Is Capitalism Making Us Stupid?

Odd heading for this - but that is the name of the book cited and reviewed here.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/04/is-capitalism-making-us-stupid.html

I like the review a lot - it talks about a lot of things I am concerned about and have been thinking about for a decade or more. But when I finished reading it, I was not sure I wanted to buy the book. So I thought I would explore that a little bit myself, and share it - if I think it is worth anything.

Here's some of my basic premises that have developed over the last 15 years.

1. Capitalism is a pretty good system, provided we manage it intelligently.
   Economics is not well understood by most people, it is more governed by schools of belief than any scientific method - but  . . .  the market approach has great potential, if we use our brains to manage it.
2. Democracy is similar - could be worse. As Churchill famously said, it is the worst political system, except for all of the others. But we need to remember that we invented it, and we could still improve it. God did not hand it down. In fact, he (or she) seems prone to a somewhat more hierarchical approach. 
3. Humans are not rational - we make decisions by gut and emotion. That does not augur well for either capitalism or political systems, given the general failure to be rational about how we run them. I love the example cited of our innate ability to project the trajectory of a thrown object - Angry Birds - but the great difficulty we encounter to do the same for a dropped object. We "evolved" our society from blood feuds, dictators and wars. Why do we think this talking and negotiating approach is going to work?

What this reviewer, and I assume the book points out is:

1. Rational thinking is under attack. Our rationality is not only a biological imperative, it is under attack from a mass of "believers" who really do not value any rational approach to anything. How else explain the rejection of global warming, the mass attacks on information and data on any topic. Our political actors generally call on fear and loathing, belief and lies, rather than cite anything that resembles science or information. For heaven's sake, we are still fighting about evolution. 
2. Capitalism and Democracy were crazy inventions. Given the propensities of humans, neither should really work at all. We are competitive, vicious, fight to the death, hierarchy prone, strong leader followers. How can a "market" or a "consensus" approach ever lead to anything but disaster. The same was said for things like "invisible little beings cause diseases". Or "some problems with people's actions come from the physical make up of their brain and are not 'fixable'." We seem to have finally understood these two - it may take us a while to get to the evolution one. There seems to be some confusion with the "religious" stuff.
3. Advertising is not rational. Well, duh. And most political discourse is the same. I am not sure it is making us more stupid - we already have a lot of that. And our politicians are persuading us of lies and idiocies with the same techniques.
4. Being rationally informed about politics is not an efficient or rewarding investment. I've seen this before, but this brought it home. If you make a buying decision, you can be pretty effective about reading reviews, comparing products, pricing, etc. It takes some time and effort, and you have to overcome that instant urge to buy - but we can do it, and there is generally a reward. I get a good product at a fair price. The effort has a reward. But in the political world, my one vote has NO real positive returns. Why spend the time and effort to do any research, to meet the candidates, to understand the issues. Especially in the face of the barrage of misinformation that gets thrown at us. There is no reward to that effort. My vote makes no significant difference at all. So why should I undertake a lot of work to analyze positions and possibilities. Just go with the group.
5. Solutions to all of this are woefully lacking. I've been there. No one yet has any bright ideas on how to overcome all of this lack of reason in these two realms. I think the political one is key. If we could actually make decisions based on research and data, I am persuaded that we might adopt a "nudge" political framework, to help people make better, more rational decisions. I don't see any other approach that might work at the moment. 

Thanks for reading this far. Help me out here. What do you think?