Our Political System Stinks

I am interested in politics.  When I say that, what I mean is I find the solving of complex problems and political issues interesting.

I have no interest in gaining political favors, or the political process, or determining how to get some bill passed through congress.  I think that the issues are interesting.

This may be a failing on my part.

Last week I posted on how incompetent government run passenger trains are.  I asked, "just how incompetent is the government?"

Keoni Galt commented that the government is not incompetent it is doing exactly what it means to do.  Politicians are getting re-elected, helped by funding from companies who get paid by the government to build the trains, operate the trains, etc.  And the local politicians get to point to the new trains to the citizens.

The actual issues, which I find interesting, can be found to work or not work on their merits.  We can try political experiments to see if the places with price controls work or not.  We can look at data and see if school vouchers mean kids learn more or less.

But all that is besides the point.

We could eliminate Obamacare, Social Security, etc.  Eliminate the income tax, remove rules and regulations, etc.  And while all of that would improve things, the underlying problem would remain.

In order to improve the politics of our country, we need to work with a system that, for example, has money extracted from productive people, enters the government, goes to people like teachers, of which some goes to teacher's unions, which then goes to democrat politicians.  Our political system, for example, takes money, by force, from the people, and funds one of the two major political parties.

And then we have situations where large companies can get the government to tax, regulate, and tariff, their competitors out of business.  A man who builds a company by providing goods and services can be downright heroic.  But many of the biggest companies today exist by having the government prevent their competitors from growing or even existing.

This is all kinds of stupid.  Each issue has solutions that may, or may not work, but our political system itself is deeply flawed.

Why aren't more of us anarchists?