Kirzner’s pupil Sanford Ikeda has usefully distinguished two interpretations of bad policy: the deception theses, in which posturing politicians and rent-seekers laugh all the way to the bank, and the error thesis, in which decent and good-willed human beings blunder inexpertly through the complex realms of political economy and trap themselves in a cul-de-sac.#
[A] continuum . . . inheres between private, voluntary agreement and coercive local government. When the members of a condominium association elect fellow residents to a rule-making board, we call any rules that restrict the use of private property “contractual”. But when the residents of Imperial, Nebraska (population 2,007) elect fellow residents to a rule-making body, libertarians are wont to call any such rules “coercive”. . . . Decentralized government, as in Switzerland, begins to merge with voluntary governance. . . . If the variable by which we distinguish between night and day is the extent of sunlight, what is the variable by which we distinguish between coercive local government and voluntary agreement?#