This is a particularly poisonous idea because for most of history it was true. There may have been a prehistorical moment when all we had to do to get more mammoth meat was walk over the next hill and avail ourselves of some unpopulated spot such as Europe. But civilization is based on land for grazing and crops. There’s only so much land. If I’m on it, you’re off. That’s the world’s shortest history of warfare, and probably also the history of class conflict, serfdom, slavery, nationalism, racism, and genocide.
Zero-sum thinking is a name for envy. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, gives an apt description of the “House of Envy” (as a poet in that most zero-sum of political systems, the Roman empire, might): “Envy within, busy at the meal of snake’s flesh... her tongue dripped venom. Only the sight of suffering could bring a smile to her lips. She never knew the comfort of sleep, but... looked with dismay on men’s good fortune... She could hardly refrain from weeping when she saw no cause for tears.” I didn’t know Hillary Clinton’s involvement in politics dated back to the reign of Augustus.
Then one day the idea of zero-sum wasn’t true. We see its falsehood being revealed by population growth during the late Middle Ages in Europe and India and China (with time-outs for Black Death, massacring invasions, and the Thirty Years’ War). The industrial revolution would further this population trend, but the original human anti-Malthusianism doesn’t seem to have been the result of science or invention. Adam Smith thought the cause was simple expansion of trade, giving farmers a motive to grow more food than was needed just for eating, reseeding, and the rats.
By now there shouldn’t be a zero-sum thought left in our heads. We should be free of all of zero-sum’s begrudgings. We know we can make more of everything. Energy, to name one. When did our vital supply of lamp-lighting whale oil run out? We didn’t notice because we were too busy inventing kerosene and electricity.
Once again India and China (Europe not so much) are showing the way with the vast expansions of their economies. We can bake more pizza (or naan, as the case may be). We can clone more cows. We can raise more plants (under grow lights in the closets of our off-campus apartments). There’s even additional beachfront property on its way, thanks to climate change and seaside development in Greenland. Celebrity offers the ultimate disproof of zero-sum. The amount of celebrity was always limited by the need for something to celebrate. Click through your cable channels. Not now.
But there is one field of endeavor where zero-sum remains the awful truth: politics. Even in the most free and democratic country politics is about power. There’s a fixed quantity of power because there’s a fixed quantity of me. Power you have over me is power I lose to you. And political power is different from other power because political systems are different from other social systems. A political system has the legal monopoly on deadly force. We’re all involved in a variety of social systems, such as that bunch of social snobs with their system of blackballing us at the country club. They’re allowed to ban us from the tees but they aren’t allowed to pick us off with sniper fire from their clubhouse bar. Governments can. Nothing sums up zero-sum like death.
Because government is zero-sum there aren’t two congressmen wedging their fat butts into the same seat in the House of Representatives. We don’t have 300 million Supreme Court justices telling nine old Washington shysters in black bathrobes whether they’ll get a lawyer at Gitmo. The chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff aren’t all commander-in-chiefs commanding “Forward March!” to one another until they collide in a group hug.
Political power is awful, and power is awful anyway. Lord Acton, one of nineteenth-century Britain’s great defenders of liberty, wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This was in a letter to Anglican Bishop Mandell Creighton,18 and the subject was papal infallibility (something Acton, a devout Catholic, argued against at the First Vatican Council). Sure, and if power can do the likes of that to the Holy Father in Rome, just think what it’s done to Harry Reid.
We have to be careful about giving power to people—for their own sake, among every other reason. We won’t get our power back easily. And when we try to get our power back it isn’t pretty: Washington at Valley Forge, Paris during the Reign of Terror, the czar’s family in Yekaterinburg.
Nonetheless we are continually tempted to confer power on government—to delegate our power (as some would have it), to alienate our power (as Jefferson would have been more likely to say). And it’s not only a desire to escape from our responsibilities that tempts us. The American government is a huge tool, a formidable engine, mighty in its operation and nearly irresistible in its movement (never mind that it doesn’t know where it’s going). The temptation is to use a tool like this when something needs fixing. Whether the tool suits the task isn’t a question we always ask ourselves, as those of us who received Home Depot gift certificates for Father’s Day can attest. Maybe we shouldn’t change the battery in our wristwatch with the electric drill. But what if it’s a cordless DeWalt with a 3/8” chuck and fifty different bits?
Or, to put the case differently, the government is a rottweiler ready to be unleashed on your problems. And you’ve stuffed raw meat down the front of your pants.
One method of being careful with government power is to think about our messy government the way we think about our messy personal lives. There are furious ex-spouses, bitter former lovers, and various outstanding child support judgments. We don’t want too much of this in one place, which is why we moved to Phoenix.
