Most people aren't particularly ideological. They're not big fans of government, they don't particularly hate government, they just want government to work tolerably well. So what metrics will tell them when it's working tolerably well? This seems to be a major problem for independent voters.
Progressives are fans of government. They favor all sorts of interventionist policies ostensibly to correct market failures. Their problem is that while there arent good metrics on government efficiency, pretty much everyone agrees that governmental efficiency is terrible. It's hard to see that you couldn't save $100 B a year with actual efficient governance - that's the entirety of the claimed Obamacare cost, and half of the actual cost. If Progressives won't demand efficient governance even for something this important to them, they'll never convince Independents to vote for them. This seems like a big problem for them.
Conservatives are fans of government stopping people from doing things they don't like, too. They will have to rely on government agencies for this. Since the equilibrium state of any mature agency is to be captured by the organizations the agency is responsible to regulate, what will this regulatory capture look like? I suspect nothing that Conservatives will like. This seems to be a problem for them.
It's pretty funny when your older brother calls you to ask how he can hack the Admin password on his new laptop. AFAIK, the Computer Fraud And Misuse Act doesn't prohibit you from breaking into your own computer. It got me wondering though - has anyone ever sued themselves?
2 comments:
> It got me wondering though - has anyone ever sued themselves?
I don't have a cite, but I read in a law blog a while back about a true case: an independent professional had an insurance policy, and he (the individual) sued the firm that he 100% owned, on the theory that the insurance policy covered mumble, mumble, mumble, and would pay out.
The insurance co. got the court to toss the case as abusive, but the appeals court ruled that the guy actually did have standing and the case actually did have a point, and reinstated it.
No further details.
And, yes, I know that "I read it on the web!" is up there with "the check is in the mail", but I really did see this in some place that's quite reputable (Volokh, etc.)
It's too bad we don't have more conservatives in the Republican Party, isn't it?
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