Nice review, as always. Not sure how helpful the conclusion, "The most obvious way to deal with this is as Hanania suggested: political leadership come with a lifetime ban on working for lobbying organizations," is, given that the influence of money and public choice is pervasive — there's no way to really enforce such a ban, it would only shift the vectors of influence a bit. More broadly, we can't simply pass a law to alter the results of public choice, since the interpretation and enforcement of laws is always subject to public choice; instead, what is required is to systematically align real economic incentives with whatever the values in question have to be. Ultimately, some structural solution is probably necessary (directly aligning the relevant decision makers with market forces and placing discrete and insular special interests that drive policy in contrapoise), but the scenario that would realistically lead to this improved state is likely outside of the range of acceptable political discourse.
No More Brother Wars
Nice review, as always. Not sure how helpful the conclusion, "The most obvious way to deal with this is as Hanania suggested: political leadership come with a lifetime ban on working for lobbying organizations," is, given that the influence of money and public choice is pervasive — there's no way to really enforce such a ban, it would only shift the vectors of influence a bit. More broadly, we can't simply pass a law to alter the results of public choice, since the interpretation and enforcement of laws is always subject to public choice; instead, what is required is to systematically align real economic incentives with whatever the values in question have to be. Ultimately, some structural solution is probably necessary (directly aligning the relevant decision makers with market forces and placing discrete and insular special interests that drive policy in contrapoise), but the scenario that would realistically lead to this improved state is likely outside of the range of acceptable political discourse.