Note to self, Google Chart API is awesome.

Theory: The more issues a government becomes involved in, the less involved voters become in choosing the government.

As a simplification, let’s imagine there’s a presidential election between James McDonald and Brock O’Malley, who each have only 2 policy ideas that they disagree on, and that you and I are voting only on which candidate will reduce spending and taxes.

James McDonald wants to eliminate earmarking in the federal budget and to extend the army’s deployment in a land war in Asia forever, since earmarks creates corruption but military service creates honour.

Brock O’Malley wants to stop the land war in Asia immediately since he feels it’s a waste of resources, but wants to spend money on medical care for the working poor since he feels that it’s our responsibility.

Even with one goal, and two candidates with only two policies each, I’m not sure which is the right one to vote for.

I think the optimal solution to reduce government spending is to elect James McDonald so he can eliminate earmarking, then throw him out next election for someone who’ll end the military engagement — earmarked pork “only” costs $29 billion each year (some of which might be useful), whereas the military engagement is costing $100 billion per year. So if James McDonald is serious and effective, his 4 extra years of war will be paid with the savings from removing pork in about 15 years, after which the country will be $100 richer per person every year.

So in a simplified case where everyone does exactly what they say, we can vote effectively.

Thus all a functioning democracy requires is that neither candidate ever utter a third sentence. As soon as James McDonald declares that vaccines cause autism or Brock O’Malley declares that trading with Canada causes poverty, optimal voting may become unsolvable.

I’m not being glib, if you want to reduce the redistributive effect of government: I sincerely don’t know which party to vote for. And I only chose this issue because the share of GDP which goes to taxes is far easier to measure than other divisive issues, like the effect a particular set of policies have had against terrorism.

More issues = more variables = more difficult to make optimal choices. That’s why cell phone plans are so complicated, it’s much harder for consumers to pick the cheapest one for their needs.

As a general rule, once government gets involved in something, it never stops. This means the number of issues that candidates have opinions on about will steadily increase and any voter’s ability to make the best choice will correspondingly decrease.

Counter-intuitive conclusion: The more involved the government is in our lives, the less incentive we have to choose the government that would be best for us.

That can’t be right, can it?