...akin to telling the pilot where you want to go, rather than how to fly.
The problem with this analogy is that the incentives of the pilot are strongly aligned with yours. If he delivers you to Paris rather than SF, you'll never fly with him again. You probably also have legal remedies against the airline, which if you exercised them would cause the pilot to lose his job.
In contrast, the incentives of lawmakers and bureaucrats are not aligned with those of ordinary citizens. For instance, in the face of budget shortfalls, government should cut the least vital services first, perhaps reducing the salaries of employees. Instead, they tend to cut the most important services first in an effort to increase support for tax hikes. The MTA in NYC is doing this, for example:
Abstracting and simplifying the underlying legislation assumes the politicians aren't lying to you. That's always a bad assumption, the devil is usually hidden in the details.
In the analogy, you yourself can tell whether you've arrived in Paris, France or Paris, Texas. In politics, you do need someone else to continue to identify whether the bills up for consideration are positive or negative from your perspective, and if you don't have a trustworthy figure doing so, you do end up in a a pickle.
But the key point is: I don't suggest or assume it should be the politicians themselves who tell you where you've ended up and who has brought you there. It's the activists and politicos of the world I look to.
The problem with this analogy is that the incentives of the pilot are strongly aligned with yours. If he delivers you to Paris rather than SF, you'll never fly with him again. You probably also have legal remedies against the airline, which if you exercised them would cause the pilot to lose his job.
In contrast, the incentives of lawmakers and bureaucrats are not aligned with those of ordinary citizens. For instance, in the face of budget shortfalls, government should cut the least vital services first, perhaps reducing the salaries of employees. Instead, they tend to cut the most important services first in an effort to increase support for tax hikes. The MTA in NYC is doing this, for example:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/12/13/2009-12-13_mt...
Abstracting and simplifying the underlying legislation assumes the politicians aren't lying to you. That's always a bad assumption, the devil is usually hidden in the details.