Random Thoughts On The Passing Scene - Part 8
Government, Politics, and Voting
Collected over many years, attribution for the title goes to amazing Thomas Sowell based on his once regular column of the same title. Read all of those first and perhaps a second time before mine. I have to note that Art Carden beat me to this.
[Disclaimer that these might be partially or wholly, but completely unintentionally, stolen.]
Voting is grownups’ version of letters to Santa Claus.
Voting is a method of settling disagreements on matters of opinion. It is not a method of discovering facts. It is necessarily arbitrary in both process and result.
If you actually believe you are changing elections, the implication is clear: Don't bother voting. Mathematical literacy and political realism > naïve wishing and democratic romance.
I believe politicians exhibit generally two emotions: anger and happiness. To be electable to the general voter they need to be angry without seeming panicky (instead they need to seem serious/firm/concerned) and be happy without seeming smug (instead they need to seem joyful/excited/hopeful). However, within their tribe these truths don’t hold and may in fact be the opposite of the truth.
The test for one's support of freedom comes in how one feels about issues one otherwise finds disgusting, distasteful, and disturbing. Consequently, the proper tolerance for governmental power (the power to restrict freedom) is to only allow government a power that you would be comfortable your staunchest political opponent having at his disposal to enforce upon you.
Zoning laws are society's attempt to repeal the inevitability of depreciation and the impossibility of building a better society no one is willing and able to pay for.
Government is largely a bureaucracy characterized by corrupt people bossing around lazy and incompetent people. This is not to say all or even most people in government are corrupt, lazy, or incompetent. Almost all are not (at least not intentionally). But there are enough that are that this is a true description.
It is unfortunate when people who woefully do not understand how the world works attempt to run it.
Democracy is not an ideal; it is but a method, a procedure.
Monarchy was the archaic view that a chosen bloodline should rule tyrannically over the masses from the most accomplished inventor to the lowliest peasant. Democracy is the enlightened view giving hope to even the lowliest peasant that he too could someday rise to be the powerful tyrant over all.
No political system is good at shrinking government.
We have made politics a sport and politicized sports. I am not sure if this says more about desire for playfulness or our contempt for play.
People tend towards cooperation, which is antithetical to government’s purpose.
Good men do not make war unless out of necessity, and only then with judicious restraint.
The need for government implies the need for discontents.
Regulations should be based on typical cases not exceptional ones.
Me: “When it comes to the religion of voting, I am a voting atheist...I don’t believe in it.” A believer: “So you don’t believe in democracy. What do you believe in?” Me: “I believe in math.”
Woe, bemoan the naivety of a man who trusts his own government.
We have a government of laws . . . For the benefit of powerful men.
If you think that the fact my kids go to private school invalidates my arguments against the government monopolizing education, then you aren’t smart enough to teach my kids.
Prohibitions are promoted by the corrupt and the dumb. Only fools and tyrants see prohibition as a reasonable solution.
If redundancy were enough, the federal government would never fail.
I strongly dislike political slogans masquerading as arguments. Slogans have their place, but they cannot replace thoughtful argumentation.
There are two kinds of HIPAA Law violations: the ones nearly all of us make on a regular, on-going basis with little chance to ever stop and the ones few ever made long before it was codified in law.
It seems we want to live in a world where a wage rate is a private, personal decision best handled between an employee and his or her politician.
I have an aspirational weight and a dreamed-of height. Is your goal an aspiration or a dream? Are your public policy positions more like my weight or my height?
Are football fans who faithfully cheer at games more likely to be voters? Put another way, do we fully understand what voting is actually accomplishing when we engage in it?
In terms of the regulatory state I want to slay the monster. Others simply long for a better Dr. Frankenstein.