Politics is not the answer

As if to confirm my second thoughts comes the essay "Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss" by Sheldon Richman. Samples:

Politics is more like show-biz -- specifically, melodrama and soap opera -- than anything else. And people behave differently in the political realm than they do in the marketplace. (When was the last time you chose a car dealership because the salesman choked back tears on the thought he was losing your business?) ...

The "free-enterprise approach" to medicine, to judge by this campaign, is to tinker with the existing state-riddled system in order to create "incentives" for private insurance companies to do what the politicians want them to do. That's the supposed alternative to proposals for taking the profit out of medical insurance. It's a bad joke. No one points out that the politicians have imposed so many regulations and mandates and taken over so much of the financing, that there is barely a medical marketplace left ...

For six decades the guiding lights at FEE [Foundation for Economic Education] have understood that at best politics is the trailing, not the leading, edge of social change. Until a critical mass of people understand that liberty is moral and practical, and demand that the state back off, the politicians will continue to give them shoddy theater instead of respect.