Posted on 07/27/2009 6:02:30 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
Acronyms change with the times. For a while "PC" stood for "personal computer." In the 1990s it stood for "political correctness," the uniformity of the progressive doctrine promulgated at colleges and elsewhere. This era brings yet another PC: "public choice" theory.
The name is awkward. Who is the public and what is the choice? The theory originated with Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan and is actually quite simple. It says that the laws of economics aren't suspended at the door to City Hall. Government reformers view themselves as morally superior, but that is an illusion. They are just like private-sector operators, who do things that are in their own interest, not society's, first. Those things include taking advantage of an economic crisis to aggregate power for themselves and their offices.
Many decades ago a younger Buchanan read an article by Knut Wicksell of Sweden arguing that taxes must be unanimously supported by voters in order to become law. A universal vote would mean that the lowly taxpayer would never be forced to carry a burden he had not voted for. With fellow scholar Gordon Tullock, Buchanan penned, among other texts, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, which forms the basis of public choice. Public choicers have since built up an influential center of economic thought at George Mason University.
But if public choice is so germane, why haven't we heard of it? Partly because PC is not categorizable. It contains something of the views of Friedrich von Hayek, who used the image of serfdom in The Road to Serfdom to describe the inexorable dominance of government. But PC also reflects Karl Marx, who saw colonial empires as crustaceans--big claws, reflexive brains and the habit of eating anything in their path. To understand what makes citizens....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Interesting read from Ms. Shlaes.
I think PC is a bad name.
It’s jargon. No one will use it but the eggheads.
“It’s jargon. No one will use it but the eggheads”
Which is why it’s a bad name. Perhaps the entire school (if that’s what you call it) is too small and narrow to deserve a name people will actually use. But it’s not so tough to come up with a hook. If Austrian, Chicago, Neo-classical, Supply-side, or Cambridge economics aren’t household names, most educated people recognize them.
The easiest way to be remembered, seems to me, is to title yourself after your founder, as in Marxism or Keynesianism. Both of which have some traction with common folk. Might I suggest Buchananism?
I’d rather opt for the Old School version of PC Theory (as in when the US was formed).
Its better known as the one finger solute.
Where is Forbes to pay me, Johnny Suntrade, for saying quite simply:
Government, and the public persons who inhabit such, are no more moral or ethical than any other segment of the society in which they operate; and furthermore, not being subject to the brutal competition of private earnings, those government persons avoid accountability and responsibility. It's called Leftism.
Hey now Forbes that's forty seven words at one dollar per; I'll bet a whole lot cheaper than Amity S. or Frederick Hayek, or what's his name Buchanan, or a thousand other verbose pundits who are ripping you off for the same obvious truths.
Johnny Suntrade
“I’ll bet a whole lot cheaper than Amity S. or Frederick Hayek, or what’s his name Buchanan, or a thousand other verbose pundits who are ripping you off for the same obvious truths.”
Far be it from me to dismiss aphorisms, but I don’t share your Down With Essays/Articles/Books! attitude. Surely you realize that even if we assume none of their 47-word runs are as concise as yours, Hayek et. al. do manage to cram more truth into their articles than any human ever could with two sentences.
In other words, the bottom line is not the whole story. Some people like to see ideas developed, with examples and such.
In other words, the bottom line is not the whole story. Some people like to see ideas developed, with examples and such.
What public choice says is that we think of both public and private goods as a basket. Just as the interest of companies' orders and management --- hired hands to increase owners' profits --- diverge, so do the interests of public managers --- our elected officials --- and the public that hires (elects) them. That's basically all.
Of those I know who work in that field, not one uses that abbreviation. People refer to it in full, “public choice.”
It's not the fact that is the subject here but its consequences. How do you design the voting procedure, for example, that will ensure the best alliance of the government actions with interests of the public? Given two parties and preferences of the public, which party platform will win and which will represent most of the public interest?
These questions are far from trivial, and they are studied in public choice.
If printed I would find this article useful for lining bird cages as well as wrapping fish.
Why?
However, members of Congress while subject to being voted out of office tend to do enough to keep voters at home happy. That is now changing and members of Congress are increasingly voting for bills that will hurt not only the country, but their own constituents. Case in point: cap and trade. This is a result of their increasing arrogance and elitist leadership. I hope that voters will soon wake up and look to more honest representatives.
...the laws of economics aren't suspended at the door to City Hall. Government reformers view themselves as morally superior, but that is an illusion. They are just like private-sector operators, who do things that are in their own interest, not society's, first. Those things include taking advantage of an economic crisis to aggregate power for themselves and their offices. Many decades ago a younger Buchanan read an article by Knut Wicksell of Sweden arguing that taxes must be unanimously supported by voters in order to become law. A universal vote would mean that the lowly taxpayer would never be forced to carry a burden he had not voted for.
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