Quote of the Day: The Person Who is Best Qualified to Govern You is You

From self development and libertarian author Robert Ringer at his website: (italics original)

All this by way of saying that because of the way our political system operates, it makes it a certainty that the scum will always rise to the top. And why not? Getting into politics is the easiest and quickest way known to mankind to become rich and powerful. How can a larcenous person resist such an opportunity?

As early as the mid-nineteenth century, the great individual anarchist Lysander Spooner put it simply when he explained that when someone says that a certain type of government is best, that does not mean it’s a good government. It simply means that it’s the least bad of all other forms of government.

The challenge, then, is to find a way to educate the public so it understands that government, by its very nature, is inherently evil. Generations from now, if the United States starts to rise from the ashes of its criminally controlled bread-and-circus existence, perhaps some social genius who is a firm believer in liberty can come up with a much better system of government than a “republic” or democracy.

Whenever some slick-tongued politician says something “patriotic” like, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” it takes an enlightened mind to understand the truth in Samuel Johnson’s observation, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Which means that virtually all presidential candidates, this year or any other, are scoundrels.

No system will ever be perfect (even the Founding Fathers failed at that), but the only hope for a morally based society is one that is rooted in Thomas Jefferson’s words that “That government is best which governs least.”

If ever a majority of citizens come to believe this, we may finally find a way to invent a government that governs so little that it becomes almost invisible. The fact is that criminal politicians have no qualifications to govern you. As you labor through the next seven-plus months of political theater, always keep that in mind and remember that the person who is best qualified to govern you is you.

Video: Should Governments Regulate and Intervene to Correct "Market Failures?"

In the following video, Professor Steve Horwitz at the Foundation for Economic Education explains the dynamics of regulations and interventions in the marketplace

"What regulation and intervention do is prevent markets from discovering new ways of solving existing problems and new ways of solving new problems. When regulation erects barriers to entry or other kinds of limits on market behavior, it cuts short this discovery process, and that leads to inefficiency and waste of resources." 

Quote of the Day: Why Government is Not Private Business

From Professor Arnold Kling,

In business it is actually really hard to get people to do what you want. In fact, understanding that fact is exactly what sets CEOs apart from policy wonks. Policy wonks think that you write a law and that solves a problem. They think that you promulgate regulations and people do not figure out how to game those regulations.

Someone with business experience would never announce a mortgage loan modification program and expect it to be implemented in a matter of weeks (remember, a mortgage is a legal document that is somewhat antiquated with procedures that differ by state and local jurisdiction; remember that, prior to 2008, mortgage servicers had very few staff with any experience at all in loan modification; remember that when you introduce entirely new parameters into a highly computerized business process, somebody has to determine which systems are impacted, gather requirements, redesign databases, develop logic to protect against data input errors, develop a test plan,...). Someone with business experience would not enact a program that fines companies for failing to use a fuel that does not yet exist. Someone with business experience, I dare say, would understand that chaotic organization has consequences.

The fundamental difference between private business and government is the use of force.

To survive or to thrive, businesses must persuade consumers that their products or services offered are worth the use, the consumption or the ownership, in order for consumers to conduct voluntarily exchanges. Failing to do so means that these private sector providers would lose out to the competitors.

On the other hand government, operating as mandated or legislated monopoly, forces people to comply with their edicts or regulations under the threat of penalty (incarceration, fines and etc.) for non-compliance.

In other words, for businesses, the distribution of power to allocate resources is ultimately decided by the consumers, whom are guided by price signals and where the consumer represents as the proverbial 'king'. Whereas for government, it is the politicians and bureaucrats who decides, whom act based on political priorities rather than by price signals.

Social power, thus, is distinguished between market forces relative to political forces.

Yet there are many other significant differences.

So comparisons of “government run as business” is not only patently misguided but a popular fallacy which needs to be straightened out.