Why Do You Persist in the Belief That Government Can Save You from Government?
Not even Donald Trump can save you.
It’s #MemeMonday. (Discussion below.)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so the meme should get the point across: expecting government to save you from government is like calling one fox to ask him to get the other foxes to lay off the henhouse.
If one agent or agency of government is persecuting you in some way, to whom do you turn? Another agency of that same government…
Police giving you a hard time? Who ya gonna call? Other police. Or maybe the FBI (LOL).
If one judge imposes an unfair ruling, to whom can you turn? Another judge who is paid by that very same government.
Need to appeal a ruling in a government court? Hey, here’s another government court.
Excuse me, Mister Bureaucrat—one of the other bureaucrats in your agency is treating me unfairly. Yeah—let me know how that works out.
Here’s Hans-Hermann Hoppe to explain further:
If no one can appeal for justice except to government, justice will be perverted in favor of the government, constitutions and supreme courts notwithstanding. Constitutions and supreme courts are government constitutions and agencies, and whatever limitations on government action they might contain or find is invariably decided by agents of the very institution under consideration. Predictably, the definition of property and protection will continually be altered and the range of jurisdiction expanded to the government's advantage.1
And Murray Rothbard:
[N]o constitution can interpret or enforce itself; it must be interpreted by men. And if the ultimate power to interpret a constitution is given to the government's own Supreme Court, then the inevitable tendency is for the Court to continue to place its imprimatur on ever-broader powers for its own government. Furthermore, the highly touted "checks and balances" and "separations of powers" in the American government are flimsy indeed, since in the final analysis all of these divisions are part of the same government and are governed by the same set of rulers.2
And John C. Calhoun:
Nor would the division of government into separate and, as it regards each other, independent departments prevent this result . . . as each and all the departments—and, of course, the entire government—would be under the control of the numerical majority, it is too clear to require explanation that a mere distribution of its powers among its agents or representatives could do little or nothing to counteract its tendency to oppression and abuse of power.3
A good deal of life boils down to incentives. Your hunger incentivizes you to find food and eat it. Love, desire, the need to procreate, and a dozen other impulses incentivize you to find a mate. These are, by and large, positive incentives.
But then there are also perverse incentives. For example…
In many states, the accumulated dollar value of welfare programs is such that it is extremely close to the wage one would get for working. In a generic case, based on statistics: the accumulated dollar value of welfare in a particular area is equivalent to working 40 hours a week at $17 per hour. Entry-level jobs in that area pay an average of $17.50 per hour. So an individual is faced with a choice: work his tail off for 50 cents an hour, or collect just a little bit less and not work at all. Even a job at $20 per hour is really only paying $3 when compared to the welfare option. The individual who choses welfare over work is, by multiple metrics, actually choosing rationally. Welfare creates perverse incentives.
Nearly all incentives for government officials are perverse. Here, in this excerpt from The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right, I describe one of many examples:
Beginning (as Rand, the Austrians, and others do) with self-interested action as the fundamental driver of human life, the Public Choicers look at the self-interest of the main players in the government drama. They called them the “iron triangle”: interest groups (who want particular policies), politicians (who make the policies), and bureaucrats (who administer the policies). The insight of the public-choice school was to identify the self-reinforcing feedback loop by which each player gives the others what they want.
The politicians’ interest is in getting re-elected. They want votes, support, and campaign cash—and that is exactly what they get from the interest groups (and to some extent from the bureaucrats).
The bureaucrats want more power and larger budgets for their agencies, and jurisdiction over more areas of operation, and individual bureaucrats want promotions and job security. And that is exactly what they get from the politicians, with the added blessing and support of the interest groups.
The interest group gets the policies it wants from the politicians (usually from the relevant legislative subcommittees), and it gets a friendly implementation of those policies from the relevant bureaucracies.
The costs for all of this are then distributed among the fourth player in the drama: the taxpayer.
This is the phenomenon of concentrated benefits and distributed costs. The benefits are concentrated among a comparatively small number of highly motivated players, who, for all intents and purposes, sit down in a room together and hash out a plan that serves all their interests. The costs are charged to people who aren’t even in the room, and who are barely even aware that the process is taking place. Broadly distributed, the cost of each individual iteration of the process is so small that it is hardly noticed. They sure do add up, though.
