Alex Tabarrok must have been reading here when he wrote this:
Brad DeLong writes that "the core problem of modern liberalism" is "how can one support the idea of an activist government when half the time that government will be run by malevolent or incompetent Republicans?
I agree with but the change of one word. "Republicans" should be replaced with "politicians." Change that one word and you move from a naive, partisan view of the world to a principled, non-partisan and correct view. Note that it is not necessary to believe that every politician is a knave or even that half of them are. The core problem is that knaves can do much more harm than angels can do benefit.
A day before I wrote this concerning the same DeLong article:
This caught my attention as it's similar to something I've thought for a long time. Neither the left nor right would be so eager to push for government expansion if they would just stop to envision their political adversaries running the government.
Posted by Walter at December 24, 2003 06:19 PM