Re: Berg's comment below .....
"But doesn't self-interest eventually evolve into special interests who try to influence the decision-maker with money?" I reply: That seems to be the case nowadays but the USA Founding Fathers had the notion of Virtue, which to them meant that a moral sense of the good (good for the country and good for all) would always trump excessive self interest. Their arguments were centered on scale. They believed that local situations in society and commerce would exaggerate self interest at the expense, sometimes, of the larger society and thus a Federal government with a larger national viewpoint would offset those local interests. Thus the 'narrow interest' states were balanced against the central government. The early leaders tended to be rich, independent men who presumably couldn't be 'bought' by private interests but of course they tended to represent 'property' interests anyway, but not as blatantly as today. Nobody talks about Virtue anymore in the same sense that the founding fathers imagined it. Now it's the term extremists use when they want to evoke a sickly sentimentalism that masks egregious restrictions on freedom, oddly. Have you noticed how the big TV network's love to focus on those politicians who have the most money in hand and as they produce poll after poll (no longer substantiated with statistical evidence) showing who's ahead and who's behind a point or so? They stir up the anxiety to get the money. All those hundreds of millions in campaign funds go to --guess who? The biggest special interest group is the TV-advertising industry where cynical managers believe they can sway public opinion any way they choose, if you pay them enough money. wc
