Must read post about Government

There's so much smart packed into this post that it's in danger of collapsing into a Black Hole of Smart:

Foseti said:

the root of the problem is democracy.

I disagree.

The root of the problem is:
Because the interests of the elite do not match the interests of the whole of society, the natural flow of governance is for elites to aggregate ever more power, and the populace to become ever more immiserated. Mandarin China, Louis XIV France, and Tsarist or Communist Russia is the rest-state for relations between government and subject. Government extracts as much as it can, subject lives in soul-crushing poverty.

The depressingly elegant thing about this is that the game theory is stable. Take the folks who make decisions, build as small a stable coalition as you can, and divide the spoils among the small coalition. It's as inexorable a solution as gravity, given power politics.

This is what governments do when they can. The core challenge of government is how to prevent that.

This is indeed how they roll, from the Forbidden City to Versailles to Washington D.C. to your local city council. Go read.

The secret, of course, if to vote incumbents out so that the remaining pols fear us more than they are encouraged by their rent-seeking cronies. Voltaire was right: In this country it is wise, from time to time, to kill an Admiral to encourage the others.

Vote 'em out. Every Man Jack and Woman Jill. The new ones will be just as bad, of course, but at least they'll be scared. Only this will break them to our will.