Maggie's Farm

He knows nothing about value if he thinks Washington can 'be effective'.

The whole basis of value is determined by choice and scarcity, the ability to make trade-offs and purchases when necessary (otherwise known as substitutes and/or complements in economics).

Adam Smith would've gone to town on this guy. The basis of "The Wealth of Nations" as well as the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" is that aggregated behaviors even out.

That is, not all my neighbors are dopey - some are actually quite intelligent (except the guy across the street who wants to put up the Italian villa on his property, but hey, it's his land and if he wants to look like an idiot, so be it). Indeed, most neighbors are more intelligent than we give them credit for. The idea one man's trash is another man's treasure should be applied (I really hate that Italian villa, but he loves it).

As a result, the entire system of purchases and needs, across our community, tends to balance out over time. This is a key point. Washington waves a wand and says "X must be priced at Y and only Z can purchase at any given time" and that's how it is in perpetuity or until the law/rule is changed.

But economics doesn't work that way. Economics dictates that price and productivity levels vary with the level of transaction/creation. Prices rise as something becomes scarce, motivating producers to create more, until prices rise to the point of lowered relative purchase trends and the creation process leads to too much supply and prices fall, leading to more purchases, and the cycle repeats.

Most cycles are not so cut-and-dried, and some are more linear than up and down or cyclical. But this is important, because regardless of how their cycle works, the concept of a central 'efficient' solution has failed every time it has ever been tried. Amtrak, Post Office, Bureau of Land Management, Drug Enforcement Agency, etc. Hell, Prohibition is really the only example you need to know just how ineffective government is at setting and enforcing rules in an efficient and meaningful way.

Ultimately, that process always leads to the Orwellian "some animals are more equal than others" outcome where politics dictate the distribution, rather than need, desire, or capability to pay.

By the way, I don't see the discussion as "American" or "UnAmerican". It's just a discussion of philosophy regarding efficiency.

I have yet to hear a Progressive tell me something the government does efficiently (though land management is often something they like to claim, even if you give that to them, you have to admit government has a poor track record) or well. I also ask them "do you trust government?" to which I always receive a resounding "NO".

Once I get those responses, I tend to point out that if government doesn't do much well, and you don't trust it, then why do you want to give it more power?

Usually the standard response is "we just have the wrong people in there - if we get the right people, it will get fixed."

To which I reply "So you know who the right people are? That's amazing. Because I have yet to make a consistently perfect hire even in my job. I've had a few good/great ones. But I've had clunkers, too. Given my own track record in hiring, I hesitate to assume I could even know who is right for a role of such power you assume is necessary or desirable. The very idea frightens me."

It won't change their mind. As my aunt once said "you're just an asshole." I replied that perhaps I am, but we all suffer, as humans, from the same problem. We tend to think linearly, we tend to assume things are solved from a central location, like the brain operates for humans. But neither is true. Few things in life occur in a linear fashion, and the brain isn't the only thing which solves problems faced by the body. We need to think bigger, sometimes, but we're afraid to or just don't know enough to.

So no, it's not an American or not thing. It just is.