Kevin Williamson has the ability to take on any topic and go straight to the heart of the matter. A guote from his piece about government roads:
There are two ways of allocating capital: through politics, or through markets. Our progressive friends generally prefer to use politics when there is a choice, because they distrust markets, thinking them disorderly, irrational, vulgar, and prone to being dominated by the top-hat-wearing and bemonocled Mr. Monopoly cartoons that haunt their nightmares. Using politics is, in their view, more democratic. Most of the evidence is contrary to that proposition. In politics, it is quite easy for a small number of powerful people — wealth is only one form of power — to get their way. In politics, one rich guy can make a difference. The theory of progressive planning is that government intervention allows the aggregation of the interests of the non-wealthy and the non-powerful, but in reality central planning accomplishes the opposite...
also,
Political institutions are incapable of rational economic planning, because they operate outside of the market environment and thus are cut off from the critical economic intelligence communicated by prices, and they are vulnerable to all of the temptations described by public-choice economics, because human beings do not cease to be self-interested once they win an election or are appointed to a highway commission or school board.
and
Most people understand and appreciate the difference between market performance and political performance in many areas, if only because they cannot help but notice that the Apple Store and the DMV are such radically different experiences. Poor, nonwhite people are as eager to send their children to private schools as are members of the country-club set in Greenwich, but political domination of the education system deprives them of the means to do so — and, cynically enough, purports to do so in their interests.
