Politics Without Romance Summary

The next article we read and discussed was Public Choice: Politics Without Romance by James M. Buchanan. James Buchanan goes onto explain in the article that by asking the government to fix things can often lead to more harm than good. He provides many different examples of how and why this often leads to failure. One of Buchanan’s main concern is how to obtain a combination of efficiency and justice under majority rule. Under majority rule the minority end up getting discriminated against. A solution to this problem is to have super-majorities, which require five-sixths of the votes for approval of proposals. Since it is very difficult to get that large of agreement on a proposal this solution becomes impractical and costly. An example of

A select few powerful people or private entities lobby for certain bills or regulations to get passed. This benefits a select few people and costs are incurred by the taxpayer. This type of scenario can be describes as “rent seeking.” Rent seeking is when private entities get the government to foot the bill. It can be through subsidies or getting loans. This is not the ethical thing to do but it continues to happen today. The elected officials are supposed to look out for the greater good up the people but in the end they only look out for their self-interest. Many of these officials get paid a lot more by doing certain favors for businesses than the salary they earn from the government. This is highly evident in Socialist states where only a select few have power in the economy. Many of these high ranking officials come into power by doing favors such as passing bills or legislation. They really do not care about the public choice but are only motivated by their self-interest. As bureaucracy expands it leads to a worsening of the economy. This is evident in Atlas Shrugged. Wesley Mouch has risen to power by trading favors throughout and backstabbing