In January’s edition of Wired Magazine, they detail an article about rail systems and advocate high speed rail as a solution for congestion.  The problem is identified correctly (here):

…Getting California’s train up and running will be expensive. But doing nothing would cost two to three times more. Why? Currently, gridlocked lanes waste $20 billion in fuel and productivity annually. And it’s only going to get worse. The Golden State is growing — quickly. By 2030, another 12 million people could be calling it home. Without an infrastructure overhaul, drivers can expect a 10 percent congestion increase every year. To accommodate the billion trips between cities that residents and visitors will make annually, the state would need to build 3,000 more miles of freeway lanes, five more commercial airport runways, and 90 more airline departure gates. The price: at least $100 billion. Oh, and all that construction wouldn’t alleviate traffic; it would simply keep pace with it….

The article goes on to detail rail as a solution, showing a brief history of rail in the US, including the really cool technological advancements in rail systems.  The main problem with the idea however, isn’t that new rail systems aren’t cool or that rail couldn’t become much faster and more efficient, the main problem, which they slightly acknowledge, is getting people to use it:

…To be cost-efficient, any high-speed rail system needs an ample supply of riders. San Francisco hopes to deliver them through a new million-square-foot terminal. Dubbed the Transbay Transit Center, it will connect the new rail line with nine regional transportation systems…

And

…No city epitomizes the insane appeal of driving like Los Angeles, whose citizens cling to their steering wheels even as they face the worst congestion in the nation. Will high-speed rail persuade them to give up their autos? Maybe. Ridership on the local rail system has increased to 306,000 on weekdays, up from 265,000 in 2007. A faster, cheaper trip — the high-speed ride between Ontario and LA will save the average commuter at least 85 hours and as much as $6,400 a year in gas, parking, and lost productivity — might pry even the most dedicated motorist out of the driver’s seat….

Looking historically though, they’ve made this argument over and over again and it’s always failed.  Due to constant regulation of the transportation industry, we’ve wasted billions and continue to poor billions more into this mess (from 2007):

Rail transit is a huge waste of money that harms transit riders and mainly benefits a few politically powerful interest groups, such as rail contractors, at the expense of ordinary taxpayers….

Thanks in part to the high cost of rails, transit systems in Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and the San Francisco Bay Area carried fewer riders in 2005 than two decades before….

…Due to financial stresses caused by the high cost of rail transit, San Jose cut its transit service by 20 percent and lost a third of its transit riders.

The mass transit system in Portland, Ore., carries only 7.6 percent of the region’s commuters, down from 9.8 percent before rail construction began.

The subway in Washington, D.C., is wonderful for tourists, but not commuters: Though the region gained more than 100,000 jobs between 1990 and 2000, the transit system lost more than 20,000 daily commuters….

& it fails for the very same reason most centralized planning fails – there is no one-size fits all solution which can magically come from government that will ever be better than what the market can provide.  Over thinking the obvious, that if rail lines could honestly save the average individual 6400 dollar a year, they should be willing to pay 4000 dollars a year to help fund it.

The simple truth is that government inefficiency will only increase the costs of rail overtime, increasing the subsidies and making a large portion of the population fund what a small portion of the population will use.  As Cato notes (here):

….Second [problem with highs peed rail], highway users paid for interstate highways, whereas high-speed rail will be almost entirely subsidized by general taxpayers who will rarely use it….

Why do “smart” people seem to espouse imposed solutions by default?  Well, as with a lot of scientific minded individuals and magazines, the search for solutions to problems becomes an end by itself.   This certainly helps when it comes to innovation – always looking for that next step or next increase in efficiency is extremely valuable ideal which helps many be successful.

Conversely, we also try to decrease known defects, a valuable skill in a fairly closed system, but I think a detriment to larger scale thinking.

Engineers, computer programmers, process engineers, CFOs, IE those in the industries where daily critical thinking tasks ask not only what we can do better, but also attempting to steam line, standardize, and reduce defects through control mechanisms, seem to be more prone than others to view imposed solutions as a solution default.

