Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics

Irrational, Unpredictable, and Not Particularly Intelligent

jeffmiller:

Yes, human beings are irrational … so does that mean that we should give them tremendous powers over the lives of others?  Yes, human beings are unpredictable … so does that mean that we should allow them to use prosecution and jail for those who defy the choices imposed upon them?  Yes, human beings are not particularly intelligent … so does that mean that we should trust them to select good overlords?

What is government?  It is not some human-less, all-knowing, inherently-trustworthy creature that guides us with magnificent benevolence.  Government is made of up people who were selected by people.  If you think people are irrational when they buy products in the marketplace, do you think they are any more rational when they punch ballots at the polls?  If you think people aren’t rational when they buy a house, do you think they are any more rational when they write a law, or start a war, or ban a trade, or “stimulate” the economy.

As Milton Friedman once said:  “Where in the world do you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?”

But what really bothers me about the diatribe quoted above is the complete refusal to acknowledge that the government has existed during the past ten years.  No one could reasonably characterize the American economy as a “free market”—not now, not twenty years ago, not ever.  When Jim Taylor baldly claims the free market caused recent ills, he is saying something simply because he wants it to be true in order to validate his worldview.  And that makes Jim Taylor seem irrational, unpredictable, and not particularly intelligent.

If the argument were that the market should be purely dictated by government, I could see your point. But I think the argument that the market should be run by government and the argument that the market should be run by business people both have the same inherent flaw: they place too much faith in all the wrong people.

There are arguments for checks on both sides: the consumer corrects the business people, the voter corrects the politician. I would argue that in almost any society, the power of the consumer or the voter is actually pretty small, and that the vast majority of consumers and voters BOTH lack the resources to make a significant impact in either.

I guess which one you choose really depends on where you place your trust: an organization that exists purely to profit or an organization that exists, at least theoretically, to maintain order in society. And while I certainly don’t think an economy run entirely by the government is a wise choice, I do think that a degree of interference in the market is necessary in order to ensure that profits don’t become more important than people.

My biggest concern now, though, is that government officials have become too entangled in the private market, are often business people themselves, and are using their positions to amass profit for themselves. I don’t think the solution is to do away with government interference in the market entirely, though. The solution is to fix the problem, which is too many government officials passing laws that affect the private market and then going into private practice where they benefit…or just flat out taking corporate dollars from the companies that profit from the legislation they pass.