Representative Government Suffers from the Principal-Agent Problem

 A recent article by Robert Higgs was published by the Independant Institute.  A few of the highlights are as follows:

...the framers of the U.S. Constitution created an institutional framework for the operation not of a democracy, but of a representative republic. There’s that troublesome word – representative.

It’s not simply that the so-called representatives are bad or corrupt, though they may be. It’s that the job they purport to do cannot be done even by the finest, most uncorrupted representatives imaginable.

No agent can truly represent a variegated group of principals, especially a large one whose members disagree along many dimensions. Some principals will have their interests seemingly fostered; others will not. The latter will simply be bludgeoned by force of law to submit.

The complete article is at this link:

 http://blog.independent.org/2017/08/24/principal-agent-theory-and-representative-government/