{"id":168769,"date":"2010-01-09T14:26:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T19:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nw0.eu\/2010\/01\/09\/opaque-by-design.html"},"modified":"2010-01-09T14:26:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T19:26:26","slug":"opaque-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/168769","title":{"rendered":"Opaque by Design"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sheldon Richman
\nCampaign For Liberty<\/a>
\nSaturday, January 9th, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe House and Senate plan to put together the final health
\ncare reform bill behind closed doors according to an agreement by top
\nDemocrats.\u201d<\/p>\n

That less-than-startling piece of news was delivered by House
\nSpeaker Nancy Pelosi. She was at the White House when she said it, so
\nit\u2019s okay with President Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thus, as the CBS News headline<\/a> had it, \u201cObama<\/a> Reneges on Health Care<\/a> Transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who is really shocked (shocked!) that this is happening
\nshould avoid talking to strangers on the street. You\u2019ll wind up
\nbelieving you own a bridge.<\/p>\n

In other words, no one really thought Obama<\/a> and his cronies were
\ngoing to make government<\/a> transparent by conducting business on C-SPAN.
\nAs the head of the Council on Foreign Relations said admiringly about
\nObama<\/a> in another context, \u201cHe\u2019s learned the difference
\nbetween campaigning and governing.\u201d Indeed. Even if he wanted to,
\nthere was no way Obama<\/a> was going to get our misrepresentatives in
\nCongress to do it.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201ctransparent government<\/a>\u201d is just this side of
\na logical contradiction. A really transparent government<\/a> would barely
\nqualify as a government<\/a> at all. Imagine if you could witness all the
\nbackroom dealing, logrolling, outright bribery, and the rest of the
\nshenanigans that go on under the laughable rubric
\n\u201cgoverning.\u201d It wouldn\u2019t last a week.<\/p>\n

Once in a while we get a glimpse. When Sen. Ben Nelson\u2019s vote
\non the health-insurance takeover was cynically bought with the promise
\nthat everyone but Nebraskans would pay Nebraska\u2019s new Medicaid
\nbill, there was genuine disgust \u2014 even in Nebraska. The payoff to
\nLouisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu got a similar reception. But that was just
\nthe tip of the iceberg. Did you hear that companies with fewer than 50
\nemployees would be exempt from the health-insurance
\nmandate\u2013except for construction companies<\/a>? Then the threshold is five. It\u2019s a little favor to the construction trade unions:<\/p>\n

\u201cLabor unions that have negotiated health benefits for
\nconstruction workers lobbied for the provision. Without it, they said,
\nsmall nonunion employers would have an unfair competitive advantage
\nover companies that they say do \u2018the right thing\u2019 by
\nproviding health benefits to plumbers, electricians, carpenters,
\nroofers and other workers in the building trades,\u201d the Times <\/em>reported.<\/p>\n

This sort of thing happens every day. As Michael Kinsley once said,
\nthe real scandal in Washington is the legal stuff, not the illegal
\nstuff, that goes on.<\/p>\n

Political Transactions Costs<\/strong><\/p>\n

We can\u2019t say we weren\u2019t warned. A few years ago a great scholar named Charlotte Twight explained it all in her book Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over Ordinary Americans<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>I\u2019m a huge fan of this book, and everyone concerned with liberty should read it closely. What I said about it in 2003 still holds<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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If I may be blunt, this is a subversive book \u2014 in
\nthe sense that if average Americans were to read and grasp it, they
\nwould turn into libertarian revolutionaries. Why? Because Twight
\ndocuments the ways that officials systematically mislead us<\/a> about what
\ngovernment<\/a> does. In many cases, she uses their own words to convict
\nthem of mass deception aforethought. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The key to her thesis is the concept of political transactions
\ncosts. In economics, transactions costs are the expenses one accepts to
\nengage in exchanges. To use Twight\u2019s example, if you hire someone
\nto plant a tree in your yard, the transaction costs include any
\nexpenses you would not have incurred had you planted the tree yourself.<\/p>\n

There are transactions costs associated with politics<\/a> too. These,
\nTwight says, are \u201cthe costs to individuals of reaching and
\nenforcing political agreements regarding the role and scope of
\ngovernment<\/a>\u2026 [t]he costs to each of us<\/a> of perceiving, and acting
\nupon our assessment of, the net costs of particular governmental
\nactions and authority\u2026 of learning the likely consequences of
\nproposed government<\/a> programs and taking political action in response to
\nsuch programs\u2026 .\u201d<\/p>\n

We could sum up the idea with the phrase \u201ceternal
\nvigilance,\u201d which takes time, effort, and money. Or as others
\nhave put it, \u201cfreedom isn\u2019t free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course the higher the political transactions costs, other things
\nequal, the less monitoring people will engage in. Keep in mind that any
\none person\u2019s clout is small, so the payoff from absorbing the
\ncosts and engaging in the monitoring are also small. That results in a
\ngovernment<\/a> watched closely by those who stand to gain a lot (the
\nspecial interests) and not so closely by those who stand to pay, in the
\naggregate, a lot (the mass of taxpayers).<\/p>\n

Twight points out that there are \u201cnatural\u201d transactions
\ncosts, as with any economic activity, but also \u201ccontrived\u201d
\ntransactions costs \u2014 the ones \u201cdeliberately created<\/em> by government<\/a> officials to increase our costs of assessing and responding to government<\/a> policies\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not apt to read about these<\/em> in textbooks or
\nthe establishment apologies on most newspaper editorial and op-ed
\npages. For some unfathomable reason, most pundits don\u2019t want us<\/a>
\nto worry our little heads knowing that politicians may intentionally
\nmake it more difficult for us<\/a> to see what\u2019s really going on or to
\ndo anything about it.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hard to conclude the politicians would want it any
\nother way. How else to explain 2,000-page bills laden with impenetrable
\nlegislatese \u2014 which no member of Congress will read in their
\nentirety \u2014 and 800-page amendments? Have you tried reading the
\nfederal budget? Such output mocks the ideal of an \u201cinformed
\ncitizenry.\u201d That\u2019s the last thing the misleaders in
\nWashington want.<\/p>\n

As Oscar Wilde said, \u201cNowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Related Posts:<\/h3>\n