The idea that even the brightest person or group of bright people, much less the U.S. Congress, can wisely manage an economy has to be the height of arrogance and conceit. Why? It is impossible for anyone to possess the knowledge that would be necessary for such an undertaking. At the risk of boring you, let's go through a small example that proves such knowledge is impossible.
Imagine you are trying to understand a system consisting of six elements. That means there would be 30, or n(n-1), possible relationships between these elements. Now suppose each element can be characterized by being either on or off. That means the number of possible relationships among those elements grows to the number 2 raised to the 30th power; that's well over a billion possible relationships among those six elements.
Our economic system consists of billions of different elements that include members of our population, businesses, schools, parcels of land and homes. A list of possible relationships defies imagination and even more so if we include international relationships. Miraculously, there is a tendency for all of these relationships to operate smoothly without congressional meddling. Let's think about it.
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2 comments:
This nails it. Even on the wild assumption that politicians are just as smart at business as business owners, running an operation of any sort is very risky.
Most private businesses fail. They do so because of the complex dynamic that WW describes. So if the idea doesn't work, end of story. No more bad money after good.
On the other hand, when government tries to run a business, it has at least as high of a chance of failure. The only difference is that failure is simply the lead in for the sales pitch by politicians that more money is needed to make it succeed.
Examples:
The postal system rates keep going up and service quality keeps going down.
Welfare, food stamps, and such are funded and have generally grown over time, but 40 years later the income disparity is greater than ever (according to welfare proponents themselves).
Social Security has been mis-managed for so long that it now can be kept alive with ponzi tactics instead of sound financial principles.
California has the highest income, sales, and gasoline tax rates in the country. Yet they also have the highest per capita deficit. You can't claim their tax rates are too low, you HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO conclude that their use of tax revenues abysmal.
These are but a few examples. All these ideas would have collapsed in the real world which is why their failure has been outlawed.
But one asks why should these failed institutions should be allowed to live. And a follow up question...why should we want one more single vital enterprise be taken over by the government?
If you read the comments in a previous post, I directly challenged Jill, noted Ohio liberal, to note one thing, just one thing libs run better than conservatives.
And just like the everyone of those challenges, it goes unanswered.
Your comment is appreciated.
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