The government does more harm than good

[jigo]

1. By getting the country involved in foreign conflicts like the
middle east, the government costs U.S taxpayers trillions of dollars.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1868367,00.html#ixzz1UeRJPgcU
It also increases the risk that they will be harmed or killed. Several
thousand Americans have already been killed in terrorist attacks. It's
only a matter of time before some terrorist group, angry because the
U.S. is supporting the side it opposes in a conflict, sets off a
nuclear bomb in a U.S. city.

2. The U.S. does not even perform the basic function of government of
protecting its citizens. The police do more harm than good.
https://sites.google.com/site/thepolicedomoreharmthangood/

Only about 2% of all violent crimes and less than half of all murders
are solved
The police have little or no significant effect on the overall crime rate
Many of those convicted and imprisoned are later proven innocent by
DNA or other definitive tests
The police falsify and fabricate evidence to get a conviction in a
large percentage of cases
The police deny misconduct and use their political leverage to prevent
reform
The police frequently harass, beat, and even kill innocent people
The police often arrest people to make arbitrary quotas
The police get generous pay and benefits and manipulate the system to
get overtime pay or illegal money
Police work is no more dangerous than other common occupations

Reference are given on that Web site.

3. The government has deprived people of many fundamental rights,
including the right to be left alone.
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7305356
In NYC, for example a policeman exposed how the police routinely
harassed and arrested innocent people. "They have to meet a quota. One
arrest and twenty summonses," said Officer Polanco. A recording of a
police supervisor confirmed this:
This audio recording obtained by Eyewitness News clearly states that
they need to bring in the numbers.
"If you think 1 and 20 is breaking your balls, guess what you're going
to be doing. You're going to be doing a lot more, a lot more than what
they're saying."
The government has also infringed on numerous rights, including 1st,
2nd, 4th, and 9th amendment rights. It presumes to tell people what
they can put into their own bodies in their own home. It routinely
breaks down doors in the middle of the night, terrifies families,
kills family dogs, arrests innocent people in enforcing these laws. To
obtain any kind of firearm, even a BB gun, in NJ, you must pay over
$100 in fees, give permission for a check of your personal medical and
other records, and supply recommendations from two people.

4. The government gives high-paying, high benefit, secure positions to
groups who support political candidates. It also gives subsidies and
gives special treatment to financial institutions and companies that
contribute millions to politicians.

[jigo]

retro...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:14:49 -0800 (PST), Werner<whet...@mac.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Since BigGivernment is bankrupt would less of it would be better?
>> http://www.EndIt.info
>
> Less and more is a silly conversation. Good and bad is a real
> discussion. We need government. We will always create it and keep it.

That's a debatable point; scholars like Dr David Friedman (in _The
Machinery of Freedom
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/ ) and
Dr. Murray Rothbard (in _For A New Liberty_
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp) have shown how the
functions of government could be completely privatized.

> The question is how to make it function well for the people.

Those in government aren't particularly interested in having it run
well. They're interested in getting elected or re-elected in the case
of politicians or in preserving their privileges.

> The less is better crap is shallow sloganeering - mostly engineered by
> people who want government out of their way so they can screw the
> people for a quick buck.

It's the government that screwing us for a quick buck NOW, as those
references that you snipped abundantly document. Smaller governments,
locally controlled, may be an improvement. Small enough so that if
people didn't like the government in their area, they could easily
move to another.

It's not as if governments have any ethical right to rule over this
land. Europeans seized control of this territory by force and
massacred the native population. Read about the "Trail of Tears," for
example:
http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html

In 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the "Indian Removal
Act. "President Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. Ordered to
move on the Cherokee, General John Wool resigned his command in
protest, delaying the action. His replacement, General Winfield Scott,
arrived at New Echota on May 17, 1838 with 7000 men...and the United
States Army began the invasion of the Cherokee Nation.

In one of the saddest episodes of our brief history, men, women, and
children were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with
minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a thousand miles.
Under the generally indifferent army commanders, human losses for the
first groups of Cherokee removed were extremely high. About 4000
Cherokee died as a result of the removal. The route they traversed and
the journey itself became known as "The Trail of Tears" or, as a
direct translation from Cherokee, "The Trail Where They Cried"

[don Gabacho]

On Jan 22, 9:31 pm, retrogro...@comcast.net wrote:

> - a  very simple concept which
> libertoons cannot seem to wrap their head around.

