Brett Stevens writes: In Brazil right now the third world cycle is playing out: We The People, having demanded government reform, have gotten a more liberal government, but now some years later, they are protesting it.
Liberals do not understand the difference between cause and effect. They are perfect consumers in this respect: they believe that whatever the label promises is what the product will actually do. Thus they come back time and time again with complaints, but without exiting the cycle.
In reality, only that the power which is supposed to make this happen becomes stronger; the task is the justification, just like advertising is designed to give people a reason to buy without making actual hard promises. Like politics, advertising conflates cause and effect.
As a result, this is the form the cycle takes:
Voters demand a certain effect.
Politician promises to make law to demand effect.
Law raises costs, clogs land with red tape, makes society less functional.
Voters notice new problems of old demands.
Repeat (ad infinitum).
What we are seeing in Brazil is that the voters are protesting themselves. They are protesting government so that the voters do not need to face the fact that the failure of government is the result of the demands of voters, because to see that would be to realize that protest, voting and revolution are all useless.
