News From the Ukraine

If Thomas Paine was still around revolution-hopping today, I believe that these would be the times that would try his soul.*

A year after the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, democracy is sputtering under the new government. It would be nice to see the new government thrive, especially as the United States is pushing for democracy around the globe. Of course, Rome was not built in a day and it does seem like Yushchenko should get more than a year to turn the country around.

Since the above paragraph has exhausted my knowledge of Ukrainian politics, I have no more thoughts on their political situation. As a tangential thought, the article does provide a little lesson on overregulation:

What happened to the price of meat is a good example. Yushchenko's team increased pensions after retirees said they could no longer afford meat. But Yushchenko also shut down the black market meat-import business, fulfilling a pledge to fight corruption.

The result? Pensioners' demand for meat grew, while supply decreased. Prices doubled, leaving pensioners again complaining that they couldn't afford meat and making matters worse for millions more people.

Yushchenko's effort to undo the corrupt sales of government-owned businesses to cronies of longtime President Leonid Kuchma also was disastrous.

The government's plan was to take back businesses it believed had been bought through bribes or rigged bidding, then to resell them legitimately.

But the program so unsettled the business climate that investment slowed.

Be it meat prices, health care, or anything else, government control is a bad idea. The United States government, for example, was built upon purposeful inefficiencies, so it doesn't make sense that we should expect the government to improve upon the performance of private individuals and businesses. As Thomas Sowell said, "Most of us--if not all of us--are grossly incompetent at other people's jobs. That is why it is so dangerous to have politicians telling doctors, farmers, bankers, entrepreneurs and others what to do."



*If Thomas Paine was still around revolution-hopping, I wonder if he could get the world rallied against the government in Sudan.