Is that:
Policies are determined by vote or by leader, rather than by structural forces in the system, mostly economic.
Example:
IP law in it's current state doesn't exist because folks got voted in who care about IP law, or because the voters care about IP law, or because the voters like the IP laws we're moving towards. IP law in it's current state...just like all other laws (+/- 3%) exists because the already rich and powerful are able to push public policy by writing the details of the laws in their favor.
Again:
Who gets elected doesn't matter.
What voters you've got mostly doesn't matter.
The structure of the system matters...and the structure of the system benefits entrenched interests at the benefit of the populace. The solution has NOTHING to do with what groups you have, and NOTHING to do with what formal system of government you have. It has everything to do with (a) existing economic power, and (b) how much power the government has to shift economic power...and the economic power ALWAYS shifts to whatever extent the government has power to move it in the direction of the entrenched interests.
Aside: Occasionally, but not very often, violence can make a difference. Then the already rich make a deal with the violent, and the violent get some power at the expense of everyone else, while the rich keep all their power.
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8 comments:
I think I understand where you're coming from & tend to agree. My question though is from whence does the government's power spring. I'm inclined to say that at some level it is a manifestation of the average/median voter's preferences. Assuming that is true, my follow-up question is: how are those preferences changing? My guess is that they are actually fairly stable, but that they are becoming less accessible to politicians.
I doubt that most people agree with me when it comes to the nature of the relationship between liberty and prosperity, but I think in the long-to-medium term that's ok since most people don't agree with anyone else either & that the internet is exposing these disagreements at increasing pace. The fiction of the nation-state is breaking down.
Todd,
I think you put too much weight on the Median voter. Median voter fundamentally doesn't care about almost anything except being richer than the Joneses.
OTOH...I do agree that the fiction of the nation-state is breaking down.
I hope I didn't come across as endorsing the MVT as the GUT of political power. I honestly don't know how it is that we find ourselves in a world where government has as much power as it does. My best guess is only that the "average" person has enough anti-market bias that when given the opportunity to vote they are consistently willing to expand the scope of the state. I figure that if such a bias exists it enables an awful lot of awful policies even if it isn't responsible for setting the details.
Todd,
1. I think that in America, it's a super-simple ratchet effect.
Law A benefits party A massively, Benefits the political class minorly and costs everyone else something miniscule. Assume this is true for most laws, and you get the idea that the government can do anything.
2. EVERYWHERE that isn't America (AFAICT), there's a different understanding of government. Government owns the people, not the other way around. Hence government has infinite power, unless actively constrained.
Can it really be true that people anywhere believe that they are owned by the government under which they live?
I know I'm unusual even within the context of American political discourse, but the idea of the government as an entity that can actually own or be owned by anyone seems so utterly absurd to me that I doubt I'll ever be able to understand it.
From where I stand I only see people who wield the name of the state as their weapon and those who yield to such threats (I admit that I am in the latter category).
It's one of the things that irritated me the most when I went through a phase of reading supreme court opinions. I couldn't stand it when "the state" was named as plaintiff or defendant (I also objected to naming businesses or organizations rather than the actual agent involved in the incident). I always wanted to know who, precisely, had suffered the harm & who had inflicted it. I could never see the benefit of using that particular fiction.
Todd,
My experience all over Europe and then again in Eastern Europe says that owned isn't quite right.
Government is seen often as an entity that does what it's going to do...and there's little that someone can do to impact that.
The notion of a government that is truly accountable to the citizenry... as far as I can tell, that's a crazy American notion.
A crazy, _false_ American notion perhaps. How much ever you discount the Median Voter theorem, you must at least explain why you disagree with Bryan Caplan's defense of it. I think it's more nuanced than either your or MVT position.
Contemplationist,
Can you point me at the particular defense? I'm looking at stuff, and he's got partial defenses all over, and I'm having trouble nailing it down? Just the general MotRV thesis?
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