I'm liking Sarah Hoyt again this morning. She argues that sooner or later every government becomes like a monkey with a pistol.
In monarchies this is fairly easy to see. The brilliant father (or in Portugal’s case) the brilliant uncle, will raise a successor who -- either because of natural issues (those people really needed to get a clue about marrying their cousins) or because he was raised in luxury, catered to from birth, and never had to do anything to justify his existence, while, at the same time, everyone told him how brilliant he was – will be a moron in power.
But in democracies this happens too. Democracies are often victims of their own success. The generation that strives and fights raises the generation that is much like the king’s heir. The generation that builds an industrial empire raises the generation that says “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a war on poverty? And isn’t the government just the instrument to use?”
. . . Keep government small and starved. Then when it starts pointing the gun inappropriately, and shooting at shadows, or at people just for fun and with total amoral enjoyment, you can immobilize it and take the gun away. . . . The only way to make this even remotely safe is to unload that gun, to take as many things as possible that people rely on the government for, and find other ways to do it. Let government play with its shiny toys, but learn to ignore, circumvent, go under, go around. Try to live your life as much as you can without either asking anything from government or letting it reach into your life to destroy anything you care about.
Before government can be trusted to do the tasks that we really must entrust to it, it should be restrained from wrecking anything even more important than those tasks. You don't start a fire until you've thought through how to contain it.
I usually like reading Hoyt, though I often disagree with her in terms of tone and occasionally in terms of substance. I had the sense that she was younger than she is, probably because she writes for a younger audience and has adopted some of their modes of phrase.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you put it better, though:
You don't start a fire until you've thought through how to contain it.
That sounds like wisdom.
We are a country that can pull living people out of the bottom of a coal mine after a disaster, put a man on the moon, limit the death toll from a huge hurricane to less than 10, and build a capitol so that, when there is an earthquake, the only buildings damaged are well over 100 years old.
ReplyDeleteSo how the hell do we pass legislation that nobody's read?
Valerie
How do we keep government small and starved, though? That's one of those feel good prescriptions that sounds so attractive in the abstract, but we live in a world that is concrete.
ReplyDeleteYears ago my Dad got terribly enthused over Newt Gingrich's latest tome, in which he cited stats about 90% of people agreeing with airy sentiments that had the ring of conservatism to them.
But of course there was no talk about what it would actually take to do those things, which is where all that lovely fellow feeling tends to break down. Any time 90% of people agree about anything more substantive than the Evil that is Kitten Bouncing, my spidey sense goes off and I suspect no one is thinking terribly hard about the details.
It's not as though no one warned the nation about the destructive effects of ObamaCare (ones that are now playing out in real time). The problem is optimism bias - unless people are allowed to experience painful consequences on a regular basis (IOW, unless they make mistakes and suffer the consequences), their natural inclination is to overconfidence and underthinking.
So how does any society counter this without impermissibly limiting the freedom to make the very mistakes we learn from?
I know of only one way to keep it small. Never vote for anything for no better reason than that it will solve a problem (yours or anyone else's) at someone else's expense. Then try to persuade people to follow your example, and in the meantime scrupulously avoid putting yourself in a position where you can't miss the next check from the government, so it's ability to retaliate is limited.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise there's no alternative to letting it get big and tyrannous, and having the occasional bloody revolution.
Or be active as individual political animals, and vote no on everything the first time--or the first two or three times--anything comes up that isn't clearly a nationwide disaster--a military attack on the homeland, a dust bowl breadth drought, and so on.
ReplyDeleteForce the apparent crisis to be lived through, things to be thought about.
Eric Hines
My rule on state and local initiatives is, if it involves spending, borrowing, or imposing a tax, the default answer is "no." I'm trying reasonably hard to keep up with public issues, so if no one has made the case to me why it's a good idea to spend/borrow/tax the money, it's not important enough to support. It should be a hard sell, backed up with detailed numbers and credible predictions. Resist the urge to say "Oh, a new stadium sounds nice. That should create some jobs!"
ReplyDeleteResist the urge to say "Oh, a new stadium sounds nice. That should create some jobs!"
ReplyDeleteThat's a nice opener, but you're right, it's inadequate by itself. Show me the jobs. Show me their anticipated wage rate. Show me the duration of those jobs. Show me the jobs that cascade from these. Show me the cost of each of those jobs in terms of what you're asking me to spend to get them. All with hard data and logic.
Explain what would happen if I decline to pay for the new stadium--and why I should care. A middling football or baseball time might go somewhere else? Eh.
And, just to be wonky and to probe whether the profferer knows what he's talking about, show me the velocity of the money from those jobs.
Another tool for keeping the government small and hungry: a certain amendment proposed elsewhere that requires every elected official to return completely to the private sector every so often for a number of years before being able to hold elective office again.
Eric Hines
I know of only one way to keep it small. Never vote for anything for no better reason than that it will solve a problem (yours or anyone else's) at someone else's expense. Then try to persuade people to follow your example, and in the meantime scrupulously avoid putting yourself in a position where you can't miss the next check from the government, so it's ability to retaliate is limited.
ReplyDeleteElise had a short post a few weeks ago that I was mildly obsessed with, but never got the chance to write about. I should go back and see if I can find it.
This little episode is a horrifying take on the monkeys- Denninger's comment, the news article and the court papers he attached .
ReplyDeleteAbout a 63 year old man in NM who "received the attentions" of the police who essentially repeatedly anally raped him under color of law.It was an obvious attempt to impose a extra judicial punishment because he did not kow tow to a sufficient degree.
Cops are not picked for imagination or they could surely see what sort of outcome this behavior will eventually elicit.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=225769
I've been seeing allusions to this story, but thanks for the link to information about the original.
ReplyDeleteFor a distressing insight into the mind of the police, see Mr. Ayoob's take on this Deming, NM horror at "Backwoods Home". He is a police officer, noted firearms trainer, advocate for the 2nd amendment etc- his commentary is astonishing- and the comments are a must read- he claims it was all for the victims well-being- an inversion of startling magnitude, along with a absolute bull-headed resistance to the idea the cops could have done anything wrong.
ReplyDeleteRead at your sanity's peril.