Gary Becker, on controlling campaign finance ... as well as other manifestations of special interests, such as lobbying and volunteering

Sharp restrictions on campaign contributions would make more sense if monetary contributions were the only major force that shapes who wins elections and the policies goverment officials support.Yet that is very far from the situation that prevails in American politics, and in the politics of most other democratic nations. One reason for this is that interest groups can often avoid the intent of restrictions on campaign contributions through other ways to influence political outcomes. For example, many industries hire lobbyists and spend other monies to try to persuade legislators, regulators, and others in important political positions to subsidize their industries, or to reduce the taxes on their industries, or to gain other advantages.

It is not only business that is active in these ways since, for example, unions of government employees use political clout to obtain generous pensions and health plans for their members. The tight budgets that are currently being imposed on many national and regional governments-such as the Greek government and state and local governments of the United States- have induced government unions to fight hard to keep their pension and health benefits, and to limit any reductions in these benefits. Similarly, unions of public school teachers have spent considerable money and time to defeat efforts to introduce school vouchers and many other changes in public school systems.

Candidates who galvanize enthusiasm with their oratory and political positions induce many supporters to spend considerable time working to elect these candidates and to promote policies the candidates favor. Time spent by supporters is often as effective and “corrupting” as money spent influencing political outcomes and policies. This is probably especially true in the age of the Internet and other methods of mass communication. Supporters of a particular candidate may spend a lot of time on political issues through blogs, Facebook and other social networks, and through other forms of mass communication. Radio, television, and Internet stars, such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill Moyers, and Matt Drudge, not only affect the views of followers, but also how active they are in supporting conservative or liberal policies.

These reflections lead me to question whether it is wise to control one form of interest group politics; namely, direct and indirect monetary contributions to political campaigns, in an environment where other types of interest group politics are important and are only weakly controlled.

Read the whole thing here.

Quotes of the day

Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible. He favored, among other things, legalizing drugs, school choice, and volunteer army. To call him or his political legacy “right wing” is simply ignorant, and I mean that also as a technically accurate description rather than an insult.

So here’s my question: If you’re embarrassed by this legacy, if you worry that it will tarnish the University’s reputation, just what is it that you good-thinking guys and gals have against human freedom?--John Cochrane

For most of the year, it is the duty of the press to scour the known universe looking for ways to ruin your day. The more fear, guilt or angst a news story induces, the better.--John Tierney

Although I remain optimistic, I do fear that interest group pressures toward a much larger role of government in the United States may become much harder to resist in the future, and that this could eventually kill, or at least badly wound, the free market-entrepreneurial goose that has been laying the golden eggs.--Gary Becker

And yet, like Charlie Brown getting ready to kick a football, we seem to have an infinite capacity to believe that it will be different this time. We think that the next top-down design introduced by government will work fine, it will never degrade, and we won't find ourselves ten or twenty years down the road wondering how such a mess was created.--Arnold Kling

It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy.--David Brooks

So even by the authors' calculations you would expect twice as many men as women in engineering PhD programs due to math-ability differences alone (compare with the media reports above). But what the author's don't tell you is that the gender ratio will get larger the higher the percentile.--Alex Tabarrok

If The Nation was demanding a repeal of the postal monopoly on delivery of first-class mail, I'd be firmly in their camp. But as best as I can tell, they want to keep the postal monopoly, and have the rest of the country subsidize them. And all this to preserve a print magazine that could easily go all-digital. Doesn't The Nation have any real muck left to rake? --Bryan Caplan

Remember how Democrats put the collapse of Enron and the subsequent losses to shareholders at the feet of the Bush White House? Freddie and Fannie are like Enron on steroids. There's a well-documented history of accounting corruption to benefit senior management; hundreds of millions of dollars spent lobbying against oversight and reform; and myriad connections to both Democratic committee chairmen and subprime lender Countrywide Financial.--Dick Armey

HIGH ENERGY prices can bring out the best in people and firms, but they often seem to bring out the worst in politicians. Whether or not greed is good, there is plenty to be said for a little thriftiness.

Politicians seem to have an irresistible urge to intervene whenever voters start suffering from higher prices, but usually those interventions do more harm than good.

Consumers have the ability to make wise decisions if they face prices that accurately reflect costs. Firms have just as much ability to innovate in ways that will attract thrifty buyers. High prices may be painful, but they convey a key nugget of information: Energy is scarce; use it wisely. If the government uses tax policy to artificially reduce energy prices, then the government will only deter private individuals from appropriate conservation.--Ed Glaeser

One of the founders of today's Halliburton

is LBJ!

Policymakers still can't grasp the concept of opportunity cost

Especially the environmental interests:

Wind, hydro, and all the "alternate" sources of energy have been dubbed "green" because they are supposedly clean, renewable, and sustainable. In fact, what being "green" really means is that they all require vast amounts of land.

In a 2007 paper – well on its way to becoming a classic – Jesse Ausubel, director of the program for the human environment at Rockefeller University, calculated the amount of wood it would take to run one standard 1,000-megawatt electrical plant, the kind that can power a city the size of Cincinnati. Feeding the furnace year-round would require a forest of one thousand square miles. We have 600 such coal plants around the country now – to burn wood instead would require a forest the size of Alaska.

Glen Canyon Dam, which can produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity, is backed up by a reservoir 250 miles square (Lake Powell, in Arizona and Utah). That's why we stopped building dams in the 1960s – because they were drowning scenic canyons and displacing populations.

Those 30-story windmills produce 1.5 megawatts apiece – about 1/750th the power of a conventional generating station. Getting 1,000 megawatts would require a wind farm 75 miles square.

In a January cover story for Scientific American, three leading solar researchers proposed meeting our electrical needs in 2050 by covering southwestern desert with solar collectors. The amount of land required would be 34,000 square miles, about one-quarter of New Mexico.

And that's where biofuels went awry. Nobody ever bothered to calculate how much land they would require.

Quote of the day

Being a capitalist can be very rewarding and a lot of fun. Just don’t be the tallest capitalist, because you’re likely to get your head chopped off.--Larry Ribstein