The Liberal Programs Have Failed

and liberals are the last to know

It is time for us to face the facts. Everything that the modern educated class has tried to do with government has been a failure. Somehow we must reconstitute and rebuild our modern societies upon a different basis. But that is a task for another time. First we must face the facts and begin a campaign to get our liberal friends to face the facts.

And let’s be honest. As Mark Helperin said on TuckerCarlson.com. We are heading for the biggest mental health crisis in the nation’s history. Because? Because a Trump win, to our liberal friends is “inconceivable” and something to be opposed by all good people.

For now the best we can do is to rehearse all the failures. Although to talk about “failures” misses the point. The only thing governments are designed to do is tax people and kill people and order people around. And usually they do that badly.

Defense

Up until recently I went with most of the conventional wisdom: Revolutionary War good, Civil War necessary, World War I and World War II the good guys defeat the bad guys. Cold War a noble stand against evil totalitarians. I supported the Iraq War when it came out. But I don’t think much of the Ukraine war. But now I have changed my mind.

Revolutionary War? Guess what: Canada ended up independent without a war.

Civil War? Guess what: another 20 years and I’ll bet that the North could have shamed the South out of slavery without a war.

20th Century Wars? I now think that starting with the Spanish American War in 1898 the US was feeling its oats and fancying itself a player on the world stage. And what a performance! The US Empire is worldwide with troops now in 44 countries. But supposing we hadn’t colonized the Philippines? Suppose we had kept out of World War I and let the Euros fight to a standstill? Maybe then the Allies wouldn’t have penalized Germany and maybe no Adolf Hitler. Maybe then we could have combined with Germany to keep the Soviets out of Eastern Europe. Maybe 100 million people would still have died from Communism, but a lot less would have died in world wars.

The fact is that for the last century the US has been building and maintaining an empire, and right now it’s a disaster with the State Department and the Intelligence Community mindlessly messing up the world.

Pensions

Governments do two things: they fight the enemy and they gift their supporters. That’s what Social Security was about. Give the voters a promise of free stuff before the 1936 election. Then there are government employee pensions. Talk about gold plate.

Of course, now Social Security is going broke in about ten years. And then what? Suppose we had set up mandatory IRA-type accounts for every employee so that people saved for their own retirement throughout their working lives? And suppose we covered billionaires with prizes and medals for funding pensions for widows and orphans? But we didn’t.

And don’t talk to me about government employee pensions. I’m not in the mood for that today.

Healthcare

Apparently the kidz are sympathetic to the alleged murderer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I get it. Interacting with health insurance companies is a nightmare. But guess why, sports fans! It’s because of Obamacare, which bureaucratized and regulated health care for working-age Americans so that underserved Americans could be helped. Then there is Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor, both of which regulate the health care industry, for better or for worse.

Do you not get, dear friends, that with government and big corporations in the middle of health care then health care will be corrupted by various people trying to game the system, from consumers to providers to insurance companies to politicians? And in consequence the whole system is going to be ground to a halt by government regulators? If you have a problem understanding that, I have a bridge I’d like you to take a look at.

Back in the day I had a cousin who liked to tease me about how his kid was brought into the world in the 1930s courtesy of a “lodge doctor.” You see, back then, everybody belonged to a Masonic or Elks or Oddfellows lodge — a fraternal society. And pretty much every lodge had its lodge doctor, usually some kid just out of medical school. And the lodge doctor, my cousin teased me, was cheap. What a concept!

Honestly I don’t know how we get out of the present health care death spiral. I guess what will happen is that people that can afford to — the rich! — will opt out of the gubmint system and the poor will be worse off.

Education

Just why do we send kids to school? To learn the 3-Rs? To teach them social skills? To teach them our religion? To teach them regime Narrative? To keep them out of the labor force and save them from the horror of child labor down in the mines? To provide a jobs program for not-too-bright adults? To fund politicians campaigns with teachers union money?

I think we need to burn the whole system to the ground and watch the rubble bounce. Did you know that back in the day some NGO sent a bunch of computer tablets to villages in Ethiopia? Within two weeks the kids were singing the ABC song and in six months they had figured out how to hack the tablet to enable the camera. So tell me just what our schools are for?

And as for our universities charging $50,000 a year tuition…

Welfare

We all know that welfare is a mess, that it kills marriage in the lower classes, and keeps the poor out of the job market.

But this is nothing new. Really, governments don’t have a clue what to do about the poor, going back to the end of the Middle Ages when kings started to nationalize their armed forces so that the nobles couldn’t enlist their peasants in their own personal armies. And at the same time landowners started getting into “improvement” and kicking peasants off the land so they could make more money by draining their land and privatizing the “commons.”

Obviously, in our time rulers have learned to earn the votes of the poor by handing out money. And the rulers have moralized the whole process as “compassion” and “justice.” I think there must be a better way, but I don’t know where to start.

Regulation

One of the glorious achievements of the Administrative State is border-to-border and wall-to-wall government regulation. And this is seen, especially by educated people, as a Good Thing. Because we can’t let greedy bankers and corporations run roughshod over the people. And then we must protect the environment and tackle climate change!

There is also the curious fact that the regulators are typically members of the credentialed educated class.

Regulation is part of the political culture that arose in the 19th century and that manifested itself in the US as the Progressive movement. The idea was that government would be staffed not by political placemen as in the “spoils system” but educated professionals that would administer government according to scientific principles and a coherent plan.

In the event, government has not been administered acccording to scientific principles but according to the fashions and political interest of the educated rulers, and is subject to “regulatory capture” by the regulated as scientifically demonstrated by George Stigler. Regulation clearly results in rigidity and slow response to changing conditions. And it is subject to the universal culture of government in aiding the supporters of the rulers and obstructing the opponents of the rulers.

But it is not yet clear to the educated class that regulation is unjust and obstructionist. And that means that things will have to get worse before they get better.

Summary

In my view almost everything government has done since falling under the influence of the modern educated class has been at best a less than optimum result, and usually an obvious failure. But modern government provides a lot of jobs for educated people, and that means that educated people experience government programs as beneficial, because they benefit the educated with employment, with status, and with power.

Obviously, things will have to get worse before they get better.