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Who could have guessed Tuesday’s turnout!?! OMG, what an unpredictable world we live in! The Socialist Lady and the Endless War guy. Fuuuuuck me. Oh the sweet choices Democracy has laid before us yet again.

If you think I’m being facetious, get yourself a beer.

Say what you will about Ron Paul, the man made a mark, and if he runs for the election as an independent, he’ll make an even bigger one. I’ve never seen more steet signs and freaking airplanes and, good god, the Ron Paul meet-up emails in my inbox. But alas, the United States is not ready to mix reason with politics. It still prefers dynasty and fear, and the shit-sturm und drang of empty rhetorical pandering, to boring sound argument.

I’m not crazy about all of RP’s positions. I don’t agree with his stance on abortion, or his hard-line views on immigration or even his seductive yet somewhat over-simplified foreign policy (considering the mess we’ve made for ourselves is one we ought to atone for in my book.) But I think he’s got more of a coherent vision of the proper role of government in the United States according to its original charter (hint: think smaller) , than any other candidate. Government is too big, too intrusive, and has proven time and time again that it does not work. Both parties have lost sight of this.

Fans of utopia will chide me for being so simplistic. They will say “Don’t be so naive. Government can fix anything- it just has to be done in the right way.” This is the core fallacy of the modern status quoticians: the belief in a top-down, self-engineered utopia delivered by a big shiny government to your doorstep for free. Energy issues? Let them eat ethanol. Poverty? Just raise the minimum wage, and we’ll all become rich. Terrorism? Just start toppling rogue governments halfway across the world. Blowback? What blowback? At best, the idea that the powerful government can solve all of our woes, is misguided. At worst, it has brought us war, broken and unethical wealth redistribution schemes, disastrous protectionism and other economic meddling, and unconstitutional invasions of privacy (wiretapping, drug policy.) All of these scenarios have one thing in common: the oft ignored hidden consequences that are birthed by the “noble” intentions of government.

When Ron Paul talked about “blowback” he was lauded by both the left and right for making a connection that few politicians dared make. Why stop there? Blowback, mostly in the form of unintended consequences, is visible in all government policies. Prohibition put small business out and strengthened organized crime, just like the drug war today creates international crime and puts money in terrorists hands. The creation of the unnecessary Homeland Security bureaucracy contributed to the ineffective handling of Katrina. The training of the Mujahideen led to the rise of the Taliban and you know what.

This is not to say that government can’t ever get it right, just that usually it doesn’t, and that its actions often end up causing more harm than good. Furthermore, when government meddles we never get to see how people and markets and society adjust to a problem naturally. Patience! Economic stimulus plans are naive, needed pain is just put off until tomorrow. But we’ve grown so accustomed to the government “doing something” that we erroneously think of it as a physician. All of the leading candidates just sprinkle promises of money and programs and war to fix everything. They promise what they can’t deliver and it’s that false hope that gets them elected.

America is on the greatest crack bender ever.

I’ve always been a little suspicious of home owner zealots that incessantly talk up ownership as miracle investment. Sure there are those who get great deals, and those who do their own renovations, but as Kiplingers points out, the investment is only decent on average. The verdict is still out for me, even though I was fortunate enough to get a foreclosure. The amount of money sucked out of my wallet for projects and repairs (seemingly trivial but never ending) is staggering. I haven’t kept tabs on every single Home Depot receipt, but it’s ridiculous. And the chores….good god with the chores.

You get decent appreciation. The operative word is decent. Sure, price gains in a few hot markets, mostly on the East and West coasts, outperformed Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index over the past 30 years. But most local housing markets didn’t come close. Nationally, home prices rose an average of 6.2% a year, exceeding the rise in consumer prices by just two percentage points a year and lagging well behind the S&P 500′s annualized return of 12.3% since 1977.

Traveling through Greece years ago, I met a Swede who spent his summers partying on the Greek Isles…funded by his government’s unemployment program. What was his disability, you wonder? Like every young and able bodied man, it was simply not wanting to work. So he snookered the system and collected his dough, came to Greece where he drank ouzo all night, did a bizarre Jim Morrison impersonation routine at a local bar, and slept on the beach all day. At the time I thought, man, what an awesome government, because I too was young, and didn’t want to work. How fair is it that some get a free ride while others don’t? Sweden, a country often cited as being the poster child for how big government schemes “work,” has it’s share of problems, and lecherous “disability” bums are among them.

Earlier this year, police in Sweden’s capital city Stockholm investigated the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels biker gang for suspected benefit fraud, because 70% of the gang were on extended sickness benefits. The same doctor had certified them all as suffering from depression.

Moral of the story: if the government builds it, someone will abuse it. And who suffers? Everyone not partying in Greece, or riding with the Hell’s Angels.

The ethanol issue is a wonderful example of delusional and self-serving government, pipe dreaming about energy independence.

Economists argue that making ethanol from corn wouldn’t make any sense without the government’s help. The mix of federal and state subsidies to corn ethanol amounted to a conservative estimate of $5 billion to $7 billion in 2006, says Koplow of Earth Track. A considerable chunk of that money comes from the 51¢ tax refund for each gallon of ethanol refiners blend with gasoline to make fuels that can power flexible-fuel cars.

At the same time, the government imposes a 54¢-per-gallon tariff on ethanol from Brazil, which is a cheaper and more energy-efficient product made from sugar cane. Some economists say American politicians are subordinating smart energy policy for political support in key states like Iowa.

I’m all for energy alternatives. If ethanol is worth it’s weight in corn, let it speak for itself. Let it compete with other technologies in a free market with no subsidies and the most efficient will prevail.