I’ve never met the Rational Actor. Not once, despite looking for most of my life.
One of the most foolish possible gambles is to depend on someone doing the Right Thing® from their own perspective. Many construction workers will vote for Trump, despite his long standing record of cheating and lying to construction workers. North Carolina farmers are quite likely to be bigoted against migrant workers, despite their utter economic reliance on such workers and intimate acquaintance with hardworking, upstanding members of that labor force.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground comes to mind. “One’s very own free, unfettered desire, one’s own whim, no matter how wild, one’s own fantasy, even though sometimes roused to the point of madness-all this constitutes precisely that previously omitted, most advantageous advantage which isn’t included under any classification and because of which all systems and theories are constantly smashed to smithereens.”
Ancient peoples harnessed the irrationality of man to serve social purposes, rather than stupidly expecting men to behave rationally, when all prior history shows that we are irrational, excitable, self-deluding animals. But using mankind’s foibles to induce cultivation of φρόνησις (phronesis) and virtus has turned out to be quite difficult in the American population.
