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Friday, November 20, 2015

Oh. My. Goodness.



"I can balance the budget twice as well as my opponent,

because once a budget is balanced, it cannot be bal-

anced any better. From a mathematical perspective, the

size (and hence the appeal) of a falsehood can be in-

flated by saying that 2 + 2 = 5, or 7, or even 27, but the

size of the truth can never be inflated by saying any-

thing more than 2 + 2 = 4.

Because the size of falsehood and favoritism can be

inflated and the truth cannot, corrupt politicians can

attract more supporters for the same amount of effort.

A corrupt politician can promise more, evoke false

enemies more, push the fear hot button more, pursue

wrong priorities more, and use more favoritism than a

virtuous politician can. The result is the race to the

bottom is normally the dominant loop. Thus the reason

that “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts

absolutely” 10 is not so much that power itself corrupts,

but that the surest means to power requires corruption."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Pursuit of power lends itself to all sorts of unusual behaviour and many people end up throwing out normal base values. Always interested to watch politicians when asked if they want to be the leader. As sure as the sun comes up each day every single person in parliament has dreams of sitting in the top seat.

robertguyton said...

I have no aspirations with regard the chairmanship of ES :-)
Have you read the article I've directed Dave to? It's a stunner.