Indeed, in their lines of work, lots of systems are routinely imposed on clients, employees, and others with typically, minimal involvement from the end user. & often for good reason.  Allowing untrained users to have open access to say a client database would be too risky.  Allowing any employee to spend the company’s money on what they thought was a good idea, would be a huge preventable risk as well.

The difference however between these critical thinking endeavors is that they have somewhat of a closed system.  Sure, market dynamics affects the controls companies can exert on their clients, but the cost benefit analysis for decisions in these closed system will be much more accurate than a similar analysis for the market as a whole.

The idea of imposing these new systems through tax payer funds has a further assumption as well: if the market is currently in state A and many experts believe it should be in state B, that’s because the market has failed.  Inside of that assumption holds that we have the requisite knowledge to take literally billions of individual transactions which led to the creation of the current transportation system and with a few nifty math tricks and a good sales pitch from the experts -  impart a better solution than all those transactions managed to build.

& lastly, but not an inconsequential difference, is a company’s ability to control the results.   One of the keys to any systems update success, will always be in checking the results.

For instance, if I changed process X, hopefully to make the time spent on X lower on average or hoping to reduce defects in products for which process X can affect – I should be able to look back in time after making the changes and ask the question – did my solution work for the problem we attempted to solve?

This doesn’t seem all that radical and certainly seems like something our government could be doing now, but the historic reality is always the same.  Governments seek to grow by expanding power.  Governments by nature move slowly.  Good government is stable and therefore moves more slowly.

This means when the government proposes changes in X process to solve problem Y, they have a known tendency to exaggerate the benefits and obfuscate any attempts to prove that changes in X didn’t affect Y, by constantly shifting goal posts (example of just one, tiny government program employing this strategy  here – 2002):

…This is essentially the strategy that DARE, the country’s leading drug education program, has successfully used to stay in business for nearly two decades. One study after another has found that students who complete DARE (a.k.a. Drug Abuse Resistance Education) are just as likely to use drugs as students who don’t. Yet DARE claims it is constantly revising its curriculum, so any research indicating that it doesn’t work is immediately outdated….

In a classic example of not being able to see the forest for the trees, this default condition of believing in solutions which will be imposed for benefit of others might be well meaning, but still one of the largest logical & philosophical impediments to true freedom.

That giant economic think-tank known as Google just announced their 3Q numbers.  Not only were the results good, but they had wonder news for all those worrying:  the recession has bottomed out:

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Google on Thursday declared the worst of the recession over and paved the way for a return to heavy spending on expansion as it reported a surprisingly strong 8 per cent jump in net revenues in its latest quarter….

Fear not friends – they aren’t basing this just on themselves, but all that economic data they have:

The optimism reflected what the company said was an across-the-board recovery in online advertising, with even the struggling financial services sector showing a return to growth….

Apparently though, Google forgot to tell Bank of America about its wonderful news (BoA 3Q):

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp posted a $1 billion third-quarter loss as consumer credit woes eclipsed investment banking earnings, underlining why the bank remains on a government respirator….

I’m sure they just missed that… wonder what a really big blue chip company might be doing?  GE?:

General Electric’s third-quarter results showed just how fragile the U.S. economy remains, as its troubled financial unit dragged down earnings 44 percent, despite gains in divisions that make wind turbines, household appliances and broadcast television shows….

Not only are GE, BoA, and the 9.8% unemployed unaware of this great news, but even Google insiders don’t seem to know.  Looking at the public record, Google Insiders Sales, shows recent transactions for all senior officers dropping approximately 5% of their current Google holdings just last month.

Call me a raving skeptic if you will, but I’m thinking that you need to evaluate your decision making skills if you take your economic news directly from Google press releases.

Don’t get me wrong here, they make a great product and innovate better than almost anyone.   They are and will continue to be a force in computing for sometime to come because of their agile nature combined with some of the best minds in the world.  & I remember webcrawler… wow things are sooooo much better.

Regardless of their product however, it seems their investments into economic modeling & research in respect to business cycles is limited to zero.  I would add that if you’re an investor, that’s a good thing.  Better to let them do what they do best.

Why the press release then?  The only ones who know are those who drafted the press release and those with editing decisions prior to its release.  Without any information directly from one or more of these people, then reasoning is simply impossible to prove.

