This post is mainly a rant, but it might find itself informative. The chart above is the percentage of a given word found in books throughout time, as provided by “Google Ngrams”.
Rent-Seeking
I write this to mainly just say the “ROI” on “rent-seeking” is too high. It makes perfect economic sense. The problem is people would call it “laissez-faire free-market capitalism”. Personally, I think it is BS. America is principally a liberal democracy with a mixed economy.
To continue calling it a “free-market”, is to continue allowing rent-seeking behaviour from people that can convince our politicians to do them “small favors” while reaping massive rewards from legislation. And I’m also not saying that “capitalism” isn’t a bad thing. I think it can be a very efficient system to exchange information and achieve utlity for each other, but it shouldn’t be self-serving.
No More Democracy?
The problem is, rent-seeking behaviour doesn’t mean we should stop democracy all together. I see and hear too much of the talking point that because there is political power that can be bought, we should just get rid of it. Lets go towards completely and really free and just markets. This line is dubious to me because it’s not like the power that existed in politics goes away, it just goes back to the same people with capital.
The whole point of the picture above is to say that we need to consider how politics and economics are dependent on the other. I don’t know, but it seems that we need to consider how those two interact or else we end up in a place that’s more wacko bizzaro than the Twilight Zone.