The two political parties with power have no reason to change. They have no competition. They have everything pretty much under control - their control, not yours. They gerrymander voters to ensure safe seats. They make it hard for competing political parties to mount a real challenge with restrictive ballot access laws that force challengers to jump high hoops. Their power to tax and spend allows those euphemistically called "member items" to buy votes. Creating commissions, authorities and boards make it possible to employ cronies and dispense political patronage to friends and supporters. Contracting work, issuing and revoking licenses, controlling the work of government agents and departments affects how people react to the controlling powers. All of this costs money. All of this makes it impossible to cut budgets. Pork must be dispensed, favors must be financed, and privileges must be granted or votes are lost. If votes are lost, elections are lost. If elections are lost, the winning party decides who pays and who loses turns at the public trough.
Power can be sold and votes can be bought. Legislators understand this reality. Power corrupts. The greater their power to dispense privileges, contracts, or favors, the higher the price such officials command.
This is not rocket science. Look at elections. What happens when politicians threaten to lower spending? Votes are lost because people who stand to lose treasury money organize against them and for someone else. Given a choice between a Republican or Democrat who promises to “bring home the bacon” and Libertarian who does not, who do you expect will get elected? Now, consider the backroom deals where more money and privileges are traded. Why is lobbying a growth industry in a state that has been losing industries?
Basically, politicians have the ability to fill the treasury with our money and use it to buy votes. Clearly the treasury is an essential element of political power. Dollars in the common treasury are like fish in the common sea. Fish can be harvested to extinction. When taxes can no longer replenish the stock and borrowing is no longer possible, treasury dollars become an endangered species. Worst of all, votes can no longer be bought. Government has then gone beyond dysfunction and become powerless. This is when governments like Erie County and the City of Buffalo find themselves taken over by a fiscal control board. The treasury is then no longer controlled by politicians or politics. A fiscal control board is essentially a capitulation to an un-elected dictatorial government because democracy has been corrupted and “We, the people” made bankrupt.
Of course, people sell their votes for access to the treasury and power to enact self-serving laws. This also costs money. Buying influence, privileges and favors is becoming both expensive and ineffective for many. Because benefit must be higher than the cost, political winners get to reach deeper into the losers' pockets. The power to decide slips away from some people and gets transferred to those who pay more for politicians.
Politicians buy votes because people sell votes to tap the treasury or get favors. No, they will not reform because change means spending less. That means losing votes needed to win elections. How long will it be before NY State is governed by a fiscal control board?
Libertarian Party
of New York
www.ny.lp.org/choice