The Reality of Politics

I'm just happy that Krugman admits that forcing insurance companies to accept customers with pre-existing conditions will cause an ever increasing spiral of higher insurance premiums and more healthy people choosing to go without insurance. I'm pleasantly surprised by Krugman's understanding - maybe he'll make a good economist yet.

Notice also how Krugman's learning to use decriptive language to make denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions sound worse that it really is. He calls it "insurance discrimination on the basis of medical history". Discrimination? - that must be bad, right?

Actually there are, in political theory, three basic views of the politician's job. The first is that his job is, in fact, to get re-elected. The second is that is job is to vote on legislation in any way that the latest poll of his district tells him his constituents want him to vote. The third is based on the ideas of Edmund Burke. It states that the politician is elected to support or oppose legislation based on his own view of what is good. The fact that our current society has created a politics based on re-election is more a reflection of our society than it is of the basic philosophy of politics.

Even, or perhaps especially, so-called "progressive" politicians who believe they are sincerely attached to the common good must place getting re-elected at the top of their priorities lest someone less interested in the public good take their place.

This is an inherent "feature" of electoral politics.

Cafe Hayek seems inundated with left-wing trolls, especially since the Scott Brown win.

Sort of like some of the spoiled tenured academics...tenure is attaining status, not knowledge.

Don't hate the playa, hate the game!

Like i said, some are spoiled...Gang of 88 comes to mind.

"...overwhelming evidence that politics, in fact, almost exclusively is about achieving election and re-election."


Absolutely it is. And if that required doing the will of the people there'd be nothing wrong with it. But this all has to do with the recent Supreme Court decision on Citizens United vs. FEC. Getting elected and re-elected does not require the consent of the people. It requires the consent of the monied interest and corporations as it is THEY who will get the consent of the people. That is what Krugman justifiably laments if only indirectly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/34985508...

Yeah this is Olbermann and its 11 minutes long but its very incredibly good.

Yeah this is Olbermann and its 11 minutes long but its very incredibly good.

Olbermann and "incredibly good" are mutually exclusive. After watching a couple clips of him recently, I refuse to watch any more of his ranting lunacy. If he spent more time thinking about the content rather than the hyperbolic rhetoric of his rants, he might be able to say something intelligent.

Expecting Olberstooge to say something intelligent (the dumbass can't even speak intelligently about football) is like expecting Yasafi to say something intelligent. Ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes.

It's not some much the monied part, but that those in position struggle to maintain their position against those the threaten the current state of affairs.

This happens at all economic levels.

Even the lowliest union members struggle to protect their incomes against any threat even if do so is opposed to the general interest.

Monied interests are often opposed to each other preventing any absolute monopoly. Wealthy politicians often lose elections to popular politicians.

You focus a little too much on the money and to little on incentives.

Your first mistake is assuming Krugman is dispensing academic wisdom. He gets paid to make these sorts of statements. He has every market incentives to not sound like a boring economist or political scientist (my self). This is as absurd as complaining over the opinions of Fox news Commentators. If Krugman wants to send a message to economists, or those that think they them, he signal his intention.

To insist that the NY Times is going to pay people to outline social choice theory is just as absurd.

Public Choice Theory? Amartya Sen (who boasts his own Nobel Prize) calls it an absurdity. 2:1 So much for Buchanan :) And please. Stop your Krugman Paranoia. This is so boring ... No ideas of your own?

Stephan, I have no idea who you are, so I'll assume that you are an okay guy. But if you have any sense of anything you will understand that both the Profs have written nearly daily for years, and the anti-PK bits are a small portion of their output. It is fairly ignorant for you suggest anything to the contrary.

As for public choice being absurd because one nobel laureate calls it so is weak. By that measure everything that PK says is absurd is absurd, and everything that Friedman says is absured is absurd. And therefore a great deal of economics is absurd because some Nobelian on either side of a discussion says so.

Next time you post something so full of self-satisfaction, please cite your rationale.

Actually Stephan I suggest you read Amartya Sen's discussion of Buchanan in Richard Swedberg's edited book of conversations, Economics and Sociology. Sen argues in that interview that James Buchanan has probably done more than any other modern thinker to put political economy on correct philosophical foundations.

Peter,

Thanks. I will look that up. In regard to Buchanan that's news for me. But never too late to learn something. Still I think Sen made it clear, that the argument "describing government officials as only self-interested" is absurd.

And this ongoing rant against Krugman is annoying. You don't like his point of view. Fine. Come up with your own. And please not only letters to news editors repeating the old mantra again and again. Something like the pirate stuff. That's a good economical read.

