o'rourke is right, the legislators are being bought and sold, but we must never forget who is doing the buying and selling. i'm all in favor of strictly libertarian principles too, providing those with access to economic power don't choose to follow them only when it is most profitable for them. and you can count on them doing it every single time.

the question is, how do you set up a system constitutionally so that those with money can't subvert it? it is very easy to say "simply prevent the government from having too much power", but those are just empty words. how do you do that in practice? those who control wealth, i.e, the commercial interests, are not going to willingly give up an arrangement where they can make things happen for them by buying and selling legislators. and that is the very definition of money, the ability to make things happen that you want to happen. people with power will never refuse to exercise it.

this is the point i've always tried to make here, it's not conspiracies of government bureaucrats trying to set things up so they can control the world, it's conspiracies of businessmen trying to set up government bureaucracies to help them avoid the market, or taking advantage of existing government bureaucracies for their own benefit. from the point of view of the little man, there is little distinction between the two.

i think the problem is that libertarians still insist on seeing the world from the viewpoint of the small businessman, operating in a sea of competitors that is essentially in equilibrium. i realize they don't like to hear it, but that is a very idealized, naive, almost childlike view. the real world is not like that at all. it is certainly not in equilibrium, it is evolving. in the aqueous energy solution that is a complex national or global economy, those firms that are larger tend to be more successful (not necessarily more efficient) by their sheer size and power. they can crush their competition and ensure no new competitors arise by influencing government. sure, you can point to counterexamples, but the general tendency is for less and less firms to control more and more of the economy, and they need not control all of it, or even most of it. they just need to control enough to be able to make it go where they want. sure the process isn't seamless or perfect, but it is the general tendency. periods of equilibrium and stability are short-lived. economic power tends to concentrate, not to disperse, when left to itself.

eventually, corporate policy becomes government policy, and corporate policy has no other goal but localized growth and self-perpetuation, not collective benefit. the checks and balances fail to operate; capitalism becomes its own worst enemy and sows the seeds of its own destruction. the answer, of course, is not to abandon capitalism, but to keep the concentration of economic power constant, and prevent it from precipitating out of solution, to continue our metaphor from chemistry. how to do this without coercion and violence is the central problem of human history. but it must be done, because the concentration of power will not stop simply because we wish it to, or because we try to ban it by regulation (or by banning regulation). societies that have not been able to control the concentration of economic power have always collapsed into revolution, although the revolution doesn't necessarily manifest itself as economic. and revolution accomplishes nothing but substituting one power class for another.

i have no illusions that you'll see my point of view, but i am nonetheless compelled to present it. i see the libertarian fallacy as being identical to the socialist fallacy: if we just don't do what the other side wants, everything will be ok. that's simply not true. the economic process is not self-correcting as the capitalists would have us believe (they certainly don't act as if they believe it themselves, but they talk the talk). but neither can it be managed or regulated as the socialists believe, because it is inherently chaotic. how we are going to guarantee our freedom and our prosperity is not clear to me, but i know the answer lies not in ideology, but flexibility, and i am inherently optimistic because democracies are inherently flexible.