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Rational Ignorance Why did taxpayers and consumers put up with CAP in the light of all of its problems highlighted in the previous section? Susan S. Nello and Pierpaolo Pierani (2010) have argued that ‘rational ignorance’ is the culprit. While agricultural community’s rents are large (if taken together), they are quite small if divided between many individual taxpayers and consumers. Making informed decisions about one or another policy, however, requires investment on 8 behalf of the population. Investment , that people are rarely willing to make unless something salient for them is at stake. In case of the CAP reform, acquiring information about it, instead of social or macroeconomic policies which are likely to have larger impact on any non-farming person, would have been inefficient use of resources. Therefore for “consumers and taxpayers the costs of information signalling their preferences with regard to the CAP exceed the expected benefits of doing so, so their rational choice is to remain ‘ignorant’ about the CAP” (Nello and Pierani 2010, 12). While the growth of mass media might have reduced information acquiring costs, it might have taken consumers and taxpayers to another extreme. As Nello and Pierani (2010, 12) point out, with a lot of, often contradictory, information available about the CAP and many other issues, information that is necessary to make informed decisions about the CAP might get lost in the noise. Members of general public were not, however, equally disinterested in the all aspects of the CAP. Swinnen, Negash and Vandermoortele (2010, 34) note the strong preferences of consumers with regard to food safety. This can be explained by two things. Firstly, one’s physical survival—which, among other things, means eating safe food—is a high priority for 8 Even casting a vote itself, could be, in fact, considered an investment which pays off only if voter ends up being median voter’s whose vote decides the outcome of the elections. In the light of this, it might be irrational altogether for people to learn about politics and to vote on elections until a large number of other people do it because the probability of being the decisive median voter is very small (Hindriks and Myles 2006, 322‐329). 33