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This explains a lot of the tax law

August 27, 2009

Iowa City "liberaltarian" Will Wilkinson has a great insight on politicians (I added the link for those who haven't heard of Public Choice theory):

The incentives of the political process create a kind of filter that selects for individuals extraordinarily fixated on power and status and extraordinarily motivated to keep it. If this is right (anyone know of personality studies of politicans?), then the problem with standard public choice is that it gives too much credit to politicians by assuming they’re like everyone else and therefore it fails to capture just how exceptionally prone politicians are to narcissism, motivated cognition, self-deception, and brazen lying.

Indeed.