Monday, May 14, 2012

Providing a Public Good or a Public Bad?


Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute published a very insightful essay recently regarding “hatred” in politics and hatred among politicos entitled The Systematic Organization of Hatreds:

“In view of the foregoing, we are well advised to consider that whenever we seek to move a type of decision-making from private life to the realm of politics and government, we are very likely moving it from a world in which hatred is incidental and avoidable to a world in which hatred is central and inescapable. Because a government imposes one rule, one outcome, one state of affairs on everyone subject to its rule, the hatreds that go into the making of that outcome become generalized and infused throughout the entire society. Thus, what economists label a “public good” is often, in the most substantive way, a “public bad.” Even if a person does not share any of the component hatreds that politic actors express and deploy, no one can avoid living in a politicized world fashioned in such large part by the organized expression of hatred. It is, therefore, small wonder that some of us view the entire apparatus of politics and government as the living embodiment of evil.”

The link to the entire essay appears below:


http://blog.independent.org/2012/05/05/the-systematic-organization-of-hatreds/

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