We can however ask some questions to try to find the likely answer.

(To be fair) The first possibility is simple honesty & stupidity.  Someone might have intended the “recession worst over” as a marketing technique to further enhance their aim to be seen as a very smart company.  All without realizing that overly simplistic analysis, based mainly upon very recent stock market activity and their profits do not make for effective proof.  Really, it’s just another anecdote that Google’s employees share.

Another, far more concerning possibility is their politics and desire to wish to see the President do well.  For years they have given most of their political donations to one particular party.  In 2008, Democratic candidates received 5 times more money than their Republican counterparts from Google.  Their employees, including top executives, gave 10 times more money to Democrats the Republicans.

Additionally, their search site has self-imposed constraints for arbitrary reasons.  For instance, Google refuses to allow gun dealers to advertise.   As a little experiment, slip over there real quick and run a quick search on swords or strippers.  Take note of the small advertisements to the right side of your search results.  Now do the same for guns and see what ads show up… I’ll wait.

They state their policy is to not allow advertising of weapons, but I think swords should qualify.

That could be an outlier, so let’s move forward assuming their ban on gun adverts is a true policy against weapons in general.

Then why did they also restrict advertising by Pro-life groups until forced by a judge to change their policy:

After a legal conflict between Google and The Christian Institute, filed when one the of religious foundation’s ads were rejected from the Google Adwords system, Google has changed their religious advertising policy to allow pro-life advertising to appear along with their secular and pro-choice advertising…

They did change their policy, but only after being sued.  Even giving them some credit for reversing their decision, their originally stated policy reeks of political and personal opinions:

The decision changes the former Google policy which excluded any ad containing a combination of “abortion and religion-related content“…. [emphasis added mine]

Putting all of this together, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that Google is using its outstanding press relations due to their history as a vibrant and smart company to help those with which they agree.

Which is completely and totally their right.  It’s their right to put their money where they wish, to make internal policies as they see fit, and to accept contracts for advertising from those they want for any reason they want.  None of this freedom for me, but not for thee crap.  Let them do as they will I say.

Just make sure your informed and know who you’re doing business with as well.

PS:  If you’re not doing anything on a Saturday night and there’s positively nothing on TV including uninteresting infomercials about idiots unable to use blankets, then you can check out some pretty heavy economic think tanks.  First and foremost, the recognized economic powerhouse, generally recognized as the institution who makes the call on things like, when is it a recession?  When did it start?  When did it end?

NBER, or the National Bureau of Economic Research, has long been the a standard bearer in economic research in all kinds of aspects of life ranging from health care to labor studies.  They are the largest non-profit economic research organization in the US and boasts about the great minds working there.  In fact, 16 of the 31 American winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, have been associates NBER, including one of my heroes: Milton Friedman.

PSS:  They could turn out to be right.  The luck of life sometimes means you can do the wrong thing and end with the correct result and vice versa – you can do the right thing and end with the wrong result.  Therefore, to correctly analyze thought patterns over time, any one result isn’t necessarily a deterministic factor.

Over time I’ve come to the conclusion that where news entities fail miserably is in their analysis with international politics.  Most pundits, writers, journalists, etc, seem to be able to semi-grasp domestic policies, albeit still in the usual, overly simplistic, fits-to-the-narrative type of way, but lose all rationality with respect to international affairs.

Interestingly enough, I think their failures in both domestic & international analysis stem from the same basic cause, oversimplification.  But it would seem that the degree to which it effects each type of analysis differs due to the lack of incentives private interests have in resolving inaccurate reports on international issues.

Thinking about the counter thought to international policy, domestic policy, we see incentives existing to resolve press inaccuracies.  For instance, if the press pushes inaccurate opinions and analysis which oversimplifies a given topic, a special interest group or two, plus at least one political party, and finally non-profits everywhere will try to enlighten by showing the fallacy of the common narrative.

This is because people rightfully see domestic issues as more directly impacting their lives.  The corollary is that our politicians, our leaders, our special interests, and our non-profits tend to focus where we as a society focus.

