In response to comments at this post, I link here to this op-ed of mine from this past December. In this op-ed, I discuss public choice — not exhaustively, by any means, but in one of the ways that is relevant to the naive notion that representatives chosen by majority rule can reasonably be assumed to tax and spend in ways that promote the public interest.
On Voting to Spend Other People's Money
Share
Previous post: Reed It
Next post: Arnold's invisible heart
{ 19 comments }
It boggles the mind that such an op-ed needed to be written in the first place…
Don,
The comment you refer to clearly stated that public interest may not be served by the elected official's actions ("Doing absolutely nothing as you suggest, while possibly a better solution, was not what the people voted for…").
The implication is that elected official has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. It's one thing to hear such a thing from the likes of George Ballela, but I've heard this argument from intelligent people as well.
We're in trouble.
I don't really disagree with the op-ed, but I don't think it would do as much as the op-ed implies. Most of the biggest spending boondoggles get thrown into the Omnibus spending bill – a bill that should really be called the "Kitchen Sink" bill. It has pork for everyone in Congress, plus spending that many citizens think is reasonable, even though it simply replaces private provision of the same. The bill can easily get a super-majority, because every Congressman has something in there, and every one of them would be seen as "obstructionist."
The bill can easily get a super-majority, because every Congressman has something in there, and every one of them would be seen as "obstructionist."
This is how NASA has made space exploration seem prohibitively expensive for private ventures. To get support for the shuttle program, bits of it had to be sourced in many congressional districts to secure votes.
Elected officials spend in the public interest and the public interest depends on reelection.
A constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority would not solve the problem, but may alleviate its severity. I would also like to see a 2 month waiting period from the moment a piece of legislation is published to its eventual vote.
There's an old saying in Texas – The state legislature meets for 180 days every two years, but most Texans would prefer that they meet for 2 days every 180 years. That'd help.
fantasyland>
I like the idea of requiring only single-issue bills with a minimum time for debate, and having every federal law sunset every year. That might keep them better focused on the general interest.
And any politician that votes for (or signs) legislation without having read it completely should be drawn and quartered, or at least removed from office.
/fantasyland>
Oh, and the super-majority is a good idea. I'm sure it won't solve everything, but it would help. Personally, I'd prefer 3/4 majority; some bills wouldn't even get started.
A supermajority for new legislation, but a simple majority for repeal of existing legislation.
Of course, the best solution would be a constitution expressly limiting the state to certain delineated powers, but that does not appear to be working.
"This is how NASA has made space exploration seem prohibitively expensive for private ventures."
You can't be that dim, S. Grove. The laws of physics are the big impedient for space exploration. There's nothing stopping private folks from stockpiling liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen other than it's frigging expensive! If there was some sort of prohibition against private ventures then what was Richard Branson doing a few years ago? The blinding obvious stopper to space exploration is the lack of some sort of high-energy fuel that can put someone on the moon on the cheap. It's akin to comparing the exploration of a continent with people and horses in the old days versus someone driving around the same countryside in a car along the highway. Right now space exploration is at the 'Lewis&Clark' stage – it's highly expensive and low returns and the best that can be done yet.
Gil–
Technological limitations are real, but you can't deny the crowding out of resources by NASA. The X-Prize has been a recent and good faith effort to correct that problem, and with some success, but if you are an aerospace engineer, you'd probably still rather take that pensioned job with NASA. And the intense mobilization in the 1950's into the 1970's effectively created a government monopoly on space technology development, all directed to political ends, with any consumer advances relegated to an accidental byproduct.
Privately funded space technology may not have gotten a man to the moon in 1969, but as a matter of technology, it would've eventually, only in a consumer-centric sustainable profit-making way.
What 'technological limitations'? Gold? Silver? Copper? Computers? Hydrogen? Oxygen? What resources were locked up that the private sector couldn't get hold of? The private inventors didn't have to build a building-sized rocket just something on a small-scale whereby the inventors could test the relative power to fuel ratio of their rockets before building anything on a large scale.
