Politics Makes Things Worse

every time

There’s a piece over at Spiked on “Why industrial policy isn’t working” in the UK.

There can be good reasons for governments to pursue a so-called industrial policy – that is, a policy that sustains or develops certain industries in order to achieve national goals.

Really? I mean, you probably don’t want to be buying fighter jets from a country that you might want to go to war with. But then today, who cares, as long as you have enough nerdy teenage kids to manufacture your own drones?

I suggest that it is time to update Lord Salisbury’s timeless maxim: “never trust experts.”

Here it is: “Politics Makes Things Worse.”

Back in the day, experts and politicians said we needed labor legislation to stop employers from exploiting the workers. Really? When the industrial revolution basically saved the lower class from a centuries-long starvation as landowners “improved” their estates and kicked the surplus population off the land?

What labor legislation does is make it difficult for employers to respond to the changing market and reassign workers to jobs where they are most needed. So labor legislation Made Things Worse.

Back in the day, experts and politicians decided to create government health care systems to help people afford health care. The result is staggeringly expensive and inefficient bureaucratized health care systems that you cannot afford unless the government gives it to you for free. So government health health care Made Things Worse.

Back in the day, experts and politicians decided to create the “common school” system of government funded and controlled education for children. The result is a staggeringly expensive and inefficient politicized system that fails to educate lower-class children. So government education Made Things Worse

Back in the day, experts and politicians decided that unhampered capitalism would “immiserate” the workers, and needed to be regulated by government and experts.

But the problem is that government regulation almost always ends up benefiting existing special interests. George Stigler called it “regulatory capture.” As Spiked says:

As things stand, government efforts to shape and direct industry are slowing growth, encouraging corporations to depend on state handouts and distracting from the core role of the state in providing decent public services and infrastructure.

So government regulation and industrial policy Makes Things Worse.

Back in the day, experts and politicians decided that government needed to intervene to reduce the fluctuations of the business cycle. But in fact the worst recessions and depressions have been the result of government interference — like wars and inflationary money printing — and the interventions intended to “stimulate the economy,” as in the 1930s and the 2010s, have not really worked. Why? Because government “industrial policy” typically helps existing special interests and makes small business go to the wall. As in the late COVID experience.

So government intervention to even out the business cycle Makes Things Worse.

Is this just libertarianism, that doesn’t care about people and imposes a blind faith in the market?

No. All I am saying is that we need to abandon our faith in War World, the arena of humans fighting and forcing and handing out goodies to their pals, and we need to focus on Life World, the face-to-face world of family and neighborhood, and the Market World, that rewards trustworthy people for delivering the goods.

Because the politics of War World Makes Things Worse.