{"id":62732,"date":"2011-07-26T12:49:34","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T18:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=62732"},"modified":"2011-07-26T12:49:34","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T18:49:34","slug":"a-couple-of-things-that-puzzle-me-in-the-debt-ceiling-negotiations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=62732","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;A Couple of Things That Puzzle Me in the Debt Ceiling Negotiations&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/volokh.com\/2011\/07\/25\/a-couple-of-things-that-puzzle-me-in-the-debt-ceiling-negotiations\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kenneth Anderson<\/a> at the Volokh Conspiracy has a fundamental insight.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would seriously entertain default. \u00a0You call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would agree to these kinds of deficits. \u00a0We think \u2014 in the current twitter-talk of a pox on both their DC houses \u2014 Washington is a mess because we can\u2019t find a compromise. \u00a0The truth is, however, we don\u2019t actually think there is much room to compromise and, given that our principles on this represent a fairly sizable difference in world view, that\u2019s probably right. \u00a0The structural problem of Washington is that everyone has a hold-up; \u201clet\u2019s vote and majority policy wins\u201d doesn\u2019t work because we\u2019ve allowed a consensus system informally to take hold, rather than a majoritarian one (albeit one revisable at least in part by a future majority).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the fundamental problem &#8212; searching for a consensus that doesn&#8217;t exist, and an unwillingness to let the side with more votes win. Granted that the latter isn&#8217;t a panacea &#8212; Democrats had two years where they complete control of the government, and they still didn&#8217;t do anything &#8212; nevertheless it&#8217;s better than what we have now. Politicians just aren&#8217;t willing to put their names on a policy and push it through, because if it fails they own it; they&#8217;d rather dither and moan and let things fall apart, because then they can keep pointing the finger at the other side in hopes of improving their chances of re-election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy has a fundamental insight. I call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would seriously entertain default. \u00a0You call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would agree to these kinds of deficits. \u00a0We think \u2014 in the current twitter-talk of a pox [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dystopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62734,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62732\/revisions\/62734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}