The People's Romance
31 Oct 2025 - 31 Oct 2025
- A paper by Daniel Klein, a libertarian economist at GMU and so normally something I would have a passionate hate for, but I really love it and keep coming back to it. The argument is roughly: people need to coordinate their actions, in order to that they need to coordinate their sentiments, and government serves as a focal point for that and exploits it. As a libertarian, he would rather dispense with this, but recognizes that it might be necessary.
- Full cite: The People’s Romance Why People Love Government (as Much as They Do). The Independent Review, v. X, n. 1, Summer 2005, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2005, pp. 5–37. https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_10_1_1_klein.pdf
If people see government activism as a singular way of binding society together, then they may favor any particular government intervention virtually for its own sake—whether it be government intervention in schooling, urban transit, postal services, Social Security, or anything else—because they love the way in which it makes them American.
- Earlier: Omniorthogonal: First person plural