In this post, I contrasted two quotes. One from Megan McArdle:
If we pass this thing, no American politician, left or right, is going to cut any of these programs, or raise the broad-based taxes necessary to pay for them, without any compensating goodies to offer the public. ... The idea that you pass a program of dubious sustainability because you can always make it sustainable later, seems borderline insane. I can't think of a single major entitlement that has become more sustainable over time.
And the other from Daniel Callahan:
In the end, government must answer to the public, forcing an accountability that is absent in private sector medicine.
I think these two quotes show the precise way in which government breaks down, and which markets excel. It's easier to see by splitting Callahan's quote into two pieces:
- "In the end, government must answer to the public"
- "forcing an accountability that is absent in [the] private sector"
If I read McArdle's quote correctly, I believe she would agree with Callahan on #1 - that is, that in the end, the government will answer to the public. Where I think they would disagree - and where I think most libertarians and most progressives would disagree - is on #2.
McArdle points out (rightly, in my view), that while the government may give the people what they want, what the people absolutely do not want is accountability. What they want from the government are freebies. As long as the government is long on freebies, it will prosper. But actual accountability, in the sense of, say, producing measurable benefits, or ::gasp:: actually paying for the things it buys? That's the opposite of what the people want from the government. And it's why the government is always and everywhere doomed to failure.
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