After reading your op-ed, Don, I am struck by one aspect of it that seems vauge and ambiguous. Cost.
In an attempt to secure a super majority, 75 percent or 80 percent, what costs would accrue over and beyond that required to get a 51 percent majority?
Assuming that working for a supermajority takes on the task of meeting and persuading those in doubt or opposed, what about that task is prohibitively expensive.
They presumably are all in Washington D.C., have computers, phones, and limos. meeting face to face off the floor of each respective chamber can not be that burdensome to the public pocketbook. Even assuming that the cost reference is directed at the length of time required to build that supermajority, I still can't
believe that it is but a modest cost increase above what it takes to get a 51 percent majority.
Frankly I would have to say that in my opinion any cost accrued to securing a supermajority would be massively offset by the costs saved by eliminating so much needless and wasteful spending.
Cost? Having a supermajority for all legislation would be more likely to increase wealth in the public treasury not decrease it.
If a plan is good enough to be imposed upon the entire people, it should be good enough to obtain an 80 percent approval of both houses of congress. If not, then we save the money.
"What 'technological limitations'?"
In your words, "The laws of physics".
"What resources were locked up that the private sector couldn't get hold of?"
For example, just about all the relevant expertise available in the country was tied up by NASA in the space race. Certainly the best of that expertise was tied up. And at any rate, it raised the cost of those endeavors.
Do you know what "crowding out" means? If so, how can you deny the massive NASA mobilization would not crowd out private endeavors in that field?
You can't be that dim, S. Grove. The laws of physics are the big impedient for space exploration.
I'm not, but apparently you are.
Where do you think the government got the resources for the aerospace program?
Are you suggesting that private sector enterprises have never formed consortiums to pull off expensive projects?
Do you understand that government involvement made it more expensive as well.
By sucking funds out of the private sector, the government has reduced that sector's ability to invest in large projects.
You are not comprehending all of the created wealth that has been squandered by taxpayer funded subsidies, 800+ military bases around the world, etc. Wealth that should have been in private hands, our hands, and our parents hands, to make those investments, AND… to make them actually worthwhile rather than to show a doomed empire that we could beat them to the moon.
Essentially, what political control of resources does is permit continued engagement in unprofitable enterprises, worse, resource wasting enterprises.
S. Grove are seriously saying . . .
. . . "The government uses computers therefore computers aren't available for the private sector."
. . . "The government uses cars therefore cars aren't available for the private sector."
The way you carry you'd think rockets were made out of solid gold. Considering this guy can make his own rocket it shows that rocket science isn't a mystical knowledge possessed by only five people in the world.
Way to miss the point Gil.
All sources of demand compete with each other for supply.
By taking money from you to buy bombs and planes to drop them on people in other countries, government increases demand for fuel and metals which raises their price in the market.
You should have learned this in primary education.
The taking of money from you reduces your ability to buy the more expensive fuel and metals, or to direct your investments to private space initiatives.
Way to miss the point Sam. I'm talking of techical ability – the ability get more results from the same amount of materials. A modern-day superfast processor may not have much more materials than a slow one from a number of years – and, depending on how far you go back, modern processors use a helluva lot less resources than ye olde 'processors' of decades prior.
"Way to miss the point Sam. I'm talking of techical ability"
Sam was talking about the development of that technical ability. Zeus does not hand down that knowledge to man. People have to dedicate resources to it. Undoubtedly NASA mobilization did result in advances. But just as undoubtedly those advances were directed toward the political goals of the space program, necessarily crowding out other directions of development.
The consequences are stunning–a few men are placed on the moon at great expense, and then little else happens for decades. Generations of dreamers grow old wondering where their dreams went. The answer–the course set by government was simply not sustainable.
And the favorite platitude of government activists is the ironic "If we can put a man on the moon, we can X" where X is some grandiose government plan. And in every case X really is like putting a man on the moon–an huge diversion of resources toward an unsustainable goal that culminates in shattered dreams.