13.3 FRQ

Voters’ lack of decisiveness changes everything. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not. The naive view of democracy, which paints it as a public forum for solving social problems, ignores more than a few frictions. It overlooks the big story inches beneath the surface. When voters talk about solving social problems, their primary aim is to boost their self-worth by casting off the workaday shackles of objectivity. —Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics, George Mason University

Describe the viewpoint conveyed in the quote.

Describe an argument that would be made by a critic of the viewpoint conveyed in the quote.

Describe one function of elections in a representative democracy, besides the selection of office holders.