2017-02-08

En politisk fantasivärld


"When I am discussing the State with my colleagues at Duke, it's not long before I realize that, for them, almost without exception, the State is a unicorn. I come from the Public Choice tradition, which tends to emphasize consequentialist arguments more than natural rights, and so the distinction is particularly important for me. My friends generally dislike politicians, find democracy messy and distasteful, and object to the brutality and coercive excesses of foreign wars, the war on drugs, and the spying of the NSA.

But their solution is, without exception, to expand the power of "the State." That seems literally insane to me—a non sequitur of such monstrous proportions that I had trouble taking it seriously.
Then I realized that they want a kind of unicorn, a State that has the properties, motivations, knowledge, and abilities that they can imagine for it. When I finally realized that we were talking past each other, I felt kind of dumb. Because essentially this very realization—that people who favor expansion of government imagine a State different from the one possible in the physical world—has been a core part of the argument made by classical liberals for at least 300 years."

Michael Munger @ FEE: Unicorn Governance »

2 kommentarer:

  1. Mycket läsvärd artikel. Munger-testet är nästa väl elakt i sin enkelhet! En bra svensk variant är "Välfärden skall förvaltas av ..."

    Det är många som tror på enhörningar och annat. Om bara jag fick bestämma skulle allt bli bra ...
    "Om jag blev kung diddel diddel i detta nu.
    Jag skulle ha diddel diddel betjänter sju."

    SvaraRadera
  2. Det där var en belgisk blå enhörning, känd för sin höga slaktvikt och saftiga kött :-)

    SvaraRadera

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