Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

A lot of people have summarized this presidential election to “Who do you want to run the country?” My answer: “No one.”

First of all the President isn’t supposed to run the country. If you read Article Two of the Constitution it’s pretty clear what the President is supposed to do:

• The President is the military’s commander-in-chief, but only Congress has the authority to declare war.
• With the advice and consent of the Senate, the President can sign treaties and appoint “judges, ambassadors, consuls, ministers and other officers”
• From time to time he will give a State of the Union speech and make recommendations to Congress.
• He can under extraordinary cicumstances convene Congress for a special session.
• He will host Ambassadors
• He shall ensure that all laws are faithfully executed
• He commissions all Officiers of the United States

Based on that description, do you really think the President “runs the country”?

OK, now let’s just forget about the Constitution for a moment… do you think anyone is qualified to “run the country”?

Who is able to plan the lives of 300 million independent free-thinking individuals? The real question is this: is it even possible to effectively centrally plan the lives of everyone in a country?

I strongly believe the answer is no. The people we deem most qualified (our politicians) can’t even manage their own lives, marriages, families and business affairs.

Why do we think that any human is capable of managing everyone’s lives? When you think of it objectively, it seems impossible.

Here’s my reasoning: the system is too large and complex to understand our any new mandate or law will affect it. In a myopic view, you can make changes to things that you understand; but the downstream implications are impossible to predict.

A good example of this is subsidies to corn-based ethanol. It should have been easy to see that these subsidies would create a huge spike in food prices (both grain and meat) and lead to shortages. But central planners were unable to see this. And even today, those subsidies continue!

So not only were central planners wrong, even now they are too slow and inefficient to remove the universally agreed on harmful regulations!

Historically, central planning has been inefficient; in Soviet Russia, the government was unable to figure out seemingly simple things like the how much bread to bake. This led to food shortages, long lines for ratios, and the eventual collapse of the USSR.

To summarize, think about what you think you’d like the government to do. Suppose you want the government to run health care.

Now ask yourself one thing: “Do you want the same guys that run the Post Office and DMV to run your hospitals?”

I hope not.