Economists are often accused of being advocates for unfettered and unregulated laissez-faire markets, but anyone who has ever taken a basic introductory economics class knows that this caricature is simply not true. Basic intro econ classes spend time explaining what markets do. It also spends a lot of time on the category of “market failure” where the market often does not perform well, including externalities like pollution, investment in public goods, poverty and inequality, information provision, encouraging competition instead of monopoly, and other categories. But as Jason Brennan and Christopher Freiman point out in “Against laissez-faire democracy” (Economics & Philosophy 2026, pp. 1-17), many of these conceptual problems arise, albeit in different forms, also in democratic elections. Thus, arguments for rules and regulations to regulate the operation of economic markets are also arguments for rules and regulations to regulate elections. For example, he wrote:
“In the first place, good government itself suffers from public problems.” For economists, the “common good” is something that almost everyone benefits from, but it is difficult to fill the beneficiaries individually, so the good is often not available. Examples would include scientific knowledge, national defense, and highways. To vote, the public welfare is that voters take enough time and effort to understand the issues and candidates, because the public at large will benefit from the effort.
“Second, voting clearly suffers from the problem of information and asymmetric information. For one, many empirical works on voter knowledge have found that many voters do not know, not only the specific social scientific knowledge needed to form policy opinions, but the most basic political information, such as general social trends, how the government works, what parties and candidates are proposed when they become officials and what they do when they become election officials… Voters have low information, most politicians and government officials have high information, like car mechanics, used car salesmen, medical doctors, doctors dentists, roof inspectors, and other market agents can use differential knowledge to exploit or deceive consumers, political parties and candidates can use differential knowledge to exploit or deceive voters in general, such as libertarian voters. In general, the main agent problem also occurs in government, realistically, politicians, bureaucrats, and others have significant independence and only limited oversight from voters, like the president of a company or a self-elected committee.
“It is an open question whether political competition will be most efficient if it imitates a competitive market, or rather a less competitive political competition is the best. However, in many places, political competition is very limited. For example, in the United States, because only two parties have a real chance to win any election. reduce competition to cause lower quality and higher prices; reducing competition between suppliers usually benefits suppliers at the expense of consumers.
“Finally, democracy also suffers from the problem of clear externalities. Indeed, this is the main difference between the market and politics. Market decisions are usually and generally internalized; negative externalities seem to be an anomaly that must be corrected. cannot choose, future generations, and foreigners. In addition, existing tenants can choose rent control, without paying the costs of future tenants who will not be able to find an apartment.
What kind of voting regulation and democracy does the author want? The tone is deliberately non-radical and experimental here – more about policy that can be considered than hard advocacy. He wrote:
Consider the public goods problem. Standard market ‘fixes’ are taxes, coercion, or subsidies to ensure provision. A democratic analogue, which would preserve equality, is the creation of participatory incentives, such as allowances for voting or taxes and fines for not voting. It might include some sort of reward (or punishment) system for delivering information with a low burden, such as a nonpartisan voter guide.
With regard to the asymmetry of information, standard market fix to have mandatory disclosure and legal labeling – such as nutrition and list of ingredients in food – as well as license providers (for example, medical doctors). Governments may require standardized and independently audited candidate disclosures. The government can require a public registry of campaign promises, which are then monitored and fact-checked by an independent board. Access to public debate and public funding of campaigns may depend on transparency rules. The standard fix for the principal-agent problem is to require and monitor fiduciary duties with third-party audits. Here, a democratic analogue would have a public promise tracker with sanctions for fraudulent claims, such as fines or media scorecards. Public performance scorecards – such as keeping promises – can determine eligibility for public campaign funding.
The default fix for the bounded and bounded rationality problem is to control the choice architecture and replace the default rules. A democratic analogue would be a neutral language and a uniform voting design. Questions and candidates should be listed randomly with a language summary. There may be automatic delivery of voter guides and automatic voter registration with opt-out clauses. Ballots can ask citizens about their preferred policies and map them to the policy platforms of registered parties and candidates.
The standard fix for the externality problem is to impose Pigouvian taxes, quotas and caps, or pollution and emission standards. Democratic analogs may have narrow output protections for certain democratic decisions. This may include requiring a supermajority for some decisions, judicial review for others, or subjecting some democratic decisions to independent expert review with some veto ability that can later be overturned by a supermajority. The default fix for the problem of limited competition is to enforce antitrust rules and ensure platform neutrality. The democratic analogue will have a greater equalization of voting access, and the rules of inclusion are more transparent and neutral for
debate.
An obvious concern with the rules and regulations governing elections is the possibility of them being hijacked by special interests or political parties. Will Democrats vote for rules that will be enforced and monitored by President Trump’s minions? Will Republicans vote for rules that will be enforced and overseen by President Biden’s minions? But as the author points out, there is a kicker here. If you are not willing to consider trust rules and regulations to facilitate elections, because of concerns about how they will be implemented, then you should have the same concerns about how the government opens and enforces economic regulations as well. The author writes about the idea of regulating democracy: “Remember that the burden here, as with market regulation, is not to show that regulation will solve all problems, but rather that it will do so adequately, with the benefits outweighing the costs.