Sleeping with the Devil(s)

The cover of the July 27 edition of Newsweek offers a gallant photograph of senator Ted Kennedy, and underneath it the words, "'We're Almost There,' The Long Struggle for Universal Health Care." Putting my general disgust for this man and what he stands for aside, I couldn't help but think of a phenomenon that seems to characterize so many people, and that is, that they are all about giving the utmost trust and prerogative to complete strangers.

The beauty about advanced trade is, even if I'm a total xenophobe anti-Semite bigot, I can still come to acquire my eggs and tuna fish at the end of the day, without unleashing doom on my producer. I have no idea who made my clothes, or who transported them to the distribution center, or who even thought stone-washed jeans were a good idea in the first place. In fact, I don't even have to know the name of the guy who works the cash register in order to buy them. They are concerned with producing and marketing a product that I want and am willing to pay them for, nothing less, nothing more.

But for whatever reasons, the voters in the robust American democracy seem to place so much faith into people that have a nice face and a smooth talk. Yes, I trade with complete strangers, but that's the beauty of it: I don't have to like them in order to get what I want. And, if they mistreat me, there's always another producer to fill the gap. With politicians, there is nobody else to fill the gap until the next election cycle, and if I'm not on the right side of the political spectrum, there's a good chance my interests are nil and none as far as they're concerned. Indeed, the people are usually assigned one and only one head political jockey, along with a team of bureaucrats and various functionaries whose only objective is, quite like the jeans maker on the market, to keep his job. However, keeping their jobs doesn't have to involve actually serving anybody well, but instead making an attractive appeal for more funding and greater controls to exact some purported noble purpose.

Bottom line: Politicians and their cronies face the same incentives that you do in life. If you're no saint, why are they any better? I'll stick with the market, where you are as successful as you are good at serving your fellow man.