1/ In markets you need sufficient liquidity and competition among alternatives for approximate rational outcomes.
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2/ The law of supply and demand isn't magic that happens in an illiquid, no-alternatives vacuum. Imaginative humans have to create both.
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3/ The equivalent principle of rational politics is 'the wrong people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons' (Friedman).
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4/ The equivalent of 'competition' is 'more, and more imaginative, policy ideas.' The equivalent of liquidity is effective opposition.
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5/ Policies are the products you buy, politicians are sort of the currencies you buy them with. Yeah it's a bit of a rough/messy analogy.
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6/ There is a convention in politics to pretend that incumbent, having won, represents all, and will pursue policies benefiting all if poss
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7/ This is the benefit of doubt amount accepting fiction that they are the 'right person who might do the right thing for the right reason'
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8/ But for the fiction to work, the incumbent has to play powerfully to it, step up, and into the role, the mask of the office.
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10/ And the better the faking, the less you need to work on actual imaginative alternatives. You can phone in gestural stubs of alternatives
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11/ This is a picture of the politics of detente: between elections, there is political "peace", opposition and alternatives are ceremonial
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