{"id":34468,"date":"2017-11-12T01:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34468"},"modified":"2017-11-01T11:07:36","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T15:07:36","slug":"qotd-why-politicians-are-all-the-same-kind-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/12\/qotd-why-politicians-are-all-the-same-kind-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Why politicians are all the same kind of people"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Why is it, then, that the virtues and decencies that we generally expect people to have in their private life are so manifestly absent in the people who succeed best in politics and government? The answer lies in the nature of government itself \u2014 at least, government as we currently know it all over the world, a system of imposed, involuntary, monopoly rule whereby the system\u2019s kingpins use military and police power along with ideological enchantment to plunder and bully innocent people \u2014 and to get away with doing so year after year. Just as only physically tough, fearless, aggressive persons succeed as prize fighters, so only dishonest, slick, evasive, power-hungry, unscrupulous, and vicious persons have what it takes to succeed in a system whose very foundations \u2014 violence, aggression, extortion, and misrepresentation \u2014 are completely at odds with private standards of just and virtuous conduct.<\/p>\n<p>If someone like me \u2014 elderly, small, weak, timid, and untrained \u2014 were put in the ring to fight for the heavyweight boxing championship, you would not expect me to survive more than a few seconds. Likewise, if someone like me \u2014 someone who respects other persons\u2019 natural rights to life, liberty, and property and who abhors dishonesty, extortion, aggression, and unnecessary violence \u2014 were thrown into the political or governmental arena, I would scarcely last much longer. There\u2019s a reason why today\u2019s leading campaigners are such morally ugly individuals: they have a comparative advantage in taking the kinds of actions one must take in order to reach the pinnacle of government power.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Higgs, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.independent.org\/2016\/03\/16\/why-the-worst-get-on-top-comparative-advantage\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Why the Worst Get on Top: Comparative Advantage&#8221;, <em>The Beacon<\/em><\/a>, 2016-03-16.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is it, then, that the virtues and decencies that we generally expect people to have in their private life are so manifestly absent in the people who succeed best in politics and government? The answer lies in the nature of government itself \u2014 at least, government as we currently know it all over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,53,41],"tags":[484,424],"class_list":["post-34468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-competition","tag-morality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8XW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34469,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34468\/revisions\/34469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}