Let’s grant that the free market, in whatever ideal form you can imagine it achieving in reality, is far from perfect. Let’s grant that all politicians, when they launch themselves on their careers of winning electoral office, genuinely intend to promote what each one sincerely regards to be the public good. Let’s grant that very smart economists, as well as accomplished practitioners of the hard sciences, can in fact devise on their blackboards schemes of social engineering that, were these schemes to be implemented as designed, would make everyone in the country – nay, everyone in the entire world, today and forever into the future – happier, much wealthier, more content, and longer-lived.
Grant all that. The result is trumped by the prevalence of campaign ads such as this one. (HT Andy Roth)
With such rank ignorance – with such utter disregard of even the most fundamental economic insights – on proud display by the reigning President of the USA (and also, in other ads, by the current chief contender for the throne), I find it inexplicable that anyone above the age of three finds politics, politicians, and government inspiring, uplifting, or trustworthy. Politics is, rather, nothing more than a circus of idiocy.
If astronomy operated similarly to politics, the world’s top astronomers would compete furiously amongst themselves to see who could most effectively assure the general public that the sun orbits around a stationary flat earth – a flat earth that was created just 4,000 years ago and which sits atop a tower of turtles.