America’s founding fathers knew enough about messy personal lives to make sure that the chief concerns of the Constitutional Convention were a federalist decentralization of power and a system by which each branch of government would check the other branches of government and balance their power with power of its own. What if all the ex-spouses, former lovers, and kids whose school fees we’re supposed to be paying become friends and get the same lawyer? America’s founding fathers would have rather moved to Phoenix than let this happen.
It is a good idea for as much government power as possible to be distributed to the smallest possible units of government—the cities, towns, townships, and counties that are scattered all over the United States plus those scattered states themselves. John Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire and chief of staff to President George H. W. Bush, is a cantankerous and truthful man. He’s also an engineer. He compares reliance on local government to a goal of mechanical engineering: short control loops. The hot and cold faucets in your shower are a short control loop. If, instead of being located in the shower stall, those hot and cold faucets were in the basement, that would be a long control loop. This is not to say that a short control loop always works. You may be out of hot water. But it’s better to stand in the shower fiddling with a useless faucet than to march naked and dripping through the house, amazing the children and shocking the cleaning lady, down two flights of stairs into the grungy basement, and fiddle with a useless faucet there. If our neighbor on the local sewer commission votes to raise our sewer rates, we can go next door and yell at him or stuff a potato up the tailpipe of his car. Stuffing a potato up the tailpipe of the limousine of the president of the United States is a federal crime, or they’ll make it one if we try.
Despite the clear and evident sense of the short control loop argument we are deaf to it. When something’s wrong we don’t consult the sewer commissioner next door, even if what’s wrong is backed-up sewage. We go straight to Washington and, bypassing even the House and the Senate, expect the president himself to take time off from trying to get his limo started and come over to our house with a plunger.
We do this not just because we’re morons but because federal government in the United States is more efficient, less corrupt, and harder-working than state and local governments. Illinois. Say no more.
The federal government attracts the biggest talents in administration, legislation, jurisprudence, and bureaucracy. And those talents are exercised under the greates
t scrutiny because the news media pay attention to the federal government. All this makes for a good thing. Of its kind. In the shark tank the juiciest bait attracts the biggest sharks. If that juicy bait happens to be something interesting, such as we the drowning taxpayers, attention will be paid.
The only effective way to keep power decentralized is by making sure our society provides ungovernmental ways of being powerful. The biggest talents should be offered bait in places other than Washington. Let the good and the great flounce around in the arts, spout pious bilge from pulpits, fill the minds of the young with drivel at great universities, spread patronizing smarm through charitable organizations, and rob all comers in business. Just one ready, necessary thing is needed to set the hook in this lure of decentralization. Thank God for money. And whenever we meet a rich person, however loathsome, we should be sure to say, “Thanks! The disgusting fact of your existence helps spread the manure of life around and keeps it from piling up in one spot, under the Capitol dome.”
Political power, however, remains the most powerful of powers, so people will continue to be drawn to it. What kind of people we know too well. The politician’s personality has been brilliantly described.
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration... beginning by early adulthood... as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
(1) has grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance
(3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her ends
(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
The authors of the above passage had no idea they were writing about politics. They thought they were writing about mental illness. This perceptive analysis of politicians appears on page 717 of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Disorders, fourth edition, under the heading “Diagnostic Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”
The only thing in the shrinks’ notes that might seem odd to a voter is “lack of empathy.” Every politician is always telling us how much sympathy, understanding, and fellowship he or she has with us and how deeply he or she is moved by our hopes, our dreams, and our fears. About such too muchness of protestation, Hamlet’s mother—no mean politician herself—has an oft-quoted line.
There is an enormously powerful machine that with one wrong turn can kill us all and it’s being run by crazy people. What are the chances this will turn out well?
In the meantime it’s costing us a fortune. Milton and Rose Friedman, in their seminal19 work about liberty and market freedoms, Free to Choose, showed why government is so expensive. The Friedmans devised what in logic is called a “truth table” to show that there are, logically, only four categories of spending. The table looks like this.
Category I is you spending your money on yourself. Let’s take cars as an example of something to spend on and me as an example of someone doing the spending. I have a splendid Porsche 911 that I got a great deal on, buying it almost new from a dentist who scared himself and bought a Lexus Coupe instead. When you spend your money on yourself you get—as nearly as you can—exactly what you want and you bargain as hard as you can for it.
In Category II, when you’re spending your money on someone else, you still bargain hard. But you’re not quite as concerned about getting exactly what’s wanted. Although I’m sure my wife is very fond of the Kia Rondo minivan I purchased for her and the kids. And it was a lucky break for me that it had been sitting on the dealer’s lot for almost a year because it is a somewhat unfortunate shade of orangey green.
