Choices

It has been said often: "All politics is local."

But that's wrong. In fact, I believe that really, "All politics is personal."

Consider that most of us support a politician or a policy or a program because we think the candidate or the policy or the program is best for us and our family.

For example most folks know Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt and believe those programs need to be fixed, just so long as it doesn't interfere with our monthly check. When the money is gone "they" will think of something.

We choose to vote for people running for office based on their perceived ability to "bring home the bacon." Although we tend to be highly critical of politicians we appreciate the new road, the new post office, the prescription drug benefit and the defense contract for our town.

We are all concerned about global warming but we bought the SUV and drove to work alone in spite of Al Gore's scare mongering until the price of gas made us believe it's too expensive to drive that SUV. Now we are eager to authorize more drilling not because we think we can drill our way out of the energy crises in the long run but rather because we want those gas prices to come down in the short run.

We all make choices we believe to be in our enlightened self interest and we tend to ignore the consequences of those choices.

The politicians, the manufacturers, the media, the retailers and the service industry all respect our choices and do their best to cater to those choices. So, we get the government, business, media and service we ask for each time we make a choice. Although we hate to admit it we get exactly what we deserve.

But the consequences of our collective choices are piling up and at some point rather sooner than we all expect or hope, the bill will come due.

The Invisible Hand

Al Gore recently made news saying within ten years non carbon sources should provide all electricity generation in the United States. That would be a laudable outcome. Of course it won't happen unless there is a government mandate. Mr. Gore obviously has no problem with government making these decisions. But, candidly, that isn't the way the world really works. How do we know?

We know because centralized decision making has failed over and over. The grand experiments with state control of the economy failed repeatedly, most notably in the former USSR and the People's Republic of China. In fact the Chinese ecnomic miracle was made possible by Comrade Deng's decision to embrace decentralized economic decision making a few decades ago.

Other less well known failures of centralized economic decision making abound, featuring "deciders" such as the despot de jure of various third world countries as well as World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or Fannie Mae.

But what is the alternative?

Clearly, given a chance people will make the best economic decisions they can. Eventually they do the right thing and positive unintended consequences result for all of us.

Today we have two examples of this phenomena reported in the Washington Post. One is an effort by baseball, and other pro sports to "go green." (See: "Green Becomes the Official Color of Baseball" July 19, 2008 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/) Another describes an economic phenomena resulting in 10% of electric power in Texas now coming from wind energy. (See: "The Aswer's In The Wind--and Sun" July 19, 2008 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

These examples required zero government intervention or interference. People and corporations are following their elightened self interest; simply doing well by doing good.

Back in 1776 at the same time as the American experiement inspired by self interest began exploring a new theory of individual sovereignty in the "Declaration of Independence," a Scottsman named Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations." In it he predicted that "the invisible hand" would motivate the exact sort of outcomes as the Washington Post reported in today's paper.

I wonder how the baseball teams and wind generation companies managed without Al Gore, Congress and whoever becomes President telling them what to do.