The problem that can stem from this seems intuitive – inaccurate press on international issues should be held as highly suspect, but get printed without much serious disagreement.   Since very little counters popular wisdom, this gives the press a power to change opinions and as well as spread myths.

This leads to all kinds of odd conclusions, with large swaths of people all over the planet prone to believe in things without substantial proof nor any degree of rational logic.

For instance believing that western countries are somehow to blame for poor countries with constant internal strife and corrupt governments which inefficiencies and lack of resources.  Or said another way, people all over believe in a zero sum game.  This is true not only in the international sense, but also when dealing with immigration and free trade issues.

Mistaken assumptions such as zero-sum games also lead to beliefs about what one thinks a President can actually do, versus what reality tends to dictate what will actually be done.  This leads to politicians making believable, yet highly impossible claims about given international situations.  This has been done to all recent Presidents, including President Obama when pulling a missile defense shield out of Poland & Czechoslovakia was made to appear as a rash decision amounting to abandoning our allies, when in fact it wasn’t a bad decision when concluding what options were open and what were the greatest threats to our security and security in the region (wrote about it here, though Mr. Obama went and said it had nothing to do with Russia… which was just amazing… wrote about that here).

It leads to pundits everywhere snidely remarking how this action wasn’t “tough” or that action was going to anger others because it was “unilateral”.  With little recourse, journalists  print all sorts of things without taking into any account the actual framework through which any given action action was taken, under what circumstances, with what available options, or really they just leave out anything resembling actual analysis.

Unfortunately, it seems no organization is immune.  A recent piece published in the Economist titled  Even greater expectations discussing the idiotic Nobel Prize Committee decision, is a far cry from the analysis for which the Economist is known.

They rightfully begin with the question the world was asking, “Is it premature to give Barack Obama the Nobel peace prize, less than a year into his presidency?”, but delve quickly into non-international events dressed up to seem as if change had already happened:

…Most broadly, he has sought to engage with opponents, saying that America would “extend a hand, if you unclench your fist”, for example to those who were earlier dismissed as an “axis of evil”. Somewhat to the discomfort of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had bolstered his domestic support by vilifying America as an aggressor, Mr Obama has proposed holding talks about nuclear affairs, removing a precondition that Iran first abandon enrichment of uranium. Mr Obama made withdrawal of American forces from Iraq one of the main pledges of his election campaign and has since overseen a slightly quicker run down of troops than was envisaged by Mr Bush. Towards North Korea, too, Mr Obama has dangled the prospect of bilateral talks and closer engagement.

Regarding Russia Mr Obama has developed a policy of notably warmer ties, dubbed “hitting the reset button”. Relations had become especially frosty towards the end of Mr Bush’s presidency when war broke out between Georgia, an ally of America, and Russia…

Continuing with this as reasoning:

…Yet Mr Obama’s main achievement is a change of tone in foreign policy. A speech given in Egypt in June was an eloquent call for a new understanding between America and Islam. It was designed both to assure Muslims, now thought to number 1.6 billion around the world, that America is not set on a crusade. Similarly it was intended to convey to any Americans (and others) who believe in the notion of a “clash of civilisations” that friendly ties between religions is eminently possible.

Similarly, American policy towards small and repressive regimes, ranging from Myanmar to Cuba, has shifted in mood, if not yet substance, by offering the prospect of engagement if governments demonstrate progress towards democracy…

Which to date has not only done absolutely nothing to help international cooperation, but has made our interests tougher to protect.  In nearly every UN Conference on whatever, for instance the G-20 dealing with the economic crisis, the US asks for a lot of cooperation and everyone goes their separate ways.

In some ways this is to be completely understood.  American solutions for economic issues will differ from that of Germany or the UK.  Even though the same basic problem afflicts most countries during the global recession,  their banking industries are setup with much different regulations, making the solutions for one country not necessarily compare to another country.  The separate policies might even be attempting the exact same “type” of solution, for instance increasing capital requirements, but under different systems any one specific solutions will affect different countries differently.

