Would you trust me to perform kidney surgery on you? Probably not, and that would be a wise decision too, for I know nothing about kidney surgery. Then why would you trust politicians to make good economic decisions? Or even any good decision whatsoever for you? Why do people want to be in power? Simple, they want power. With very few exceptions, people get into politics because they have what is called libido dominandi, the lust to dominate. With political positions comes power, money, and prestige. In this kind of environment the worst of power mongers succeed and the worst cases of libido dominandi get to the very top. And I don't distinguish between the left and right either. The differences are purely cosmetic and insubstantial.
But back to economics (yay!).
All the above being said, there are a lot of "experts", such as university economists and political advisers, who give advice to all these politicians and surely then these politicians will be well informed and will make good decisions, right? Not so fast. First of all, all these supposed experts, if they are giving advice to politicians, are on their payroll. You should not expect them to give politicians advice they do not want to hear. Rather, their job becomes to invent semi scientific apologies for policies politicians are going to adopt anyway. So don't look for sound economics in the realm of politics and government run and/or funded educational institutions. This is not to say there isn't any. But the odds to find it there are rather against you.
Don't believe me? Let us do a short exercise. We have learned recently that the EU Commission will enact (new) price controls on mobile service providers in the EU for international calls, price controls downwards, of course. Now, which of the following scenarios do you think is more likely to play out: a) the mobile service providing corporations are going to say "oh well, guess our profits are just going to have to be smaller henceforth", or is it b) "since we cannot charge our preferred rates on international calls, we will have to raise our prices on domestic calls and other services in order to maintain our profitability". If you can answer this correctly (I will not be giving out any hints this time), you know more about economics than all the eurocrats combined. And trust me, there are quite a few of them. So in essence, what this move by the Commission does is transfer the cost of international calls to domestic users. In other words, the poorer people who cannot afford to travel as much will now be paying for the international calls of wealthier people when they are traveling. Brilliant institutions we have in our government, no? The excellence of their genius never ceases to amaze me. I do suppose it is also possible that they are aware of the sinister effects of their actions but... That just makes my case that much stronger.
So how would I suggest you read and watch the news then? After all, the saying "How can you tell when politicians are lying - when their lips are moving" is not very far off. My first suggestions would be learn Austrian economics. Short of that, whenever you hear a proposal from a politician, ask yourself where the money is going to come from. Who is going to lose money so that this can be undertaken? What is not going to come to life because this new political project has siphoned off the resources? What productive enterprise will see its funds stolen so that the politicians will have it their way? After all, government doesn't have any money that it didn't first confiscate from private citizens. So in short, when you see a project is being funded through coercive measures of the State, you should not support it. And by that I don't mean growing a mohawk and throwing stones at the parliament. I mean be principled and be against the initiation of force and theft against peaceful people, whether it's called taxation, tariffs, fines or any other euphemism we have become accustomed to.
Matej Avsenak Ogorevc
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