Because the marginal impact of a single vote on the probable outcome of the electoral process is normally tiny, many citizens do not vote at all, thereby conveying zero bits of information about their value scales. For the same reason, relatively few take the time to educate themselves about many of the races, so that their ballots often do not accurately reflect their underlying values. In contrast, the buyer brings with her to the marketplace the knowledge gleaned from her direct experience with products bought on previous visits, as well as knowledge gathered from the immediate experiences of friends and neighbors.
Observing these shortcomings, the defenders of the democratic mixed economy often inveigh against the "apathy" of nonvoters and uninformed voters. Their diatribes are pointless, however, because the behavior they deplore is only a praxeologically predictable effect, inherent in the very process. As we shall find in our later analysis, special conditions prevailing in a mixed economy may contribute even further to voter apathy. 