"Sheesh":

Declining Trust in Government: The Electoral Connection
ftp://ftp.nes.isr.umich.edu/ftp/resourcs/techrpts/reports/Tch60.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by LM Bartels - 2000 - Cited by 19 - Related articles
The National Election Study time series shows a significant decline in
public faith in .... battery of four questions on Trust in Government,
Government Waste, Big ...
Opportunity Lost: The Decline of Trust and Confidence in ...
www.brookings.edu/events/2002/0530governance.aspx
May 30, 2002 – In the past eight months, public trust in the federal
government, elected officials, and government workers has declined
dramatically and across ...
[PDF]
Building Trust in Government in the Twenty-First Century - Review
of ...
unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/.../unpan025062.p...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by PK Blind - 2006 - Cited by 48 - Related articles
How can governments prevent the decline of trust?
…………………………………………………………………….p. 8. • Survey Results on Levels and
Pattern of ...
How Americans View Government | Pew Research Center for the ...
www.people-press.org/1998/03/.../how-americans-view-government/
Mar 10, 1998 – Trust in government declined modestly to 34%.
Throughout this report, the analyses of factors influencing trust in
government reflect findings in ...
80 Percent of Americans Don't Trust the Government. Here's Why ...
www.theatlantic.com/business/.../04/...trust...government.../39148/
Apr 19, 2010 – It's part of an overall decline in government trust
since the mid-1960s. The only time since 1975 that government trust
broke 50% was in the ...
Explain how divided government has contributed to the decline in ...
wiki.answers.com › ... › History › War and Military History › US Civil
War
What are two specific consequences of the decline in trust and
confidence in government? yes. Explain how the increased cost of
election campaigns has led to ...
[PDF]
Can IT Help Government to Restore Public Trust? Declining Public ...
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.4.2836...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by MJ Moon - Cited by 30 - Related articles
Declining Public Trust and Potential Prospects of IT in the Public
Sector. M. Jae Moon ... performance to the decline of public trust in
government, this study ...
THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLIC TRUST IN ...
poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/3/239.full.pdf
by VA CHANLEY - 2000 - Cited by 222 - Related articles
clining public trust in government. Declining trust in government in
turn leads to less positive evaluations of Congress and reduced
support for government ...
Partisanship And Declining Trust In Government | The New Republic
www.tnr.com/blog/.../partisanship-and-declining-trust-in-government
Apr 14, 2011 – Mike Sances has a great post, accompanied by charts,
showing that declining trust in government over the last several
decades has resulted in ...
Hetherington, M.J.: Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust
and ...
press.princeton.edu/titles/7877.html
by MJ Hetherington - Cited by 246 - Related articles
Nov 6, 2011 – Description of the book Why Trust Matters: Declining
Political Trust and ... As people lost faith in the federal
government, the delivery system for ...

[jigo]

retro...@comcast.net wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:47:21 -0500, jigo<ret...@home.com> wrote:
>> retro...@comcast.net wrote:
>>> On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:14:49 -0800 (PST), Werner<whet...@mac.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Since BigGivernment is bankrupt would less of it would be better?
>>>> http://www.EndIt.info
>>>
>>> Less and more is a silly conversation. Good and bad is a real
>>> discussion. We need government. We will always create it and keep it.
>>
>> That's a debatable point; scholars like Dr David Friedman (in _The
>> Machinery of Freedom
>> http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/ ) and
>> Dr. Murray Rothbard (in _For A New Liberty_
>> http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp) have shown how the
>> functions of government could be completely privatized.

> Again less vs. more is a silly conversation. Some things can be
> privatized to good effect. Many things cannot. If things could be
> privatized to better effect tit would happen naturally through market
> forces. Most of the time government only gets involved when there is a
> market failure - Market failure - a very simple concept which

> libertoons cannot seem to wrap their head around.

The government prevents most things from being privatized. For
example, that site documents how inefficient and abusive public
policing is:
https://sites.google.com/site/thepolicedomoreharmthangood/
But you can't refuse to support and accept public policing and
subscribe to a private protection service.

