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August 25, 2005
But Bill, why the lack of love for political parties?
Over the last few days, I have been doing a lot of thinking as to why the major political parties have zero place in my life.
...Why, in the greatest country in the history of mankind, the thought of constant, bitter division via a cyclical popularity contest disguised as being "an issues-minded discussion" has little appeal to me and, in fact, elicits great frustration.
To sum it up for me, I'll let John Stossel do the speaking from his (now in paperback!) book, "Give Me A Break." As I re-read this book in the light of current events and the declining social and moral systems of our land, I'll probably be quoting from it often.
"Free markets are better.
The editor of this book challenged me on this, saying, 'How can you draw such distinctions between government and private enterprise? Democracy is a sort of free market. We choose representatives and get exacly what we ask for. Isn't that just as good?' No, because under private enterprise, we get to vote more often, and for more things. Free-market competition demands competitiors adjust constantly (millions of changes a day, if not per second) if they are to keep pleasing (winning the votes of) customers.
Democracy is a kind of market, but a horribly slow and clumsy one. We elect only once every several years, and we don't choose representatives under conditions of open competition. The political class has so rigged the system that 98 percent of congressional incumbents are reelected. Now that incumbents have also enacted contribution limits, it's even harder to raise enough money to mount a challenge.
More important, politics is a package deal; government responds to collective choice, usually the wishes of a majority. You get all of Gore's promises, or all of Bush's promises. But you can choose between 20/20 and a dozen other newsmagazines on TV. There are many different restaurants, with many different combinations of cuisine, quality, and price. Imagine that you bought food like you vote for president. You get two choices, donkey meat and elephant meat (every now and then, another choice is available in certain states, where the food's producers solicited enough signatures on a petition to get into the grocery store). Every four years, everybody gets together and votes for donkey or elephant meat. No matter how you vote, you have to eat what the majority picks."
Consider me a political vegetarian.
| By colrus | 12:40 AM
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