Thomas Sowell has observed on many occasions that politicos never pay a direct price for being wrong. The only price paid is non-reelection. Sowell’s observation, the mechanics thereof, are as follows:
(1) the politico puts forth a notional proposition of the way things ought to be,
(2) the politico then frames the notional proposition as fact,
(3) the non-fact fact is then argued through verbal virtuosity,
(4) the non-fact fact becomes legislation or governmental action,
(5) the legislation or government action is followed by first stage positive economic consequences followed by cascading negative unintended consequences for years into the future,
(6) the politico pays no direct price for the cascading negative unintended consequences, rather the price falls on the masses.
When past political actions by the politico begin to haunt him/her, they conveniently retire and generally the retirement is based on something along the lines of “more family time”. They retire and no direct price is paid by the politico for the legislation or government action spawned by the same politico.
It is worth pointing out that "government" is abstract and hence governments do not think, act or decide. Politicos think, act and decide. Therefore, it is in reality not "government action" it is actions by politicos through the mechanism of government. That mechanism is directed by bureaucrats. Hence the bureaucrats are an extension of the politico i.e. the mechanism.
Occasionally these bureaucrats make extreme errors. Errors that lead to immediate cascading negative unintended consequences. Like their politico counterparts, the bureaucrat conveniently retires. They conveniently retire with no direct price paid by the bureaucrat for past actions.
That is, in both the politico’s and bureaucrat’s case (the decision maker and the purveyor of the decision mechanism), retirement becomes the escape hatch and that is the end of the story with others left to pay the price.
