Case in point: gambling. I love to do it. It is astonishingly easy to convince yourself your likelihood of winning is easily 10x, 100x, or in the case of a lottery, 100,000x as likely as it actually is. Humans have a well known tendency to take small probabilities of positive outcome and act as though they are, in fact, quite likely. Even knowing this, I still frequently over estimate the likelihood of good things happening when I play poker. If that tendency right there isn't my own brain being hardwired to have trouble figuring out my own best interest, I don't know what is.
Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, credit card debt is bad, etc. However, most people succumb to shot term temptation, rather than long term gain.
It is like the marshmallow experiment conducted by Standford university.(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...)
Most kids succumb before they can get the second marshmallow. However, those that wait these long few minutes will get two of them.
If a man will have a low time preference, in general, he will be more wealthier than a man with a high time preference.
The politically opposite assertion, which is that the members of the speaker's set know better than the masses what is in their interest, is also extremely appealing.
I think, in general, people are pretty awful at figuring out what is in their own best interest. That's why the obesity rate is so high, credit card debt is so crushing, lotteries exist, and casinos are so damn profitable. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that politicians are better at figuring it out. But I have no idea how you are supposed to successfully navigate life without the insight that you frequently make a lot of mistakes about what is best for yourself.