Cats Don't Bark
29 October 2006
Editor, The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Dick Armey speculates about why the GOP broke its promise to rein in government ("Where We Went Wrong," October 29).
My colleagues, the Nobel economist James Buchanan and his collaborator Gordon Tullock, aren't surprised by the GOP's sorry performance. They explain that, because the benefits of most government programs (say, tariffs on sugar) are concentrated on a relatively small handful of persons (sugar farmers) while the costs are spread over hundreds of millions of persons (sugar consumers), elected officials are soaked in incentives to gratify concentrated interests and to ignore the general interest. And this flaw is only one of many that afflict politics.
Expecting politicians to elevate the public interest over their own individual interests and those of the special interests that inevitably haunt government lobbies is as realistic as expecting lions to sing lullabies to zebras.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Dick Armey speculates about why the GOP broke its promise to rein in government ("Where We Went Wrong," October 29).
My colleagues, the Nobel economist James Buchanan and his collaborator Gordon Tullock, aren't surprised by the GOP's sorry performance. They explain that, because the benefits of most government programs (say, tariffs on sugar) are concentrated on a relatively small handful of persons (sugar farmers) while the costs are spread over hundreds of millions of persons (sugar consumers), elected officials are soaked in incentives to gratify concentrated interests and to ignore the general interest. And this flaw is only one of many that afflict politics.
Expecting politicians to elevate the public interest over their own individual interests and those of the special interests that inevitably haunt government lobbies is as realistic as expecting lions to sing lullabies to zebras.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Sunday June 10, 2007 at 7:15am