Democracy would be a fine idea - if we were all Vulcans. That's not exactly the thesis of Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter," a must read for those trying to crack the code of improving US democracy, - but it's a major theme.

Economists suspect that humans - we average Joes - are riddled with biases. Caplan walks his readers through the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy to show exactly how differently I and Alan Greenspan think. There are four big ways: I (and you, most likely, if you're not an economist) tend to be really pessimistic about the future; we think good economic policy should be aimed at creating more work rather than creating more efficiency; oddly, even though we don't trust the government to regulate business, we also don't trust the market to solve our problems; finally, and least surprisingly, we're biased against foreigners.

I buy it. But that's probably because I think of human behavior in terms of WWHGD - that is, what would a hunter gatherer do? For real. If you, like I, believe that our behavior is largely hard-wired by evolution, then you'll agree that our emotions and biases were probably better adapted for hunter gatherer life (which homo sapiens had for about 200,000 years) rather than agricultural living (10,000 years), let alone a post-indusrial world (200 years).

In HG terms, our "biases" make good survival sense. If keeping alive means having a steady food supply, pessimism (damn, better stock up on roots) is probably a better instinct to have than optimism (no prob, I can hunt and kill tomorrow). Likewise, not working as a HG probably was the equivalent of starving. Since hunter-gatherers usually hang out in small, cooperative groups, it also makes sense that we'd have a distrust of capitalists (hey, why should that guy get all the yams?) and foreigners (I mean, who can trust a guy that doesn't pierce his navel?).

The good and bad news is that most of us are no longer are hunter-gatherers - but we do still have their instincts. So we support policies that ward off downsizing (which economists believe staves off higher productivity and thus higher standards of living for us all), that over-regulate the market (again, slowing down progress) and "protect" us from foreign trade (yep, more wrenches in capitalism's progress). (For the record, I confess to still holding on to at least one of those biases.)

Caplan's solution? Haven't got that far in his book. For starters, I guess we could all start acknowledging our biases, taking a few economics courses and, ultimately, thinking more like Mr. Spock.