When it comes to reaching our hand out to those regimes, we see that North Korea, Russia, and Iran have been openly hostile to any US intents.  Iran’s deadline of October the 1st to fess up or face sanctions has come and gone, even while it was precipitated by Iran admitting to an additional enrichment facility.

And all this, including that all important warming of US-Russian relations, Russia has stated publicly the will continue to trade with Iran, meaning they will back them, if the UN, lead by the US impose stricter sanctions against Iran.

Now these situations are fluid to some extent, especially between cautious friends such as US-Russia and most of the controversial moves taken by Iran & North Korea would likely have happened to test any new US President’s resolve.

The issue is that by glossing over the realities we end up believing in myths.  Think about all that talk about “unilateral” action as if it’s a huge negative due to the controversy surrounding the last semi-unilateral decision to be made, without understanding that this is exactly as we should expect it.

No country should do something the US requests if they know in the end the analysis states otherwise.  On the international stage, Europeans, Cechs, Persians, Africians, indeed every person deserves the same representation we deserve – for their representatives to look out for their interests.

Now this can and does lead to all kinds of international policies from all different governments that appear wrong or unseemly when in truth it’s a playing field for which no one actor controls the rules which leads to countries making decisions that seem antithetical to their stated morals or goals.

It also allows one country to look at another as particularly egregious, regardless of their country’s current international policies.   It should be obvious that while beating up on your own politicians on domestic policy makes sense, doing so on the international stage is just beating yourself up.  Even if well-deserved, it’s easier to beat up on other country’s policies than it is to self reflect.

In some ways, national feeling probably affects this as well.  When most countries populations have enough information to dislike a number of other countries, going against that grain can be seen as being unpatriotic.  You certainly wouldn’t see a major political figure like Tony Blair coming to the US to air Britain’s dirty laundry or Putin to do the same in the US against Russia.

It also allows for journalists to paint country X with any brush they choose.  This helps some countries as the press will like some allies, but can obviously hurts or diminish countries for which popular sentiment doesn’t exist.

In the end, what it does is allow for a type of international superiority by enhancing nationalistic feelings.  When only reviewing other countries’ by hand picking policies, self-selecting cultural attributes, last recent controversy, crazy politicians, one can get the opinion of their general greatness over all those “other” people.

Lastly, and in my opinion, the most unfortunate consequence of this misinformation, is our inability to actually analyze international issues.  In between these simplistic news stories real trade-offs on the international stage are being made and constantly simplified.  From a high-level view the policy might appear to be utterly wrong, but in reality  might not be so.  It might simply be the least bad of all the bad options.  & it might really be the policy itself which is wrong.

For real analysis however, historical context, actions taken versus realistic options available, trends, and a number of other data points are required.  Without honest sourced information cost/benefit analysis simply isn’t possible.

Unless you were lucky enough to be traveling or otherwise unavailable on Sunday, you were likely deluged with Mr. Obama’s media storm to sell not only health care, but apparently many other items as well.

First, it should be noted that this WH is above all, extremely insecure.  The President could be seen on 5 Sunday news shows: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Univision.   But he didn’t have time for Fox, the number one rated Sunday news show…

Regardless of the WH being extremely petty and worrying more about perceived injustices than an honest discussion with those who might disagree, what he actually said is far more serious.

When asked if a health care mandate was a tax increase on ABC’s this week, the President responded:

…”I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said….

“What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore,” said Obama. “Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance . Nobody considers that a tax increase.”…

Using flawed logic is nothing new for Presidents, but this one isn’t even close.  Hhe’s analogizing the privilege of driving with the “privilege” of being a citizen.

The difference of course as that by my very birth, I have a “right” to be a citizen, whereas driving has always remained a privilege with constraints.  You see, I can forgo auto insurance, so long as I don’t drive.  There are many ways around without a car in this day and age, but if I “choose” to drive, then constraints can be placed on me.

Health care on the other hand would be required simply because I existed and no other reason.  & If the government says, “You have to buy this” – it is a tax increase as not paying it can land you in very serious legal troubles.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, with an omnipotent sense of when health care, our fearless leader goes further:

…Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

“I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term,” Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…

Even ignoring the fact that this goes against his basic premise that more people need more health care, one wonders if there is anything our President doesn’t know.  So far, he’s taken over banks, car companies, told car companies with whom to merge, who to hire, who to fire, what to build… and now we find out he knows how much health care is too much.

