Sydney’s Lockout Laws have been bad for Sydney’s night life, arts scene, hospitality workers, and international reputation. Any reader of this blog should be well aware of those facts by now.

But the ripples don’t stop there. As this report points out, as businesses lose revenue, they start vacating the area or demanding lower rent from their landlords… lower rent on commercial properties (and to a lesser degree residential ones as well) means lower values, and suddenly home owners and commercial property investors alike find themselves with devalued investments at best, and quite possibly bank foreclosures and bankruptcy at worst… all because some politicians saw a chance to ‘do something’ to gain publicity.

So who pays? People are losing money, in some cases big money, as a result of the lockout laws installed by government… If a family loses everything because they couldn’t keep the shop they owned tenanted, who picks up the tab? If a superannuation account is devalued because it held shares in a property trust that was heavily invested into King Cross, who repays the retirees? Depending on the specifics of the situation, the answer is either ‘no one’, and the individuals must suffer the loss, or the answer is ‘taxpayers’, and we all suffer the loss because we end up financially supporting someone who would otherwise have been standing on their own two feet. In either case, it’s not the decision makers that are paying for their poor foresight.

And this cuts to the heart of one of the biggest problems with government, and one of the strongest arguments in favour of Libertarianism: People make better decisions when they pay the price for getting it wrong! ‘Socializing’ or ‘Distributing’ decision making or the costs of decisions only serves to insulate us from the consequences of our decisions and makes the decision ‘less important’ in our minds.

Allow me to use voting as an example. Most people do far more research and put far more thought into buying a TV than they do into choosing who they vote for. Why? Surely voting is more important! Well actually no, it isn’t. The likelihood that their vote will make any difference at all is extremely low, so most people don’t feel that there is value in being careful about who they vote for. Furthermore, the consequences of government are usually indirect and delayed, so people feel disconnected from the consequences of their vote on multiple levels. On the other hand, they’ll be paying for the new TV out of their own hard-earned money, and they’ll have to put up with whatever TV they choose for a few years at least! They will very directly feel the financial and lifestyle consequences of their decision about a TV, and so the TV will get hours of research, reading reviews, looking at options, and looking for bargains… where the voting is given little to no thought… except perhaps the thought of ‘why yes, I’ll have a sausage, thankyou!’ whilst at the voting booth.

Removing consequences removes care. So in the words of Thomas Sowell

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

And we see that harsh reality once again in the lockout laws and property prices in Kings Cross. Did the decision makers even stop for a moment to consider the people who work in ‘the cross’? Doubtful… why would they? They don’t work there. Did they consider the business owners who would be ruined? Clearly not. Did they think it through long enough to realise that they would be hurting all manner of people who own houses and shops, and who may be counting on those assets for their livelihoods or retirements? Of course they didn’t! They’re guaranteed a cosy government pension after they retire from politics, so such considerations are the furthest things from their minds.

What they saw when they looked at the violence in Kings Cross was not a complex issue where actions of any sort would have consequences both intended and unintended, no, they saw a chance to grab some headlines and get a bump in the polls. Because the polls are pretty much the only ‘consequence’ that a politician actually cares about! They are completely insulated from pretty much every other consequence of the decisions they’re making, with the single exception of popularity, and even then it’s a sometimes rubbery link.

So what’s the solution to politicians making bad decisions because they pay no price for being wrong? Well, we can fix it one of two ways: Make them pay a price for their decisions, or take the decisions off them and put them into the hands of those who pay.

History is full of examples of where a population have become so enraged at their out of touch government that they’ve taken to the streets and become violent in their efforts to make the politicians feel the ‘consequences’. This usually ends very badly for all involved, and more often than not has led to a new government just as aloof and oppressive as the last. It’s for this reason that I campaign for the latter option: take the decision making power away from politicians in as many areas as possible, and invest that power back to the people it’s been taken from.

I’m not delusional enough to think that the world would be a ‘perfect place’ if people made decisions for themselves, or that everyone would always get decisions right, just because they will have to face the consequences. But what I do know is that on average the quality of decisions being made will improve, and that when people suffer from a bad decision, it will be from their own bad decision, not from some bureaucrat with ‘departmental goals’ to follow, or a politician with an election to win. And surely that’s got to be better than what we have now?

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