In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan explains that, much of today’s bad economic policies can be blamed on the systematic biased beliefs that voters hold concerning issues of economics. A way of rephrasing Bryan’s insight – ideas matter.
Bryan makes the metaphor between politics and religion explicit – but I’m curious if we could get tractable results by looking at some of people’s more specific religious beliefs. Take the belief in an “end of days,” or apocalypse scenario. If people truly believe that the world will come to an end, either in their own lifetimes or even within the lifetimes of a few future generations then there are obvious economic implications. Why save for tomorrow when there may be no tomorrow?
Now the obvious objection would be, “people don’t really believe that.” But I suppose we could test for it. Is there an observed difference in savings rates between people who admit to an “end of days” dogma compared to those who don’t? Secondly, some people believe it. Are they a big enough biased group to sway policy outcomes?
The Imprisoner's Dilemma
comments on political economy, punishment theory and mass incarceration
The end of the world need not be some religious doomsday scenario: the earth could be hit by a large asteroid or some other celestial body, or we could have a supervolcanic eruption / really bad plague / some other extinction level event. But we all assign this such a small probability that it does not have measurable effect on our actions or preferences. This includes religious people.
Since almost all religious eschatologies talk about the end-times in vague terms, I think almost no one believes strongly that the end of the world is at hand. “The apocalypse is now” talk is too nutty, I think, even for the nuts.
Hmm… there might be some data on that somewhere. Let me look around.