James V. DeLong on Ending “Big SIS” (The Special Interest State)
“Obamacare is not, as one judge says, a national solution to a
problem,” argues James V. DeLong.
“It’s 2,000 pages…of special-interest-written law.”
As such, it exemplifies what DeLong, a long-time Washington
insider who has worked for many think tanks and government
agencies, denounces as “Big SIS” or the “special-interest state.”
In his scathing – and utterly convincing – new book,
Ending Big SIS and Renewing the American Republic,
Reason Contributing Editor DeLong traces how “the political system
creates economic advantages for special interests and then demands
that part of the profits be fed back into the political system,
where they are used to enhance the power of the political
incumbents.”
Whether the topic is defense spending, agricultural subsidies,
health care, or the financial sector, DeLong documents the
pervasive rot at the core of Washington’s way of doing business –
and provides ideas for cutting Big SIS down to size.
For more information on the book and DeLong, go to here. For his
Reason archive, go to here.
About 6 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain. Interview by Nick
Gillespie. Camera by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, and Swain.
Subscribe to Reason’s YouTube page to get automatic
notifications when new material goes live. Go to http://reason.tv
for downloadable versions of all our videos.