To end, the following are some quotations which I found to be interesting:
**** "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal." (Graffiti)
**** "Public Choice, ill-named because the only choice it recognizes are essentially private, is both a branch of microeconomics and an ideologically-laden view of a democratic politics. Analysts of the school apply the logic of microeconomics to politics and generally find that whereas self-interest leads to benign results in the marketplace, it produces nothing but pathology in political decisions. These pathological patterns represent different kinds of "free riding" and "rent-seeking" by voters, bureaucrats, politicians, and recipients of public funds. Coalitions of voters seeking special advantage from the state join together to get favorable legislation enacted. Rather than being particularly needy, these groups are likely to be those whose big stake in a benefit arouses them to more effective action than is taken by the taxpayer at large over whom the costs are spread. In general, individuals with "concentrated" interests in increased expenditure take a "free ride" on those with diffuse interest to lower taxes. Similarly, the managers of the "bureaucratic firms" seek to maximize budgets, and thereby to obtain greater power, larger salaries, and other perquisites. Budget maximization results in higher government spending overall, inefficient allocation among government agencies, and inefficient production within them. In addition, when government agencies give out grants, the potential grantees expend resources in lobbying up to the value of the grants-an instance of the more general "political dissipation of value" resulting from the scramble for political favors and jobs." (Paul Starr)
**** "It is the behavior of public sector bureaucrats which is at the heart of public choice theory. While they are supposed to work in the public interest, putting into practice the policies of government as efficiently and effectively as possible, public choice theorists see bureaucrats as self-interested utility-maximizes, motivated by such factors as: salary, perquisites of the office, public reputation, power, patronage… and the ease of managing the bureau." (Author not identified)
**** "Because elections
are fundamentally expressive free-for-alls, not substance but
rater sanctimony, sleaze, and sound bites will determine who gets
to spend the next four years in the White House and who slinks
off into an unwelcome retirement." (Loren E. Lomasky)