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| Home Front: Politix |
| Game Postponed |
| 2015-10-09 |
| A society as huge and complex as the United States can run economically only on the basis of acceptance and trust. This has been true for so long it is no longer noticed, like the air. People accept the rules and generally follow them whether or not there is a policeman in attendance. They deposit money and trust it will be credited to their account. They mail letters and trust they will be delivered. They sleep in their beds and trust the president will protect them. All over the the land people go about their business secure that arrangements will be honored and carried out. A high-trust society is a low-cost society. The breakdown of the speakership race following the withdrawal of Boehner's heir-designate Kevin McCarthy is a sign that this happy state of affairs is eroding. It's no longer business as usual in Capital City. Who do the Republicans represent? Maybe not the Republican voters. ...A low-trust society is a high-cost society. It creates a place where everything is governed by innumerable rules yet where things work very poorly. A cop behind every billboard means a lot of low-rent cops. That's why low-trust societies are poor societies. By contrast a working democracy is cheap to run and its economic life is generally unfettered and creative. It is efficient because it does not have to carry the burden of an immense apparatus of propaganda and coercion to get from one day to the next. What changed was the gradual evaporation of confidence. When the principals (the voters) no longer fully trust the agents (the politicians), what economists describe as agency costs become prohibitively high. Too much energy will be expended brokering transactions between parties that don't trust each other. Unless trust is restored things will simply freeze up due to the costs of hesitation and mutual suspicion. Even supposing the president -- or any president -- can keep going without trust, it will be costly. There will not be enough lawsuits, executive orders or federal agents available to restore things to the former free and easy way. The elites who seized power underestimated the costs of despising the voters, assuming that because they were on the side of angels they could act like devils. They underrated the corrosive effect of constant betrayal and unbroken degradation upon transaction costs. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #2 A low verify society is a high fraud society. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2015-10-09 15:37 |
| #1 We the people are still here. |
| Posted by: Sven the pelter 2015-10-09 14:26 |