In the recent news article:
Freakonomics Author Proves Poker is a Game of Skill The author makes the following statement:
One of the most important roles of government is establishing a set of rules under which society will operate. Governments determine property rights and coordinate the provision of public goods. Some frowned upon activities are deemed illegal (e.g. homicide); other favored activities are encouraged through subsidies (e.g. home ownership, education).
He is wrong in that the role of government is to codify the rules under which the society already operates. If the government establishes "a set of rules under which society will operate" without regard to the unwritten rules that exist already, they merely turn people into criminals.
The author of the article then goes on to define a very reliable, very easily applied elegant test that governments can use to define the rules under which society already operates -- the so-called "daughter test."
What neither article addresses, though, is the reason that modern governments make rules, and that reason of course, is to channel money into the hands of those who form the power behind the government -- in the case of "democracies", or to channel money into that hands of those governing, as in the case of tyrants.
In the specific case of the US, the daughter test fails, because the power behind the government rests in the hands of very wealthy, very prudish people, who are driven to insist that their wishes for their daughters are to be enforced on everyone else's daughter too.
Good luck at the tables...
--VS
