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Warning: not suitable for low-information and partisan minded folks. Another reason this thread will likely fall off the radar quickly, but it outlines the problems with rent-seek and K street.
In what kind drug induced haze does stuff like this come to mind? Is this supposed to be an attack on stupid policies like section 8 and rent control?
ETA, after reading the link...the cartoon makes a sort of twisted sense. It's long past time the public got out of the business of subsidizing housing and let the free market set rates.
Last edited by Toyman at Jewel Lake; 03-20-2013 at 10:31 AM..
good cartoon and link. The public choice theorists give me hope for the future. We threw off monarchy and adopted democracy because we wanted more freedom, but it turns out that there are a lot of unintended consequences with democracy. King George would have never dreamed of telling colonists what size drinking cup they could use, but democratically elected Mayor Bloomberg did.
I expect one of these public choice scribblers will come up with a new form of gov't that will address the unintended consequences, and we will throw off our present system just as the colonists threw off monarchy. Unfortunately it will probably not be adopted without another bloody revolution.
This is similar to Prisoner's Dilemma, in which a Nash Equilibrium is identified and does not equate with the global optimum. Grant writing works this way, where organizations consume resources (time, money, manpower) to write up grants in hopes of collecting on the jackpot. In essence, each organization has put in a secret bid that is the aggregate of these resources, and the one expending the most usually wins but in which all bids are either wasted or collected by the grantor.
The problem with a market system is who bails out the building contractors and their financiers when they build more houses than can be sold at a profit? I submit the Las Vegas housing market in 2008 as an example. This "need" to protect speculators is the root cause of our financial problems. The market system does not work if the losers are insulated from their losses.
FWIW - At least one of the English Kings did set the size of drink glasses in English pubs. Where did you think the English Pint of beer came from?
BTW – Only a fool or a dunce would participate in an auction as illustrated. Maybe that was why the dinosaurs died out.
The prevalence of rent-seeking and lobbying essentially refutes Madison, both his argument in #51 which is quoted at length in the OP's first link, and his overall theory of separation of powers. In effect, the experiment has now concluded, and the results contradict the hypothesis.
We threw off monarchy and adopted democracy because we wanted more freedom, but it turns out that there are a lot of unintended consequences with democracy. King George would have never dreamed of telling colonists what size drinking cup they could use, but democratically elected Mayor Bloomberg did.
Correction: you threw away not monarchy, but the British constitution, and replaced it not with democracy, but with Madison's little toy.
Why is it that lobbying, as the term is understood in the United States, hardly exists in Westminster-style systems?
Lobbying in the United Kingdom plays a significant role in the formation of legislation and a wide variety of commercial organisations, lobby groups 'lobby' for particular policies and decisions by Parliament and other political organs at national, regional and local levels.
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