Outrage Economics

My regular readers may have noticed a couple things about my content. I tend to alternate between writing serious posts about current events, politics, and economics; and more frivolous posts about my hobbies, photography, cooking, and beer. The simple truth is I am an individual with a limited capacity for outrage. I need to recharge my sanity by finding enjoyment in life. Maybe I find enjoyment in things you dislike. So what? It brings me a moment of inner peace in a world where there is little enough of it externally.

When I am outraged, I try to focus that outrage on root problems. There is a lot wrong with this world, and a lot of people owe an apology to the universe for being such bastards. However, the system that gives those outrageous bastards power to inflict harm on a scale unimaginable for anyone else is politics, yet few are truly outraged by their usurpation of power.

Case in point: One nutjob used bump stocks and AR-platform rifles [tinfoilhat] allegedly [/tinfoilhat] to murder and maim many in Las Vegas. The political response was to turn every single other bump stock owner into a felon at the stroke of a pen. Meanwhile, the administration that took this stand against gun violence is still murdering people in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and God knows how many other countries, but no one notices. When there was the slightest hint that Trump might even slightly withdraw from just one of these theaters, the gun-grabbers joined with the chicken hawks to demand perpetual global military occupation instead.

Government goons don't really care about preventing murder, they care about seizing control at every opportunity. And people have no outrage to spare.

You see, none of us can spare the energy to be outraged by everything outrageous in the world today. Social media, the legacy mainstream media, politicians, false prophets behind pulpits, and so forth strive to feed us shallow outrage fodder until we are sated, and this distracts us from real issues. Then, we are given false solutions to these tangential outrages.

Vote Democrat!

Vote Republican!

Vote Labour!

Vote Conservative!

Vote Socialist!

And yes, Vote Libertarian!

These all detract from real solutions, but we feel like we did something. We see people making noise. We see politicians making promises. We see flags and marches and election turnout numbers. But what does it actually change? Nothing. Sure, sometimes the crumbs the political class scatters from their plundered feasting lands somewhere new for a while, but the plunder remains and grows like a cancer. The political game isn't designed to win liberty, it's to win your belief in its legitimacy through smoke and mirrors while raping, pillaging, and burning its way across the planet.

That is where your outrage needs to be focused.

Care about the environment? Be outraged, but fight first to end the wars that waste resources and slaughter millions. Then fight to end the corporate subsidies, liability protections, and regulatory capture masquerading as "free market capitalism."

Care about the poor? See above, and then include voluntary solutions.

Care about the failing education system? Well, that's as clear-cut an example of government monopoly waste and abuse as you could ask for. We need choice and competition. One-size-fits-all solutions will never work, no matter how large the budget and numerous the reforms.

Care about health care? We need transparent pricing, not new bureaucracy. Nationalized health care just means another chain for the political class to yank when we mundanes step out of line. In the US, the status quo is corporate collusion writ large. Nonetheless, there are examples of how different it could be even under the distorted markets we have now.

The problem with misguided outrage is that it leads to the Politician's syllogism.

Outraged person: "We've got to do something."

Me: "I disagree with your proposal because it violates individual liberty and I anticipate unintended consequences A, B, and C based on this reasoning."

Outraged person: "You don't even care about the problem. HOW DARE YOU!"

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And so the cycle of misallocated outrage continues, and political abuse is ratcheted up yet again.