Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
This reminds me of something that always bugs me in debate with left-wing people.

One of the things that sucks so much about the state is that many of its tyrannies are necessary in light of its other tyrannies. It's the doctor that prescribes you one drug where the side effects are worse than the cure, then needs to give you more drugs to counter those side effects which contraindicate with the first drug, and on and on.

When you have a situation where wealth concentrates due to political influence (crony capitalism), it makes sense to have wealth distribution to the poor. When you have a system that gives money to the poor, it makes sense to make immigration difficult. When you have free government healthcare, it makes sense to meddle in people's business to make sure they don't do risky things with their own bodies. When you have a high minimum wage, it makes sense to give everyone free post-secondary education since there otherwise will be no jobs for them. When you give everyone free college, it makes sense to control who goes into what field so you don't waste billions of dollars on people who will be in the same predicament as having no education at all. It also makes sense to control the content in public universities when taxpayers are footing such a massive bill.
I agree with pretty much everything you say, the problems of regulation are obvious. My point is, and has been all along, that I find it hard to be convinced that the alternative you propose can work any better as long as its whole premise is based on rational choice theory, which I find flawed. Voting, for example, is a market activity, and people are disastrous with their choices. People act rationally in the economic sense as much as they only do +EV choices in poker.

https://msu.edu/course/aec/810/bond-rat.htm