Politicians are One Trick Ponies

Some ideas are so big and their rewards are so obvious that disparate groups of people will pretend to get along long enough to organize and pass a tax bill to pay for it. That's the one trick. After that, anytime anyone brings them a problem, their answer is to levy a tax to pay for a program. That might not be the best solution and in fact it might be the wrong solution, but if the government decides to help, that's what you are going to get. So think carefully about those social ills you want to correct. Is throwing money at the problem going to solve it?

Some people are good at working with reality. Some people are good at working with other people. Big programs require lots of people with people skills. All those people with people skills are looking to move up the ladder to get farther away from working with reality. Working with reality is for peons. Things go on long enough and everyone gets promoted and no one is a peon and no one has to work with reality anymore. And that's why government programs fail.

Right now I suspect that every person working with reality is supporting three or four other people. They may not be making as much money as any of the other four, but reality still has to be dealt with, and for the four that aren't, this one guy is doing all that reality stuff for them.

Could it be that we just don't need that many people working with reality? I mean we have been becoming ever more productive to the point that one person now does the work that would have taken a thousand people a hundred years ago. What is everyone else doing? I suspect most of them are playing at one thing or another, keeping other people entertained, or doing drugs. Drugs are basically cheap entertainment.

Not having to pay rent would have to be invigorating. How much money would you need to keep yourself fed is you were living on the street?