>>> The question is how to make it function well for the people.
>>
>> Those in government aren't particularly interested in having it run
>> well. They're interested in getting elected or re-elected in the case
>> of politicians or in preserving their privileges.
>

> Again with silly broad brush statements. many in Government do care
> and do work well for the common weal. You libertoons never seem to be
> interested in talking about making government work better, just
> dismantling it. It's a silly over simplistic answer.

The vast majority of people in government--elected politicians and
bureaucrats--are far more concerned with their own welfare than what's
best for the country. For years it has been obvious to every sensible
person who looked into the matter that the criminalization of drugs is
responsible for a vast amount of harm to society and drug users.
https://sites.google.com/site/drugsshouldbelegalized/
But nearly all politicians support keeping drugs illegal because it's
the politically correct thing to do. And a huge bureaucracy like the
DEA now has a vested interest in keeping drugs illegal.

>>> The less is better crap is shallow sloganeering - mostly
engineered by
>>> people who want government out of their way so they can screw the
>>> people for a quick buck.
>>
>> It's the government that screwing us for a quick buck NOW, as those
>> references that you snipped abundantly document. Smaller governments,
>> locally controlled, may be an improvement. Small enough so that if
>> people didn't like the government in their area, they could easily
>> move to another.
>

> Sorry I've been screwed far more and worse by corporations and
> businesses. How can you be so silly? Let's just look at the role
> Credit Default Swaps played in the recent economic collapse. A totally
> unregulated commodity that ran to 60 Trillion dollars! More than the
> world economy.

Possibly you have, but that's anecdotal. And many economists argue
that it was government action, such as insisting that interest rates
be held artificially low and people who did not qualify be granted
mortgages, was responsible for most of the economic meltdown. There's
little doubt that the waste of nearly a trillion dollars by government
on the unnecessary Iraq war contributed to the national debt. And
many other such government waste could be cited. The trillions of
dollars spent on terrorism and counter-terrorism is due to the
government's unnecessary involvement in foreign conflicts.

>> It's not as if governments have any ethical right to rule over this
>> land. Europeans seized control of this territory by force and
>> massacred the native population. Read about the "Trail of Tears," for
>> example:
>> http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html
>

> Sheesh.
>
> So because the colonist displaced the indians - you're free to do what
> ever the fuck you want? BTW the colonists were largely modern day
> entrepreneurs pushing their self advantage - i.e., you libertoon
> heroes. Jamestown and the like were far more libertarian small
> government voting groups. And look what they delivered. A libertarian
> solution.

That was not the argument (that we should be free to do whatever we
want); it was to point out that governments were founded by force and
in an unethical manner. It is not true (as statists often argue) that
governments were founded by the will of the people and some "social
contract," so we have an obligation to accept it. And libertarians do
not argue that people should be free to do anything for their
self-advantage, only that they should be free to pursue their
interests as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others.

[Mr. K]

