Saturday, August 09, 2014

Quote of the Day: Blaming Bad Outcomes on Bad People rather than Bad Institutions

And yet: how often do you hear people saying that we need to vote the bums out and replace them with the wise, the virtuous, and the incorruptible? How often are people shocked (SHOCKED!) that politicians respond to incentives? How often do people treat systemic institutional failures as if they are individual moral failings by people who are of virtue insufficient for their office? How often do we blame bad outcomes on "bad people" rather than "bad institutions"?
This is from Professor Art Carden at the Econolog (Library of Economics and Liberty). 

The blaming “bad people” phenomenon represents what I call as “personality based” populist politics.

And related to this topic a suggested read is from The Freeman's debunking of one popular statist myth or the Clichés of Progressivism #17 – “All We Need Is the Right People to Run the Government”

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