Why vote for the lesser evil?
Bush, of course, launched numerous expensive new programs and entitlements, and failed to restrain the inherent growth of Clinton’s affirmative action easy mortgage program. He encouraged the growth of that program, though to judge by the screaming of the Democrats at the time, probably slightly less than the Democrats would have done.
But even if Bush had launched no new entitlements, restraining the inherent growth of Clinton’s mortgage program would have been unthinkably drastic and “racist”, would have been “cuts”, “cuts” directed at particular racial groups supposedly for racist reasons, “cuts” immeasurably more extreme and controversial than anything any tea party candidate dares speak out loud about, “cuts” far more dramatic than the quite controversial cuts happening now in Britain. To maintain the Clinton status quo against the inherent growth of Clinton’s programs would have required unthinkably drastic “right wing racist cuts”.
Every institution tends to grow. Institutions are made of people. They exist because they give those people what they want, so people in them always want more of that institution. Market institutions, such as firms, are inherently limited, because if the customer says “no”, the institution fails to grow, or vanishes altogether. Government institutions have no such inherent limits, so always grow barring frequent, extreme, and drastic “cuts”.
The growth of government in America was restrained by federalism, by market competition between the states. When the constitution was gutted, that restraint was removed. Almost everything the feds do except the post office, the patent office, and warfare, is unconstitutional. If all that stuff was passed back to the states and states such as California were allowed to go bankrupt, state to state competition and state bankruptcies might slow growth to levels that could be accommodates without social collapse.
There is a natural selection process going on– government programs that can be stopped half way, generally are, or at least are slowed, so government tends to be dominated by programs that inherently have limitless growth that can end only in social collapse or total domination of every aspect of society.
If any politician stops affirmative action mortgages, he launches himself on a path where he is going to stop all affirmative action and wind up in front of the television cameras ridiculing Marie Curie’s Nobel prizes and women scientists in general. You cannot stop affirmative action half way. The inherent logic and needs of affirmative action, like most successfully expansionist government programs, require total domination of every aspect of society, or complete repudiation.
The dominant part of government is programs that cannot be cut half way, can only be cut off at the roots, because the ones that can be cut half way, frequently are.
In the private sector, natural selection selects well run firms, so firms are mostly well run, and where most firms are badly run, for example retailing, well run firms such as Walmart tend to dominate.
In the government sector, natural selection selects programs whose growth is impossible to restrain For example: If you give “under represented groups” their fair share of Nobel prizes, you soon have to give them their fair share of degrees. If you give them their fair share of degrees, you soon have to give them their fair share of well paid high status jobs. If you give them their fair share of well paid high status jobs, you soon have to give them their fair share of mortgages. If you give them their fair share of mortgages, the economy collapses. So there is no help for it but to resist and ridicule giving them their fair share of Nobel prizes.
You cannot have half affirmative action, and half not, because if you do, either the half that is not affirmative action be racism and sexism, or the half that is affirmative action must be fraud, lies, pretense, and special privilege, must itself be racism and sexism. This is the formula for a successful government program – that any attempt to restrain its growth must be politically outrageous and extraordinary.
It follows that the biggest and most uncontrollable programs will be those that to cut is unthinkable, and that the only cuts of those programs that can succeed is total abolition. Compare and contrast with the most “radical” of the Tea Partiers.
If you can cut a program by five percent or ten percent, then it is unlikely to be a big problem. Most government is programs that cannot be cut by five or ten percent, cannot even have their growth much slowed, except by abolition.
If George Osborne slows the growth of Britain’s National Health scheme to levels that Britain can afford, in a few years the National Health Scheme will consist entirely of committees of expert authorities sending memos to other committees of expert authorities, while Britons die in the streets of readily treated ailments. Indeed, we are already seeing the horror stories in the British press. George Osborne tells some government entity that is blowing ludicrous amounts of money that it will have a few hundred million pounds less money that it asked for, a mere drop in an overflowing bucket. The entity finds some pathetic and deserving client, whose very life has come to depend on them spending a minuscule amount money on him, and announces that they will save a few pounds by letting him die. And then they do it.
