Do Stupid People Act Rationally?

Here’s a great confrontation of that notion:

For a more detailed argument, we discussed this starting here. But here’s some of the relevant quotes from Mises:

“Human action is necessarily always rational. The term ‘rational action’ is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man.”

“Action is, by definition, always rational.”