In article <4f1f0656$0$28384$607e...@cv.net>, jigo <ret...@home.com>

> "The Politics of Bullying" by Cliff Wilson
> http://wilsonsnotes.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-of-bullying.html
>
>
> We have become a nation where bullying not only is too common in
> school hallways and playgrounds but in our politics and public
> meetings.
>
> As we saw in the Congressional town halls of 2010 those angered by the
> lies being spread about the health care reform bill were loud, rude
> and nasty to elected officials and other citizens. There was no
> evidence of respect for the office of the persons conducting the
> meeting and no civility toward neighbors who were present and perhaps
> on the other side of the issue. Instead there was simply an attempt
> to loudly bully those in attendance to either join in harassing the
> elected official or keep silent.
>
> And that continues today. While once was considered standard at a
> political rally or a peaceful demonstration to cheer, jeer and
> exhibit enthusiasm is now common at community governmental meetings to
> shout, scream and accuse elected officials of lying. This reached the
> extreme when a Congressman shouted at the President during the State
> of Union address “You Lie”. Citizens shout at their local officials
> until they do what the citizens want. We were a nation whose body
> politic was formed around the concept of representative democracy.
> People voted in elections and accepted the results of the election. If
> those who won did not perform to the expectations of the majority they
> were ousted in the next elections.
>
> Today as soon as the ballots are counted the losing side declares the
> winners illegitimate. The losers than practice the art made famous by
> former Speaker Gingrich in 1995 - the politics of personal
> destruction. Rather than debate an idea the losing side demonizes and
> seeks to personally defame and destroy the individual who represents
> that idea or party. Epithets are tossed around and accusations with
> no basis in fact are issued like dogma. Some of the charges are a
> distortion of an underlying fact but most are simply made up. And, if
> the attacked party attempts to reason with their attacker they can’t
> because anything they say in their own defense is twisted and used
> against them. When the shouter claims the sky is green and the
> elected official says no it’s blue the attacker responds you know it’s
> black when there’s a storm. You cannot reason with irrational people;
> you cannot present facts to those who refuse to understand them. As
> the Bible says none are as blind as those who will not see.
>
> The result of this bullying politics is to drive good people out.
> Those who will not fight fire with fire stay home - they may vote but
> that’s the last time they are heard. They will not seek or accept
> office because understandably they don’t want to make themselves the
> targets of the bullies. When the Communists took power in Russia in
> 1917 and when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 it was through
> the tactics of bullying. They silenced the opposition using force
> when verbal bullying failed.
>
> One of the many reasons I support the people of Wisconsin in their
> effort to recall Governor Walker is to show people that there is
> another way. Vote those you disagree wit out. We need more recall
> provisions in our various state laws and we need more states with
> initiative and referendum. We also need term limits for legislative
> officials. But with those reforms must come a societal acceptance of
> the results of the elections. Let those elected show their stuff and
> then let the electorate take the appropriate actions to replace them
> if they wish to.
>
> If we no longer accept the legitimacy of our elections - and the right
> wing efforts to suppress voting by enacting photo id laws and reducing
> the number of polling places and restricting absentee voting will only
> increase the seeming illegitimacy of the election results - we will
> soon lose the right to hold elections. If we don’t adopt a
> constitutional amendment to require full transparency and total
> disclosure of campaign contributions and limit the size of personal
> and corporate contributions our democracy will become an oligarchy of
> the very rich. And we will find that when Patrick Henry cried “Give
> me Liberty or give me death” he never assumed that two hundred years
> later we might get neither.

thanks, I'll share this.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if "bullies" could be spotted early in their
careers and diverted?
Imagine a world w/o dick cheney?
--
Karma, What a concept!

[Ddfr]

On Jan 22, 6:31 pm, retrogro...@comcast.net wrote:

"Most of the time government only gets involved when there is a
market failure - Market failure - a very simple concept which
libertoons cannot seem to wrap their head around."

I'm curious as to how you think "market failure" is defined, and what
your reason is to believe that it is the reason governments do things,
rather than an after the fact defense for their doing them.

Anyone curious as to my view of the subject can find it in several of
the recorded talks at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/MyTalks/MyRecentTalks.html

[Ddfr]

On Jan 25, 12:12 pm, retrogro...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:48:46 -0800 (PST), Ddfr

...

> >I'm curious as to how you think "market failure" is defined, and what
> >your reason is to believe that it is the reason governments do things,
> >rather than an after the fact defense for their doing them.
>
> >Anyone curious as to my view of the subject can find it in several of
> >the recorded talks at:
>
> >http://www.daviddfriedman.com/MyTalks/MyRecentTalks.html
>

> Market failure as traditionally defined is where the market does not
> deliver the most efficient result.

I don't think so, and your list further down isn't consistent with
that. Consider the case where the result is inefficient because
consumers are irrational--don't make the choice that is in their own
interest--or because firms make mistakes, or because the information
needed to make the correct decision isn't available. Those are all
case where the market fails to deliver the most efficient result, but
none of them is what normally counts as market failure.

I think you are making the (common) mistake of assuming that one can
deduce the meaning of a technical term from the words that make it up,
rather like believing that you can summarize the theory of relativity
as "everything is relative."

I also think that, contrary to the name, market failure isn't limited
to markets in the usual sense. Precisely the same problems, such as
the public good problem and externalities, show up in a political
system. A voter who spends time and effort figuring out which
candidate is better for the country in order to vote for him is
producing a public good, a benefit shared with many other people. Just
as with any public good, he can't control who gets the benefit and so
has an inadequate incentive to produce it, resulting in what public
choice economists refer to as rational ignorance. So that should also
count as market failure.

