Foseti said:This is indeed how they roll, from the Forbidden City to Versailles to Washington D.C. to your local city council. Go read.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.
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.
"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."
ReplyDeleteTed, that is rather poetic...
Needs to be set to music... a Dylan beat...
And that is also why I believe the 2nd Amendment is so important. Keep 'em scared.
ReplyDeletethe 2nd Amendment is so important. Keep 'em scared.
ReplyDeleteBe more effective if a random potshot at a pol wasn't criminal.
GuardDuck,
ReplyDeleteYou want a smiley on that (Poe's Law and all that).
That said,
When did something being illegal ever stop it from happening? recreational heroine and cocaine are illegal most places, and readily available in all of them.
Now, just to give the prayer wheel of the law of unintended consequences a quick spin as I pass by:
If the penalty for having an unlicensed air rifle of 13 footpounds and a functioning half inch Browning are the same (as they pretty much are in Britain). what do you think the black market will gravitate towards?
There, that should make for some dirty underpants if the "Authorities" follow comments on your site BP.
:^)}
PS
ReplyDeleteCan I add the vatican to the list of temples to the god of unjust governance by elites?
<;^)}
hmmmm, bearded smiley wearing a tinfoil hat doesn't seem to work - looks more like a dunce's hat...
;^)}