Read this post by Daniel Little and weep. If you care about democracy and the public good, that is. This kind of thing is a main reason that standard economics has done a serious disservice to humanity by emphasizing the private motivations of individuals and not studying public mindedness and the “public good” in general very much. We can still hope to make strides to reverse this inattention to publicness in economics and also in the political sphere. At least, I sincerely hope so.
The degradation of US democracy
The curious incident of DD on the Web 