The left, control and pandering
May 21st, 2008, 3:01 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Mark Landsbaum
George Will makes a great point on tomorrow’s op-ed page about what Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit” — “the idea that government can know the future’s possibilities and can and should control the future’s unfolding.”
That, Mr. Will rightly observes, ”is the left’s agenda.”
“The left,” he writes, “exists to enlarge the state’s supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective goods. Hence the left’s hostility to markets. And to automobiles — people going wherever they want whenever they want.”
Not all political motives are leftish, of course. Thomas Sowell’s recently observed another truism about the political inclinaton to pander.
Mr. Sowell says:
“Supply and demand will never replace ‘need’ and ‘greed’ in political discussions of economic issues. … One of the many ironies of politics is that those politicians who do the most to reduce supply often express the greatest outrage about high prices. So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it.
“Make a list of those politicians who do the most to prevent our drilling for our own oil. Then make a list of those politicians who express the most outrage about the high price of gasoline. Don’t be surprised if you see the same names on both lists.
“Make a list of those politicians who most loudly lament the lack of ‘affordable housing.’ Then make a list of those politicians who have most consistently promoted restrictions on the building of housing, under the banner of ‘open space’ laws, ‘farmland protection’ policies, preventing ‘urban sprawl,’ and other politically soothing phrases. Again, do not be surprised at seeing the same folks on both lists… So long as voters prefer heroes and villains to supply and demand, this game will continue to be played.”
There is a lot of common ground here, of course. The leftist tendancy to control how the future unfolds (that fatal conceit) is a good traveling companion for the general crass political motive to pander. They share the outcome of inevitable unintended consequences.
In both cases, the future is held hostage and perverted because of bad motives of bad actors.