My definition is that market failure describes a situation where
individual rationality fails to lead to group rationality. The
prisoner's dilemma, which I expect you are familiar with, is a simple
two person example. Each prisoner is making the correct decision for
himself, and both are worse off than if both had made the alternative
choice.

> (My own belief is that economic
> efficiency is only one consideration in decision making and it has
> unfortunately been lifted to a God like status and should be the only
> outcome in the over simplified belief system of many. Economics was
> developed to be a tool for better information for decision making.
> Those who seek only economic efficiency have elevated a tool to the
> goal. We can talk about that in a different thread.)

There are certainly problems with economic efficiency as a criterion
of goodness--you can find a discussion in an early chapter of my
webbed _Price Theory_. I can't tell from your comments whether you
understand what economic efficiency is, or what your reasons are for
rejecting it.

> As to what why markets fail I rather like this description:

> Different economists have different views about what events are the
> sources of market failure. Mainstream economic analysis widely accepts
> a market failure (relative to Pareto efficiency) can occur for three
> main reasons: if the market is "monopolized" or a small group of
> businesses hold significant market power, if production of the good or
> service results in an externality, or if the good or service is a
> "public good".[2]

Or due to adverse selection.

In the conventional theory, monopoly only produces an inefficient
outcome in the absence of perfect discriminatory pricing, so you could
blame that for the inefficiency.

> So government gets involved frequently as a result of market failures.
> Government entered the environmental protection/regulation business
> after markets externalized pollution to unacceptable levels. People
> were literally dying in the streets. See e.g., the London Smog event
> 1952 - 4000 people died.

And why did government get involved, much earlier than that, in
putting on protective tariffs? In making it illegal for airlines, and
earlier railroads, to reduce their fares without government
permission? In forbidding anyone to cut hair who had not has several
hundred hours of classes on the subject? In making food more
expensive?

> Similarly government entered the fisheries regualtion and wildlife
> regulation because market failures actually lead to push these
> resources to extinction. Intervention was necessary as stocks
> collapsed.

Interesting case. In our society, government was already defining and
enforcing property rights--it was just doing so badly in that case. I
would argue that there are other mechanisms by which property (and
other) rights could be defined and enforced, but that would take us
fairly far afield.

In any case, my point is not that none of the things governments do
can be defended as dealing with market failure but that that is an
inadequate explanation, because a large part of government activity
exists to benefit some people, those with political influence in that
particular context, at the expense of others.

> Similarly government entered the food safety arena, market trading,
> pharmacy regulation, housing markets, banking, etc. when these markets
> did not curb wide spread abuses, fraud and public impacts.

Do you have any evidence that government involvement in fact resulted
in an improvement in those areas? Stigler published an article long
ago trying to see if securities regulation resulted in better
outcomes, and was unable to find them--do you know of later research
that succeeded in doing so? The most serious U.S. depression occurred
after the Federal Reserve was created as a governmental substitute for
the private arrangements that had earlier been used to prevent runs on
banks--and arguably it was the Federal Reserve that was responsible
for how bad the Great Depression was. Government intervention in
housing markets produced the two large government created firms that
dominated the mortgage market, and played a large role in its
collapse.

> Essentially the markets are left alone until they fail and raise
> unacceptable results,

International trade was producing unacceptable results, and that is
why we had tariffs? Can you explain prohibition on that basis? The War
on Drugs? The farm program?

> at which time government steps into provide
> regulation, either forcing consideration of externalities, making
> information more available and transparent, etc. Legislation and
> regulation in arena does not start ordinarily until there has been a
> significant market failure.

You are describing the c. 1960's economics textbook description of
what government ought to do, which is inconsistent with both
observations of what governments do do and the later public choice
analysis of what governments can be expected to do. Part of what was
wrong with those textbooks was that they attempted to provide a
realistic analysis of market outcomes, based on rational self-interest
of the actors, but failed to apply the same assumptions to analyse
what governments would do if given various powers.

...

> Let's look at credit default swaps now. A totally unregulated market
> place contributed massively to the recent economic collapse. Now
> legislation and regulation is looking into how to regulate this market
> - because of the failure.