But let’s not stop there.  Not only is our community organizer one of the smartest men in America when it comes to economics and health care, he’s also a brilliant strategist with respects to Afghanistan:

…”What I’m not also gonna do, though, is put the resource question before the strategy question,” Obama told NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “Until I’m satisfied that we’ve got the right strategy I’m not gonna be sending some young man or woman over there- beyond what we already have.”…

I’m not sure exactly what happens to man to think he has the answers to every single last question. Maybe it’s just arrogance and ignorance, as Hayek stated:

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

Whatever the reason he believes so strongly in his ability to decide what’s best for our own good, history shows us without question where this inevitably leads.  Hayek again:

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Let’s hope we begin to understand the value of humility before we do too much damage.

Unintended consequences.  An often used phrase for almost every piece of legislation pushed our politicians.  Whether it’s McCain-Feingold’s chilling effect on free political speech or whether bailing out banks which are “too big to fail” has actually decreased our long term viability instead of supporting it; the term seems to connote any consequence which wasn’t expressly mentioned by proponents of the bill.

Technically, that’s correct.  The definition of unintended consequences does not require the consequences to be unforeseen, though in common language we generally use the base meaning of “intention”.   Therefore the phrase has come to mean those consequences which were neither  intended nor unforeseen.

I submit however, that we should start changing our language and call known consequences intended consequences, because like the citizens in the face of the law our politicians should be held to the same standard: ignorance is not a defense.

Regardless of the human failing that pushes people to believe they, or their elected leaders, can ultimately control behavior which is already constrained by the marketplace, acting as if the results weren’t readily understood is disingenuous.

Looking more closely @ McCain-Feingold effects, we see the chilling of free-speech (here), where citizens can’t create a documentary on their beliefs about Hillary Clinton without it being subject to regulation:

…The case before the court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, originated over whether a 2008 feature-length movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton could be classified as an “electioneering communication” subject to regulation.

The FEC contended it was, and that its sponsor, a conservative advocacy group called Citizens United, was barred from promoting the film. While nonprofits can be exempt from campaign-finance regulations if they limit their fund-raising to donations from individuals, Citizens United fell under McCain-Feingold because it accepts business contributions….

Now.  I haven’t seen the movie nor do I care to, but when individuals get together to use their own money, their own resources, to produce their own political speech, the government has absolutely no right to be involved.  In the marketplace of political ideas, that whole “congress shall make no law” thingy, seemed pretty straight forward.

Regardless of your reading of the 1st Amendment, some will contend this is an unintended consequence.  I contend it was a known consequence and therefore must have been intended.

I will even go further and say this was like a consequence well enough known by politicians who voted for the bill, that they had incentive to pass restrictions on others as this would help them secure the current balance of power.

Using banks too big to fail (here):

…Increased concentration is vexing for regulators. Because systemically important firms can borrow more cheaply thanks to implicit state backing, small and medium-sized banks struggle to compete. A recent Fed study put big banks’ funding advantage at more than 30 basis points. That leads to another possible problem: indiscipline. Private firms with a low cost of funds and the taxpayer behind them are prone to recklessness: just look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. America’s leading banks were too big to fail before the crisis. Now they are bigger still….

This was not only easy to foresee, but libertarians, conservatives, small business groups, think tanks, economists, literally, tens of thousands of people wrote and discussed that this is exactly what would happen.

Once you’ve effectively told the market that they will not be responsible for their failures, you’ve written them a blank check to become much more reckless than they would have otherwise.

Not only this, but that action, more reckless businesses, will have it’s own well understood consequence.  The banks will continue to make stupid decisions due to a perceived lack of risk.  As long as people allow it, the government will continue to bail them out until it becomes just too expensive.  Then during that emergency, we will see much greater regulation and control of the financial industry which might include a government takeover.

As Hayek stated and history has shown:

‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Maybe it’s time to start holding our politicians & leaders accountable for the known consequences & not just the stated ones.