Now I know why letters to my members in the Senate and Congress always come back formatted in gereral terms by never addressing specifics. I guess I have to pay them in some form to get their serious attention. The fact is that we are being sold down the river and few know it.

Unintended Consequences - 20th Century and Beyond

• by James Quinn
• January 05, 2009

"The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple. It operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences." ─ Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University and author, "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do."

Andrew Gelman is dead on. He states that the political system is simple. I’d go a step further and say that lifetime politicians and entrenched government bureaucrats are simple. They show no indication of knowledge or expertise in American history or rational financial theory. The president, Congress, Federal Reserve, and Treasury try mightily to direct our economy. It is an impossible task. With a GDP of $14 trillion, there are thousands of inputs and outputs that feed the system. Their hubris leads them to believe that they are in control and can manipulate the gears of capitalism in a way that will produce their desired outcomes. If a desired outcome occurs, it is simply due to dumb luck. The more likely result of their manipulations of our complex system is a set of bigger problems that never occurred to them.

Congress definitely fits Mr. Gelman’s definition of a simple system. I can’t think of a body of people operating with more ignorance than Congress. The information they act upon is provided by the 17,000 lobbyists who wine and dine them on a daily basis. Corporate lobbyists, PACs, unions, and special interests buy their votes. Their time horizons are less than a few months. They are constantly running for re-election, raising money and handing out goodies to their constituents. The only feedback they care about is their standing in the polls and the amount of money they’ve raised from "donors." Their incentives are poor and not aligned with the needs of the American people. They are not willing to do what is right for the country because they have no incentive to do so. Their only incentive is to get re-elected by insuring that their district gets as much pork spending as possible. They do this by selling their votes to the highest bidder.