The great thing is that you have the freedom to avoid Prof. Boudreaux's "ongoing rant", simply Google another blog to spend your time. As for the "old mantra" do you prefer him to constantly lie? Perhaps with every blog post telling us "Trees Are In Fact Purple"?

Hi M. Boudreaux,

I strongly disagree. You advance that one should not complain that something is not like one thinks it should be (am I correct?).

I think that this position makes all the sense in the world for the vast majority of objects (the object, here, is the thing whose state is the object of the complaint), but not at all for one important class: that of endeavours, of projects, of all human enterprises in which the person can claim to be an active participant.

For example, about the progress of a project that is entirely mine (say, embellishing the garden), I have all the rights to analyse its progress, try to diagnose the causes that may explain why it doesn't unfold as I thought, to ask myself if I still thinks it worths it, etc. About a project that I started with a group of people, I can also do these things, although we can expect that the impact of my sole opinion will be diluted in the multiples opinions of the other participants.

Politics is the process by which a group a people establish rules about their interactions. In the U.S.A., everyone is (has the right to be) a participant in this process. And this process is a project, an enterprise, in the sense that it implies human will.

Because of that, it is totally acceptable that one expresses his distress that the project is not like he wants it. Heck! Is there a libertarian, or an austrian economists that never complained about the state of the political process??

(politically, I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian. This post is entirely about the correct use of words, correct argumentation, on not at all about policy.)

Jonathan Dumas

Seems to me Scott Brown's job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution". I have little respect for an official who places the goal of re-election above his oath of office. The job of public official should be short-term, not a career!

For once, I think you are not giving Krugman enough credit; his wording is actually precise. The emphasis here is on "supposed:" whether it's how politics actually operates or not, the average voter expects politics to be about "achieving something more than your own re-election." Public Choice Theory tells me this is so, because if voters thought that politicians should only ever be interested in doing what it takes to get to keep their jobs, then this is the rhetoric politicians would use. Rather than boasting about their principles and offering pointless annecdotes to convince us of their authenticity, they would point to how much they were spending on consultants and polling firms and how much time they spend reading their constituents letters. Draw the obvious conclusion. Paul Krugman is disingenuous, but he's not stupid. He realizes that politicians have to project the image that they're worried about something more than their own political survival, and he's playing on that.

I saw Scott Brown say this morning that his "job" was to get the voters who voted for him to vote for him again and to get more of those who didn't vote for him to do the same - or words to that effect. I was surprised by the honesty. And of course, he's exactly right.

I think this is one of the problems with the direct election of SENATORS.

The founding fathers wisely setup the different branches (and the sub-divisions within those branches) to operate differently from one another. And one of those differences (harking back to a time when the country acted more like a federal republic in which the states still had rights and hadn't capitulated to the federal government for a few dollars) was that the House of Representatives was intended to be the body whose members WERE beholden to the voters. These folks were not really supposed to be "voting their conscience but voting the will of the people they represented.

The SENATE however was to be populate by people selected by the states (governors, legislatures, etc.) to represent the interests of the states and to be "above the fray" and more in a position to "vote their consciences". The IDEA here was that you would have the voice of the people, but also the voice and minds of people that were "above the fray".

Now we can debate all day long whether this was a good plan and whether the founders were hopelessly naive (or even elitist) but the change to the direct election of senators has turned the senate into a smaller house of representatives, only worse because the senate, in general has more power and each individual senator has more power as well.

I guess it is time for term limits for crass politicians like Brown and crass commenters like you for acclaiming Brown's spineless admission of beholden subserviency. Brown is obviously an ignoble brown-noser, so his name fits like a glove. If the glove fits, you must convict. I say with deference to the late Johnny Cochran for expanding on his legal lemma.

Thank you for raising the level of discussion around here. You are indispensable to this blog, because the more time you spend here, the less harm you can do elsewhere.

"Thank you for raising the level of discussion around here. You are indispensable to this blog,"

If you are going to extend the "name must fit" slam on Brown, then you are wrong to invoke Cochran. His name literally means "fugitive penis."

And the capital of Thailand literally means what happens when a guys walk sideways through a narrow doorway.

Germ, why would you write this? "Spineless admission?" "Subserviency?"

It's a REPRESENTATIVE democracy that we work with in the US. We elect people to represent us-- that's exactly why we have the system in place-- to serve the people who are eligible to vote. The system is designed to put people in decision-making roles who will best represent the majority view. It is expressly NOT for electing people who have "bright ideas" that run counter the general will. It is not experimental. It is not 'progressive' or 'conservative' or scientific in its nature.

I respect politicians who work in political systems that respond to voter choices.

Crass? That's someone who is without refinement, delicacy, or sensitivity. In order to get elected politicians have to walk a fine line of fundraising and public proclamations that illustrate who they are and how they will represent the many interests of their constituents. They may lie about it all but then it's the voter's responsibility to vote against them in the next election.

