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An excellent summary. What I would like to know is: why do voting populations swallow this? I was just coming to the conclusion that when democratic fundamentalism takes over from liberal conservatism, people will always drift towards that which they can more easily understand (or think that they understand). Libertarianism is an acquired taste, mainly for people who were left-leaning when they were younger and knew so much more than they do now. In other words, democracy inevitably tends towards socialism. The widespread popular support for Keynesian bailouts seems to have dashed my theory. The more I read, the less I understand about the theory of bail-outs, and I didn't have a good grasp of it, or even the illusion of a good grasp of it, to start with. So what's the go here? Do voters really think they understand stimulus and bailout like they understand the Robin Hood principle? Or do they segue off into art-critic mode, in which incomprehensibility is taken as the sure sign of an advanced mind at work and great wisdom guiding the wheel? And if they do the latter, does that mean that there is, after all, some way to sell libertarian principles to the voters in a way that they will appreciate, even if they don't understand it?
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