"Politics is not about creating more goods, services, and benefits to society. Politics is about dividing them up."

"The growth of politics is the opposite of the growth of liberty. When liberty grows we get increased individual enterprise and expansion of free markets. We create more goods, services, and benefits to society. The pie gets bigger.
    "But politics is not about creating more goods, services, and benefits to society. Politics is about dividing them up. Politics is about promising things to people. 'The auction of goods about to be stolen,' as H. L. Mencken put it.
    "The promises are lies, of course.... And everybody is disappointed. Everybody goes away empty-handed. Everybody feels cheated. Does this make us mad at our politicians? Yes. But mostly it makes us mad at each other, because politics is a zero-sum game the way freedom and free markets are not. Zero-sum games are not played for kicks and giggles. Zero-sum games are blood sports.
    "Yes, there’s competition in free markets. That’s what makes them work. Competition is the vermouth in the martini. But as it is with martinis, so it is with free markets. For every one part competition vermouth there are six parts of that top-shelf gin called spontaneous cooperation among free people. (Which always seems to leave politicians 'shaken, not stirred.')"
          ~ P. J. O'Rourke, from his book 'A Cry From the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land'