The US election process works because it moderates. What doesn't work well is the huge, and growing, unelected power elites in government. They suffer no checks and no moderation.

he's just trolling. Take a look at all the comments he left on this blog.

I know, but this year my resolution was to drop the sarcasm and actually argue things up front and honestly in public forums.

What I don't get is the constant drumbeat about how politicians are just in it to get elected. My only response is, well, yes they are. I say out loud that that is a good thing about our system.

Aye, that is the problem of democracy. The idea of a constitutional republic is to moderate the passions/opinions of the electorate.

When the electorate achieves sufficient wisdom, they will put down the weapon of political power and turn to cooperative effort in the marketplace.

The government is there to organize conflict between interests.

The market is there to coordinate interests.

My hope is to have a system where the motives of politicians are irrelevant because government is too weak for motives to matter.

Good luck with your resolution. I hope it works out for you. I find there are some people and some situations which are conducive to honest debate and sometimes sarcasm is the best that will ever come out of the exchange.

In any case, I enjoyed reading your post.

Re; the "admission of beholden subserviency".

Interesting point. The way I see it, either a politician works for me or they are exploiting me. No other possibilities. I have become quite convinced that it is nearly always the latter, so it was at least interesting to hear a politician claim to be the former. Your statement, of course, represents the position of the exploiters. I'm hoping that you meant it sarcastically...

So do you believe that Ted Kennedy held on to that seat for 40 years by always "doing the right thing" and never "doing what would get him re-elected"? All politicians are crass. Some more crass than others. I tend to believe newbies are less crasser than the Ted Kennedy's of the world.

I like him even more now.

I often disagreed with Jesse Helms. However, he made a good point. His dinner companion (whose name I have forgotten) challenged him on farm subsidies. When his companion finished his diatribe, Helms calmly replied that he agreed. Farm subsidies are awful, he understands the argument against them and agrees with it. Then he said that his constituents love the farm subsidies. If he voted against them, he would be voted out of office. "Tell me please, why should I do something that would ensure that I will never be re-elected?" Particularly since nobody else in his position in congress will do so and any replacement will vote to please his constituents - for subsidies."

Good comment, Methinks. Politicians are nearly always fulfilling the wishes of the asses who vote for them. I for one am sick of hearing how righteous the farmers of America are. What a joke. Same thing for unionized people. Screw you unionized electricians, plumbers, welders. You're just a bunch of sheeple who think you need a shepherd to watch over you. There are idiots in the IT field who talk about unionizing. What a bunch of pathetic losers.

"Politicians are nearly always fulfilling the wishes of the asses who vote for them" - actually, I think it's a bit more disingenuous than that... the trick of politics - maintaining power - seems to be in NOT actually DELIVERING fulfillment of the voter's wishes, but in convincing them that their problems will be solved by something which actually makes the problems worse (often by design).

Minimum wage is a primary example - they've successfully sold the notion that they can increase a worker's prosperity by artificially increasing his wage rate, ignoring the fact that the price of all the goods which that worker wants to buy must increase proportionately also - leaving him right back where he started, but in a higher tax bracket. Ultimately, whether paid $7.50 or $75/hour, a floor mop operator can never be as prosperous as a brain surgeon because the jobs have different value to society - the FMO will still need to work a whole hour to buy 3 gallons of gasoline.

If the politicians could solve all the problems, and did so, they'd have no jobs left - they'd lose the imperative to "do something" which is the source of their power.

Finally, I think it's beautiful that our President has a name which is so easy for "Sheeple" to pronounce - "O-Baaaaaaaaa-Maaaa"

A lot of those rank and file union members seem pretty unhappy when they find out that the union leaders are sucking them dry and they can't get a job if they lose it because unions increase the unemployment rate.

IT wants to unionize? Uh....good luck with that.

Well, I've been thinking about it a little. Maybe "Coders Local 75" would be good after all?

I think Krugman proved that donkeys are, in fact, bipedal; I'm assuming that he walks on two feet.

Well, at the very least he's proven that he is an ass.

Thank you for raising the level of discussion around here. You are indispensable to this blog, because the more time you spend here, the less harm you can do elsewhere.

Ah yet another new troll insulting a long time member.

Folks, could it be that the reason:

"Lamenting that Democratic politicians up and down Pennsylvania Avenue have lost their enthusiasm for radical health-care ‘reform,"

is because, as we have said to each other over and over, it was never about health-care reform, it was about seizing power and control, and the reason the enthusiasm is gone is because Scott Brown just ensured that the power and control had hit a serious pothole in the democratic path perfect?

what I was implying ;)

I know. I just like actually saying it :)