It is a true delight to have a dialogue on FR. Thank you!
To often there are two monologues!
The inertia of “entrenched interests” is indeed a problem. So too is the lack of rational thought by Federal politicians.
Ponder this from a comment I just made on another thread on the Republican origin of Obamacare:
“The important observation is what is the sum of all of a Federal Politician’s ideas?
How rapidly were the stupid ideas rejected by that politician?
Did the good outweigh the harm done by the politician?
A stupid person is one who is incapable of learning. Few Republican Politicians fit that definition.
An ignorant person is one that does not know, a trait common to all who begin the task of learning.
An intelligent person is one who has the ability to learn quickly, something that President Reagan demonstrated frequently, except for his failure to learn about Defecits.
Yup, the Nationalization, single payor “solution” to controlling medical cost was an idea common to Socialists in England, Communists in Russia, and bird-brains at the Heritage Foundation.
England is still stupid, Russia went under, and the Heritage Foundation had to eat crow.
Lesson learned: A Free and Open Medical Market will always outperform anything any Government will ever come up with.
Only the stupid still believe in Nationalized, Socialized or Government Medical or Medical Insurance Control, as if they haven’t learned it from the abject failure of Obama’Care’ they never will.
BTW, “You can’t fix stupid. Stupid is FOREVER.” (Ron White).”
To tie this in with your last comment to me, I think that a case can be made that the inertia of being what an Elite is expected to be is to choose to not learn, that is to stay ignorant.
With time this choice of Elite Ignorance becomes an historical defense, and the ugly head of stupid becomes a choice by default.
I find Senator McCain to be the best example of such a Federal Politician: a stupid politician by default of first choosing to be just another Ignorant elite Politician, feeding at the bounteous slop trough in the District of Corruption.
I fully expect that your estimate of > 50 % default rate is about right. Time however will be greatly compressed as the inflation caused by the 17 + Trillion dollar binge spending will allow only the most important financial topics to be discussed.
If there are high attrition rates to weed out the stupid, it is entirely possible, IMHO to have a Rational US Congress.
All bets are off on the SCOTUS, as that is crippled by the tradition of Political stacking and majority “democratic” winner take all.