This is my view of how government/politics seems to work

Miscellaneous General
1

This is my view of how politics/government seems to work. Imagine this is a politician explaining to a crowd why he is going to be able to fix the economy. It helps if you imagine him like a sleezy car salesman with a wiseguy accent.

P= politician

A= Audience member

P :“Seriously guys, I promise that I’m better and smarter than that last guy. Swear to god.”

A: “So what are you going to do to fix the economy?”

P: “I’m going to be smarter, work harder, and do better than the last guy. “

A: “Right… but that isn’t really a plan…”

P: “Listen, I got plans out my ass. Look, I got this guy to help me run the economy. This guy went to MIT, he’s smart as shit. The last guy we had in charge was essentially retarded, but this guy is freakin’ smart, ask anybody.”

A: “Wasn’t the last guy an MIT grad too?”

P: “Sure but look how shitty he did. He was clearly stupid. This guy I got, he’s smart as shit. This guy’s got some very technical statistical shit that he uses, I’ll admit even I don’t understand it. That’s how smart he is.”

A: “Can you give us an example of something he has accomplished?”

P: “Well liked I said, it’s super technical so I don’t want to bore you with the details. But, for example, this dude came up with a .96 correlation between being poor and being sad. Nobody else ever found one that high, never. That’s how good this guy is. All these other stat guys ain’t found such a good number, and who the hell ever heard of those guys? Nobody, that’s who. See, this guy I got is going places, he’s smart, he gets shit done. As a matter of fact, this is the kind of brilliant shit we can use to help the economy. You think I’m just goin’ to sit by while poor people are 96% sad all the time? Get outta here. That’s what the do-nothing idiot before us would have done. No, I’m goin’ to expand welfare because poor people ain’t goin’ to be sad on my watch!”

And then people vote for him.

The end.

2

People vote in packs, and cheer for parties in packs, because most people are followers. It’s part of human psychology. We mimic the behaviour that we believe our peers are engaging in and would approve of. To reach masses, you have to break off individuals one by one, and get them to stop mimicking each other, and start acting independently.

That, is the incredibly difficult challenge of a libertarian activist because people identify with their group whether it is race, creed, nationality, party, their identity is tied to being part of the group.

3

I don’t know who’s to blame for it. Pretty much everyone involved in modern politics is a demogogue. They run on false promises. People believe them. They aren’t that smart. Each 4 years there is a new election cycle. If they like the guy they’ll keep them. If they don’t they’ll throw him out. They see the under party as the real solution. The masses are uneducated about the real problems of society. It’s just a whole big game to everyone really.

4

I certainly hope not.

5

IMO the topic title should more accurately be named- This is my view of how government/politics doesn’t seem to work.

6

Lmao that was so much funnier than I thought it would be, and all too true.

7

One important part of democracy, as Caplan and others have pointed out, is that given how small the probability is of an individual’s vote deciding the outcome of the election it’s rational for voters to remain ignorant of the policies and the effects they have on society for a given candidate. The marginal cost of finding out information about a candidate far outweighs the benefit of voting. Now, what this means is that votes tend to be ideologically based as opposed to grounded in an understanding of the policies of the candidates. I’d argue that this is supported empirically also, as these tendencies are manifest in the election of Obama.

However, one unfortunate aspect of many so called “laymen Austrians” is the opposite of the usual flaw of much of mainstream analysis. So called “Austrians” often attribute characteristics to politicians that they would never attribute to market actors, and if they were to attribute these characteristics to market actors I believe their analysis might look significantly different. Keep in mind, this analysis is not based on any studies of incentives but of some psychology that they fail to provide any evidence for.

8

Government policies and the history of governments provide the evidence, Giles.

9

All those policies provide evidence for is that government produces “bad” policies, I wouldn’t disagree with that. My point was rather that there is no evidence that “bad” people go into government, the better explanation is simply that the incentives cause government employees to act in various ways that might be counterproductive. For example, in a majoritarian democracy it makes far more sense for a candidate seeking election to concentrate on certain parts of the population in order to be elected. This leads to the usual results of rent seeking, logrolling etc.

10

I like the short version of Hoppe’s Law on this: those who seek elected office are the type you’d never want elected in the first place.

11

OK, but I’d like to see some sort of argument in favour of that assertion.

12

You have. Your whole life. It’s called reality, Giles: look into it. Further, consider what free entry into government actually means.

Don’t like the answer? Tough. You’re supposedly smarter than us. You figure it out. It’s not that difficult. Doesn’t take a Pee-Haich-Dee to grasp it.

13

Free entry into government is really ambiguous. It could mean that anybody is free to enter a bureaucratic job in the state, but large corporations can often be so bureaucratic that there is, in this respect, little difference between a public sector and private sector employee. Now, you may respond that there are those who enter the government because of a lack of principles of whatever, but I don’t think anybody except libertarians of the Rothbard-Hoppe variety see matters in this way. As for party politics, once again, I’m not sure that this is true. I am extremely hesitant to call politicians “evil” or “bad” since I suspect that many of them going into government with the best of intentions. I think you have one more assumption here than I do, and as such you violate Occam’s razor. Because you’re theory implies that those who go into politics are evil, I merely believe that the incentives corrupt them, even if they’re largely unaware of this corruption.

14

No, it’s not. Now try your response without the evasions.

15

For once I am actually going to paraprhase Hoppe:

Hoppe stated that those who advanced in government are those who can sustain and advance the power structures of the government itself. Since the government is built on coercion in the tax-system, burearcracy, ability to empower favored interests, propagandize the populace into war etc. These individuals who can do it the best are the most likely to advance and succeed within the state apparatus. Therefore those at the top prove to be the best con-artists, tyrants, blood-thirsty merchants of death that this country can produce in the public sector.

16

I don’t believe I did evade it, but if you wish to clarify how I didn’t answer your question. I’ll try to be more precise.

17

I’m wondering what institution would actually hire somebody to make the institution fail.

18

I wanted to say something like this too. I was going to say ‘who promotes idiocy and failure?’ but then it would of just evolved into a statement about ‘failing upwards’ and how idiots can be promoted etc.

19

Isn’t this why in politics there’s a lot of damage control that goes on? I’d say yes.

20

Well, I’m pretty sure you’d find that the most able con-artists would be able to succeed in the private sector. And would perhaps be more likely to do so given the higher ROI involved in the private sector. As for “tyrants” and “blood thirsty merchants of death”, I don’t know how you see the state as working but very few within it are involved in the “coercive” side. I’m not really sure how one can be a “good tyrant” either, doesn’t make much sense to me. Keep in mind, in today’s private sector to succeed you have to have a number of these traits too. You need some characteristics that will aid in rent seeking etc.