Comments on: The Lesson of Rod Blagojevich: We Need Better Government!

By: You fail at cynicism : The Uncredible Hallq

You fail at cynicism : The Uncredible Hallq — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:12:59 +0000

[...] incentives to be a bit nicer to each other. I do agree a little bit with Will Wilkinson that culture and norms matter, but even what culture and norms develop depends in large part on what ones people have incentives [...]

By: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:42:49 +0000

awsome article men

By: nutrition foods

nutrition foods — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:26:39 +0000

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By: Neverfox

Neverfox — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:36:33 +0000

Will,

Whenever there is a desire for “better” goods and services, do you typically expect the best approach to be the support of a monopoly on these goods and services?

By: Butler T. Reynolds

Butler T. Reynolds — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:49:18 +0000

Last spring my house was burglarized. The thief made quite a mess of my place while he was looking for his loot to haul out of my back door that he smashed in.

Next time, I want a better thief who doesn't make such a mess.

By: I’m gonna plagiarize Ed Lopez’s philosophy here, because it’s mine too | the daily john

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:09:59 +0000

[...] the comments on Will Wilkinson’s post to which I just linked, Ed Lopez offers a statement of philosophy that expresses my own beliefs [...]

By: More on constitutional institutional design and corruption | the daily john

More on constitutional institutional design and corruption | the daily john — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:09:11 +0000

[...] Will Wilkinson read Ed’s post too, and Mike Munger’s, and Steve Horwitz’s that I linked to in my original post. Will is splitting a very fine hair among positions that are in substantial agreement: Look at Blago! He’s a politician! They’re all alike. Neener! Except, they aren’t. And some places are better governed than others, with less incompetence, waste, and corruption. … [...]

By: Steve Roth

Steve Roth — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:25:32 +0000

No duh. But, thanks for saying it.

Reagan was absolutely, fundamentally wrong: government is not the problem. Bad government is the problem.

A certain amount of government (and associated redistributive policies) is necessary for a modern, prosperous, high-productivity economy to operate. (The only way to maintain aggregate demand and avoid meltdowns.) All evidence suggests that the proper amount requires taxes in the 30-40% of GDP range--slightly to significantly north of the U.S. at 28%.

For a century we've teetered at the bottom edge of that workable amount. We fell off the edge catastrophically once before, and now we've done it again. In both cases we crashed everybody else, too--even those with responsible levels of government who would have gone along fine except for our irresponsibility.

It's time for libertarians and conservatives to put aside childish things and magical thinking, and contribute creatively within the context of what is actually workable, reasonable, and prosperity-generating in a modern political economy.

By: wph

wph — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:17:05 +0000

I think the libertarians who believe that these occasional government scandals prove that government is irredeemably corrupt are the counterpart to the leftists who believe that the occasional corporate scandal proves that capitalism is irredeemably corrupt.

By: Cool Cal

Cool Cal — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:44:33 +0000

I suppose the major distinction here is better “government”, meaning those actors and entities which comprise the government at hand, or better “system of government”, whereby our judgment of said government's agents would drastically differ scenario by scenario, regardless of their individual moral fortitude and virtues.