The Gambler's Delusion

Another (very brief, because I've made some of these same points previously) observation about the upcoming election. The enthusiasm for Obama bears a striking resemblance to the habits of a gambling addict. No matter how bad things get, or how many times he loses, he always holds out hope that next time he'll "get lucky" and that his "investment" will pay off. So he continues to pour money into the gambling (now called "gaming" -- another Orwellian bit of word magic) system hoping for a return, and in fact the more he puts in, the higher the return would have to be in order for him to come out ahead. And, as a matter of fact, that's another facet of the delusion -- the fact that most habitual gamblers consider themselves "ahead" even if they aren't. It would take utter devastation, loss of home and family, and being forced to live in a packing crate under a railroad trestle to convince this guy that he wasn't doing all that well in the gambling arena.

It's the same with the voters, i.e. the ones who habitually vote for collectivist/statist candidates in the hope that they (the candidates) will come up with still another government program that will work to their (the voters') benefit and, in addition, make up for any losses they feel they've incurred to date, through misguided government activity. And the worse their situation becomes -- aggravated, in almost every case, by liberal/socialist programs and policies -- the more they return to the folly of voting for the same sorts of candidates over and over again. And besides this, voters of this sort are commonly convinced that they wind up "ahead" by voting for government programs combined with higher taxes -- the theory being that the "entitlements" they receive from the program will make up for the additional taxes they have to pay. (Note that their calculations don't include the economic chilling effect of confiscatory government policies. It also hasn't occurred to them to take a look at the amount of money the government keeps for itself, like the lavish casinos do.) So... if they continue to vote this way, year after year, and still wind up living in the same blighted (by "urban renewal") neighborhood, sending their kids to the same failing public schools, and still live in daily fear... why, better luck is just around the corner, don'tcha know? And if the government doesn't provide it, who will?

So when you go to the polls on Tuesday, remember that at least half of the other people in the polling place are the ones who treat the government as a sort of combination piggy bank and slot machine. Except that the bank and the machine are filled with _your_ dollars, not theirs.