The Illogic of Statism

This (thoughts in brackets are mine):

Market failures [almost always from markets so regulated and insulated from competition so as to hardly be "markets" at all] are taken as evidence that we need a regulatory state, but regulatory failures are used as a pretext for even more government. We need government to restrain human nature, because human beings are ignorant and corrupt, and tend to feather their own nests [So believes Cass Sunstein, from his own well-feathered nest]. But government, apparently, is constructed from a less crooked timber — perhaps the angels that Madison wrote about in The Federalist.  People ask, “How would voluntary institutions in a stateless society prevent something like the BP oil spill?”  I don’t know — how did government prevent it?

I know many people who are not anarchists, as such, who are open to reasoning and evidence on why this or that government policy is counterproductive, and government is the cause of the problem. But when it becomes clear that you’re arguing with a religious believer rather than someone open to rational argument, you might as well stop wasting your time.

Case in point – I had a long chat with a self described progressive the other night who repeatedly stated that he “doesn’t believe the principle of scarcity exists in 2011.” This was in spite of me demonstrating the principle of scarcity by pointing out that there is only so much coastline, and that it typically costs more than not living on a coast. Evidence and logic be damned, he has decided to be a lefty.

Socio-Political