This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 25, 2015, and Caleb Brown.

If you're hearing this as you travel to family or friends this Thanksgiving, please don't start any fights about public policy.

But if you just can't help yourself, Mike Munger, Duke University, Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and

Economics, has a few ways you might raise the hackles of friends and family alike.

We discussed for this special Thanksgiving argument addition of the Cato

podcast the bad judgments of consumers versus voters and the wave of

destruction that will surely sweep across America thanks to the sharing economy.

So in keeping with our America thanks to the sharing economy.

So in keeping with our limited series of Thanksgiving arguments that one might be subjected

to or pick and in the case of libertarians, unfortunately,

the option is quite often to pick the fight.

So you argue that, well first of all, consumers make bad choices every day.

And they're not based, they're not doing it for the right reasons, their animal impulses take over when they make

purchases, so this is a problem.

We're not very good at making judgments.

We're used to, if something is free, you should take all of it you can.

In fact, if something's free, you should choose that over something that you want more.

And the way that things are presented can influence the choice in a way that would

violate the usual precepts of rational choice. And so my colleague Dan Arylli at Duke has written a book, several books, but one in particular

predictably irrational.

The two features are people don't do very well in choice situations and since marketers know this they can use

advertising and product placement to manipulate you as a consumer.

...