voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational — and vote accordingly.” Caplan’s complaint is not that special-interest groups might subvert the will of the people, or that government might ignore the will of the people. He objects to the will of the people itself.

Claro, todo economista com uma formação universitária sabe que o will of the people de fato não existe como tal pelo teorema da impossibilidade de Arrow. Mas o problema da democracia é - agora dolorosamente evidentes nos EUA de um modo difícil de encerrar pela análise do The Idea Trap. Isto se deve, claro, em boa medida a complexas especificidades do sistema americano, que passam por uma ponderação desproprocional à população no sistema distrital e por uma divisão cultural cada vez mais profunda, parte de um desenvolvimento dual que explode periodicamente — vide a guerra de secessão e o movimento dos direitos civis nos anos 60. Mas as armas de Caplan estão voltadas para a própria democracia:

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