I have blogged in the past regarding the fact that what I care about is not policy successes, so much as more people becoming libertarians. (Read the comments in that post, too.). Poor policies, like those being billed as healthcare “reform”, are simply a symptom of an underlying problem, people having poor ideas regarding economics and politics. Fix the root, and the rest will take care of itself, at least in a democratic society.
While it is easy to get depressed observing the machinations in Washington, D.C., over the past couple of years, there has been substantial progress where it may count most: More people have become libertarians, and even more, who may not self-identify as libertarians, have grown to harbor a greater skepticism of government. The corruption used to shove the healthcare initiatives through the legislature was on full display, receiving (somewhat surprisingly) a reasonable amount of media coverage. Those who go on about poor incentives for government officials, government corruption, and in general, government failure outweighing any market failure suddenly look a lot better.
The bottom line is that the cause of poor policies like healthcare “reform” was many years of bad ideas circulating in society and taking hold in people’s minds. We are well past an inflection point, as the momentum is in favor of libertarian ideas (and in my view, probably has been for many years now). More precisely, the percentage growth in libertarians is probably greater than the percentage growth in non-libertarians. Hence, I remain optimistic.
I think you make an excellent point, as you have before, that what is most important is to have change in attitude on the part of the public and therefore on the political class (my paraphrase). Even as the healthcare bill passed, a CNN survey Sunday (see below) showed that:
* 59% opposed the bill;
* 56% bill gives the government too much involvement in health care;
* 62% bill increases the amount of money they personally spend on health care;
* 70% believed deficits would go up because of the bill.
* Roughly one in five of respondents who said they opposed the bill did so because it was not liberal enough. Take them out of the picture and opposition to the bill because it is too liberal is 43 percent.
* Most Americans also trust Barack Obama more than the GOP on health care.
So, there is progress, the public somehow do see through political smoke.
CNN survey 3/21 (via WSJ): http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/22/cnn-poll-americans-dont-like-health-care-bill/?fbid=Do73X-Dst9A
Chris, those are encouraging numbers. However, I am always at least somewhat skeptical about the usefulness of such numbers because it is clear that too many people have less-than-coherent views. 59% opposed, 56% think it gives the government too much involvement, yest most Americans trust Obama more than the GOP on health care. Not that the GOP deserves to be trusted, but those results raise some eyebrows. What they indicate is that many people are worried about too much government involvement, but a reasonable number of them have mixed views.