As I’ve been reading through chapters of Human Action recently (and then re-reading each chapter to make sure I get it all), I was struck by the notion that there must exist some “dual” to Mises’s masterpiece with a political emphasis instead of an economic emphasis.  Instead of the analysis of money, it would have an analysis of favors (or pieces of pork); instead of the market, it would have a legislature; instead of the business cycle, it would have the liberty cycle; and so on.  The law of marginal utility would still hold, but applied to favors and/or pork.  Ricardo’s law of association becomes logrolling, maybe.

An e-mail that my brother just sent me reminded me of the liberty cycle idea:  “Government grows through apathy, then dependence, then fear – so maybe
it’s a cycle. People obtain freedom, then become complacent when they achieve
what that have been striving for, then the government takes back liberty bit by
bit, then the people become dependent, then because of the dependence, the
people become fearful of what the government can do to them, then when the fear
(and frustration) become too much, then the people revolt and take back some
liberty.”