The end result looks a lot less like the “I’m Just a Bill” process lovingly depicted in the Schoolhouse Rock PSAs of the 70s and 80s, and more like the back rooms and royal courtyards of the ancien régime (or the fascist corporatism of the 20th century). Making matters worse, the players tend to move, in a revolving-door process, from one vertex of the iron triangle to the next. Politicians go on to become industry lobbyists. Industry lobbyists are a natural fit to work in the bureaucracy that oversees the industry they know so well. Both have developed plenty of friends to support them in any sort of run for office they’d like to make someday.
Where do you fit in all this? Nowhere.
Think the police will save you? Police incentives are extremely perverse.
Think politicians will save you? Explain how that will happen. Politicians’ incentive is to get elected and reelected. That does not mean helping you—it means pandering to the majority, and to those who have campaign cash.
And this is further reinforced by your fellow citizens, who have their own perverse incentives: Voters A get together with Politician B to decide what Taxpayer C will be forced to fork over to Recipient D…
Recipients D get your money.
Voters A get to virtue-signal about how generous they are…with your money.
Politician B gets votes and campaign cash from A, D, and everyone else who likes to virtue signal about how generous they are with your money.
Got a problem with a politician? Never fear—you can always vote for another politician who is faced with the exact same perverse incentives as every other politician.
In order for government to hold government accountable, it has to be in a particular government official’s interests to do so. And it almost never is. Even if an official wants to take some sort of action against another branch or official, the risks almost always outweigh the benefits. And they rarely want to anyway.
Government is only getting larger and more intrusive. Nothing has ever come along to stop that process. That is not because corrupt people have perverted a good system. That is the system functioning normally. And yes, that means our vaunted “constitutional republic” too.
Indeed, as Hoppe describes, the situation is inevitable from the start:
Predictably, under democratic conditions the tendency of every monopoly to increase prices and decrease quality will only be stronger and more pronounced. As hereditary monopolist, a king or prince regarded the territory and people under his jurisdiction as his personal property and engaged in the monopolistic exploitation of his "property." Under democracy, monopoly, and monopolistic exploitation do not disappear. Even if everyone is permitted to enter government, this does eliminate the distinction between the rulers and the ruled. Government and the governed are not one and the same person. Instead of a prince who regards the country as his private property, a temporary and interchangeable caretaker is put in monopolistic charge of the country. The caretaker does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is permitted to use it to his and his protégés' advantage. He owns its current use—usufruct —but not its capital stock. This will not eliminate exploitation. To the contrary, it will make exploitation less calculating and more likely to be carried out with little or no regard to the capital stock. In other words, exploitation will be shortsighted. Moreover, with free entry into and public participation in government, the perversion of justice will proceed even faster. Instead of protecting preexisting private property rights, democratic government will become a machine for the continual redistribution of preexisting property rights in the name of illusory "social security," until the idea of universal and immutable human rights disappears and is replaced by that of law as positive government-made legislation.4
No amount of voting can save you from this.
No specific leader can save you from this. (Not even Donald Trump.)
No policy—save for a policy in which the system dismantles itself—can save you from this.
The system is the problem.
Democracy The God That Failed, pp. 230-231
For A New Liberty, p. 58
Foot note from For A New Liberty, p. 58: John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953), pp. 25–27.
Democracy The God That Failed, pp. 234
The Oligarchs (Lobbyists) stroke the Politicians to create the Administrative State (Bureaucrats) to establish barriers to entry of potential competitors that would compete against said Oligarchs.
After establishing a tight circle jerk the only competition (Free Markets) is between Oligarchs.
The Politician, after receiving a good hand job from the Oligarchs, will later join the Oligarch (become Lobbyists) and give the hand jobs to newly elected Politicians, for a princely sum. The Bureaucrats are promised a lush pension, in addition to the sordid power plays they get to exhibit, to keep the circle jerk intact.
The Proles are kept in check with small giveaways to keep them happy. The Bourgeoisie become hand puppets to whatever social cause is sold to them via propaganda to use governmental coercion to purportedly correct the injustice and it gives them a feeling of rectitude.
P.S. Donald Trump isn't going to break the circle.
1. "Government is only getting larger and more intrusive. Nothing has ever come along to stop that process."
Nothing? Not even for a period of decades or more? Does the American Revolution count?
2. "No policy—save for a policy in which the system dismantles itself—can save you from this."
At one point, I recall a Trump policy of 2 regulations canceled for every new one enacted. I also recall that for a while he was dismantling at 10 times that rate. Is that a small example of a self-dismantling government policy?
"Electing the right people" is the usual response of well-meaning people, but I always liked Milton Friedman's (paraphrased) response: "The challenge is not to elect the 'right people'. The challenge is to create a political system architecture that will get the wrong people to do the right thing. "