"Selling Ideas in a Rationally Ignorant World"
Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Description:
Excerpt: "Americans are busy people. They have real lives. They don’t have time to become expert on everything. And they most assuredly don’t read the Federal Register before dozing off each night. They rationally devote time to becoming informed about those things they can do something about, which means that they are rationally ignorant about most things in the political realm. Yet, we in the policy world keep trying to educate them, to make them as knowledgeable as we are! Bad idea....Yet, although people will not be knowledgeable, they will have opinions. And public opinion is important in our democracy, because it defines the bounds of the politically feasible."
Excerpt: "Americans are busy people. They have real lives. They don’t have time to become expert on everything. And they most assuredly don’t read the Federal Register before dozing off each night. They rationally devote time to becoming informed about those things they can do something about, which means that they are rationally ignorant about most things in the political realm. Yet, we in the policy world keep trying to educate them, to make them as knowledgeable as we are! Bad idea....Yet, although people will not be knowledgeable, they will have opinions. And public opinion is important in our democracy, because it defines the bounds of the politically feasible."
Resource Access:
Available to the General Public
Available to the General Public
Copyright / Creative Commons Status:
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright / Creative Commons Details:
(c) The Heritage Foundation
(c) The Heritage Foundation
Document Source and Bibliographical Information:
The Insider no. 265 (November 1999)
The Insider no. 265 (November 1999)
