THE RECURRING BELIEF THAT GOVERNMENT, POLITITIANS AND BUREAUCRATS ARE SAINTS AND ALTUISTIC

THE RECURRING BELIEF THAT GOVERNMENT, POLITITIANS AND BUREAUCRATS ARE SAINTS AND ALTUISTIC

Auberon Herbert’s remarkable essays, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State; specifically, it’s from Herbert’s 1906 lecture “Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine”:

Does it mend matters to say that under our system we choose the best man available, and leave the hundred questions for him to deal with?  That is only our old friend, the autocrat, come back once more, with a democratic polish rubbed over his face to disguise and, as far as may be, to beautify his appearance.  Our sin consists in the suppression of our own selves and our own opinions; and in one sense we fall lower than the slaves of the autocrat, for they are simply sinned against, but we take an active part in the sin against ourselves.

It seems to be implicitly assumed that the imperfections that exist in markets do not exist among those who might seek to  intervene in markets.  Yet it is clear from the crash that regulators suffered from the same herding tendencies as market participants, suffered from lack of perfect knowledge and that there were lags before regulators acted, and so on.  Any rounded theory must make realistic assumptions about market participants and those operating outside the market who seek to regulate it.

Yes.  Turning matters over to government does not render reality optional or transform humans into super-humans.  Turning matters over to government does not make miracles occur.