You spend someone else’s money on yourself in Category III, and I’m on the fence between the Aston Martin DBS coupe that goes for close to $300,000 and letting “someone else” off easy with an Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione spider convertible, a steal at $230,000.
With Category IV you’re not involved at all. It’s not your money and nothing’s in it for you. So it might as well be billions spent on jack shit or, as the government called it, “cash for clunkers.”
There is only one problem with the above examples from the Friedmans’ truth table. The Friedmans assume that the person doing the four categories of spending is not an insane evil pig. Can that assumption be made about me if I’m a politician? Things don’t look good even in Category I. That 911 is a relic of my footloose bachelor days. I’ve had it for twenty years and could never afford another one. Unless I plunder the children’s college fund.
For Category II I’ll stick with the orangey-green Kia. My wife had a couple glasses of wine last night, and it turns out she hates it, I mean hates it.
In Category III I’m pulling out the stops with a $2 million Bugatti Veyron—the fastest production car in the world—and a $500,000 Maybach 62 that has plenty of room in the back for all the booze, drugs, and strippers that someone else’s money can buy.
But it’s Category IV, the category into which all government spending falls, where crazy, malicious hoggishness can be given full play. If I’m buying a car for you peons, it may not be enough for me to just throw money away on something you don’t want. I may have other thoughts. Maybe I think I’d prefer a world that isn’t full of smelly pollution and where I don’t have to worry about the temperature getting so high that I’ll be able to bake bread by leaving dough outdoors on an August day in Nome. So your car has to be an even more unfortunate shade of green than my wife’s Kia. Plus I don’t like being stuck in traffic or constantly looking for parking places. So your car not only shouldn’t emit greenhouse gases, it shouldn’t do anything else. Plus don’t forget I hate your guts because I’m an insane evil pig. Thus no research, development, or manufacturing expense will be spared to provide each one of you with... a hybrid Yugo.
There are very few excuses for allowing goods and services to be allocated by political means unless you’re trying to get something that isn’t yours. And what you get is a Yugo. That’s one Yugo for you versus innumerable reasons for the rest of us to prevent you from allocating goods and services by political means. Make that innumerable plus three.
1. Concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.
2. Invisible opportunities.
3. Committee Brain.
One of the things that allows us to be eaten up by our politics is that we are eaten very slowly, one political bug bite at a time. If we were being eaten by a boa constrictor or Kim Jong II we’d notice. But in a democracy it takes years for us to wake up and say, as Ronald Reagan so memorably said in the 1942 movie Kings Row, “Where’s the rest of me?” Not until almost forty years later, when Reagan was running for president, did we taxpayers finally come to our senses and ask the same question about our paychecks.
The first secret of our obliviousness to being swallowed is what’s called “diffuse costs.” A government idiocy may be expensive, but the expense is spread so broadly that none of us feels the nip of that expense very hard. For instance, let’s take a government idiocy that’s quite expensive and, furthermore, obviously and evidently useless to the nation, and which doesn’t even have any political support. Joe Biden. Joe Biden costs us $227,300 a year in salary plus $90,000 for official entertainment expenses. (O’Doul’s, because somebody has to keep a clear head during thos
e White House Beer Summits.) Then there are the tens of thousands spent on around-the-clock White House staffers trying to keep Joe Biden’s mouth shut and more tens of thousands for shoe shines, black neckties, and Air Force 2 fuel when unimportant foreign leaders die, and at least $20 worth of Secret Service protection. We’ll round it off and take a guess and say that Joe Biden costs us $600,000 a year. But there are 300 million of us. Yes, Joe is a complete waste of two-tenths of a cent, but who cares?
Joe does. That is the “concentrated benefits” part of “concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.” The two-tenths of a cent means nothing to us, but it’s everything in the world to Joe Biden who will bear any burden, meet any hardship, pay any price (well, no, we’ll pay the price), even go on Bill O’Reilly to remain one and a half heartbeats from the presidency. (The half a heartbeat is the time it will take Nancy Pelosi to wring his neck and become president herself.) And so it goes with other government idiocies even more expensive than Joe such as AIG and Homeland Security.
The expense of politics wouldn’t matter so much if it weren’t for the opportunities that are destroyed by this spending. Money that’s poured down rat holes can’t be used to pay the Pied Piper. (Not that the government of Hamelin town did pay the Pied Piper.) These destroyed opportunities—or “opportunity costs,” as economists call them—are the flip side of zero-sum. It is a source of wickedness to believe that the world contains a fixed amount of resources. Paradoxically, it is a source of wickedness to forget that the world does contain a fixed amount of resources, at any given moment. The amount of resources is infinitely expandable, but in order to expand it we have to spend the resources we currently have on something other than Joe Biden.
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