Are you suggesting that banking was a totally unregulated industry? Or
only that the regulators made the wrong choices about how to regulate,
which is not evidence in favor of regulation.

> Now in best case scenario the risks are seen in advance and regulation
> can come in a preventative fashion, before the worst consequences. But
> of course that rarely happens as resources are limited, pressures
> resist such action and people tend not to address problems until they
> reach a significant level and are in their face.

Your whole view is based on an implicit philosopher king model of
government. You might want to think about whether you can construct a
plausible analysis that predicts governments will act that way, as
distinct from an analysis of how you would like them to act. Also
about whether that model is consistent with the actual behavior of
real governments.

[Ddfr]

On Jan 25, 5:49 pm, retrogro...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:46:37 -0800 (PST), Ddfr
>
> <daviddfried...@gmail.com> wrote:

...

> >And why did government get involved, much earlier than that, in
> >putting on protective tariffs?
>

> First off, note I said "often" not always. Don't assume me into things
> I did not say.

What you actually said was:

"Most of the time government only gets involved when there is a
market failure "

> Then more directly in response - Mostly for purposes of infant
> industries protection.

That is the excuse, but if you look at what industries, here and
elsewhere, get protection, it isn't generally infant industries. The
U.S. steel industry, for example, or auto industry, are pretty old
infants. Or the U.S. sugar "industry."

If anything it's the other way around--declining industries, for
reasons that I think public choice theory can explain, are the ones
that mostly get protection.

And by the way, can you explain what sort of market failure the
tariffs are responding to? How does the government figure out that a
particular industry, which doesn't exist because it can't be run
profitably in the U.S., would be a winner if only it had some
protection at the start.

Note also that if the reason really were protection of infant
industries, then the tariffs would be dropped after a little while. Do
you observe that happening?

Can you offer any evidence that protection of infant industry is the
usual reason why tariffs are created? Maintained?

...

> >In making it illegal for airlines, and
> >earlier railroads, to reduce their fares without government
> >permission?
>

> Airlines had a history of cut throat competition, resulting into
> negatives: 1. Frequent bankruptcies. 2. Cutting corners on safety to
> compete on price, etc. 3. There were also issues of monopoly producing
> competitive practices. 4. There were also issues of safety regulation
> generally.

Safety regulation doesn't require price regulation--maintaining a
cartel does. And creating a government enforced cartel seems like an
odd way of avoiding the dangers of a hypothetical monopoly.

> The CAB and later FAA got in the game with the idea of regulating
> fares much like public utility regulation. The airlines were allowed a
> set a level of guaranteed prices and removing price competition led to
> competition in other arenas, services, etc. This led to a more stable
> industry. Bankruptcies were unheard of.

And you regard a bankruptcy as an example of market failure for some
reason? "Stable industry" describes what the industry wants--and gets
when it can prevent competition, preferably with the aid of the
government, as in this case.

>  It was not unlike the regulation of taxis.

You haven't explained why taxis needed to be regulated. Have you
noticed that the usual outcome of regulation of taxis is a monopoly or
near monopoly firm? By casual observation, things are rather more
competitive in the D.C. market, which is one of the few U.S. markets
where entry is not controlled.

> >In forbidding anyone to cut hair who had not has several
> >hundred hours of classes on the subject?

> I'm sure you know the Union history and efforts to professionlize the
> work.  Lots of trade guilds sought regulation. Again market failures
> are not the ONLY reason for emerging regulation.

Not the reason at all. Why do you need to introduce an imaginary
market failure to explain something that makes perfectly good sense as
a profession trying to raise its income by creating entry barriers?

> Though the unions argued there was a market failure in that unhygienic
> practices, and untrained people were bad for the consumer and made
> professional competition difficult.

And do you take that argument seriously? It requires hundreds of hours
of training to learn how to cut hair safely.

> >In making food more expensive?
>

> I'm assuming that's your biased gloss on something more general.

The farm program, whose main purpose is to raise the price of
agricultural output, in order to make farmers richer and consumers of
food poorer.

Are you still maintaining that "most of the time" the reason
government does things is to solve problems of market failure? Do you
have any theory to offer about why you would expect governments to act
that way, instead of using their power to transfer wealth from
dispersed interest groups to concentrated interest groups, able to
reward politicians for doing so, as in, I think, all of my examples?