A response on ungovernability

One of my regular readers just commented "I reject the thought the process isn't working. How did they find ways to grow government by so much in the past 20+ years? " Good question. Government is ultimately about choices. In the last couple of decades the state has made a number of choices about where to spend the money that we offer to the public sector. There is considerable evidence that most Californians would disagree with the way that dough has been allocated. But if you start with the notion, as I do, that it should be hard to make decisions to spend public money, then the question is a very good one.

Some of the growth has come from non-elected sources. For example, the federal judge that has tried to dictate spending in state prisons, is but one example of a judiciary mad with power. But as the literature of public choice economics suggests, in democratic assemblies the propensity is to too easily accede to the wishes of a minority that has concentrated interests and disburse the costs through the general public who feel the effects of those changes in much less concentrated ways. That is the fundamental theory behind things like the two thirds requirement for taxes and spending decisions. Even with that constraint the rent seeking capabilities of public officials seems to be pretty large.