The Most “Successful” Political “Entrepreneurs” Are the Ones Who Are Most Adept at Convincing the Public That They Can Offer Them Something for Nothing

Private property entrepreneurs succeed by discovering ways to reduce costs and prices, improve product or service quality, or by inventing new products that meet the approval of consumers. They succeed, in other words, by catering to consumers. If they fail to please consumers, they lose money or go bankrupt.

In politics, the opposite is often true: “entrepreneurial” politicians “succeed” by avoiding the minor constraints imposed on their behavior by the elections that are held every two or four years. The most “successful” political “entrepreneurs” are the ones who are most adept at convincing a gullible, public-school-educated, rationally ignorant public that they can offer them something for nothing. They are the slickest liars and propagandists. Bill Clinton was arguably the biggest and best liar in American politics over the past half century, and was one of the most successful politicians as well. As discussed above, successful political “entrepreneurs” are good at

• telling official lies about government policy,
• hiding the costs of government with fiscal illusions created by excise taxation and debt finance, 
• creating off-budget government enterprises to further hide the true costs of government from the public,
• and allocating large amounts of taxpayer dollars to nonprofit sector special interest groups which grossly exaggerate the benefits and understate the costs of special-interest legislation.

--Thomas J. DiLorenzo and Walter E. Block, An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice, Economy and Society (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, 2016), Kindle e-book.