that some want the government to rule the citizen is a shame On Jan 11, 9:57 am, "M. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote: > The Goal Is Freedom:Opaque By Design"Nowadays to be intelligible is to be > found out."BySheldon Richman• Posted January 08, 2010“The House and Senate > plan to put together the final health care reform bill behind closed doors > according to an agreement by top Democrats.” > That less-than-startling piece of news was delivered by House Speaker Nancy > Pelosi. She was at the White House when she said it, so it’s okay with > President Obama. > Thus, as theCBS News headlinehad it, “Obama Reneges on Health Care > Transparency.” > Anyone who is really shocked (shocked!) that this is happening should avoid > talking to strangers on the street. You’ll wind up believing you own a bridge. > In other words, no one really thought Obama and his cronies were going to > make government transparent by conducting business on C-SPAN. As the head of > the Council on Foreign Relations said admiringly about Obama in another > context, “He’s learned the difference between campaigning and governing.” > Indeed. Even if he wanted to, there was no way Obama was going to get our > misrepresentatives in Congress to do it. > The phrase “transparent government” is just this side of a logical > contradiction. A really transparent government would barely qualify as a > government at all. Imagine if you could witness all the backroom dealing, > logrolling, outright bribery, and the rest of the shenanigans that go on > under the laughable rubric “governing.” It wouldn’t last a week. > Once in a while we get a glimpse. When Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote on the > health-insurance takeover was cynically bought with the promise that everyone > but Nebraskans would pay Nebraska’s new Medicaid bill, there was genuine > disgust even in Nebraska. The payoff to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu got a > similar reception. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Did you hear > that companies with fewer than 50 employees would be exempt from the > health-insurance mandateexcept forconstruction companies? Then the threshold > is five. It’s a little favor to the construction trade unions: > “Labor unions that have negotiated health benefits for construction workers > lobbied for the provision. Without it, they said, small nonunion employers > would have an unfair competitive advantage over companies that they say do > ‘the right thing’ by providing health benefits to plumbers, electricians, > carpenters, roofers and other workers in the building trades,” > theTimesreported. > This sort of thing happens every day. As Michael Kinsley once said, the real > scandal in Washington is the legal stuff, not the illegal stuff, that goes > on.Political Transactions CostsWe can’t say we weren’t warned. A few years > ago a great scholar named Charlotte Twight explained it all in her > bookDependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over Ordinary > Americans.I’m a huge fan of this book, and everyone concerned with liberty > should read it closely. What Isaid about it in 2003 still holds:If I may be > blunt, this is a subversive book in the sense that if average Americans were > to read and grasp it, they would turn into libertarian revolutionaries. Why? > Because Twight documents the ways that officials systematically mislead us > about what government does. In many cases, she uses their own words to > convict them of mass deception aforethought.The key to her thesis is the > concept of political transactions costs. In economics, transactions costs are > the expenses one accepts to engage in exchanges. To use Twight’s example, if > you hire someone to plant a tree in your yard, the transaction costs include > any expenses you would not have incurred had you planted the tree yourself. > There are transactions costs associated with politics too. These, Twight > says, are “the costs to individuals of reaching and enforcing political > agreements regarding the role and scope of government… [t]he costs to each of > us of perceiving, and acting upon our assessment of, the net costs of > particular governmental actions and authority… of learning the likely > consequences of proposed government programs and taking political action in > response to such programs….” > We could sum up the idea with the phrase “eternal vigilance,” which takes > time, effort, and money. Or as others have put it, “freedom isn’t free.” > Of course the higher the political transactions costs, other things equal, > the less monitoring people will engage in. Keep in mind that any one person’s > clout is small, so the payoff from absorbing the costs and engaging in the > monitoring are also small. That results in a government watched closely by > those who stand to gain a lot (the special interests) and not so closely by > those who stand to pay, in the aggregate, a lot (the mass of taxpayers). > Twight points out that there are “natural” transactions costs, as with any > economic activity, but also “contrived” transactions costs the ones > “deliberately created by government officials to increase our costs of > assessing and responding to government policies” (emphasis added). > You’re not apt to read about these in textbooks or the establishment > apologies on most newspaper editorial and op-ed pages. For some unfathomable > reason, most pundits don’t want us to worry our little heads knowing that > politicians may intentionally make it more difficult for us to see what’s > really going on or to do anything about it. > But it’s hard to conclude the politicians would want it any other way. How > else to explain 2,000-page bills laden with impenetrable legislatese which no > member of Congress will read in their entirety and 800-page amendments? Have > you tried reading the federal budget? Such output mocks the ideal of an > “informed citizenry.” That’s the last thing the misleaders in Washington want. > As Oscar Wilde said, “Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found > out.”http://www.thefreemanonline.org/tgif/opaque-by-design/?utm_source=The+Freeman&utm_campaign=f082172a81-In_brief_1_8_2010&utm_medium=email#
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