The Sunk Costs Fallacy is a key principle of statist growth. The Left is constantly grabbing piles of money, blowing it on useless or counterproductive programs - and then insisting we can never abandon the "investments" they made on our behalf, so we must keep spending.
Every dollar statists can seize from free people becomes a flag planted on the next hill they plan to conquer. They insist we must be "progressive" and can never "go back," because that would be an unconscionable waste of all the money they've already spent.
Economists call this a fallacy, an irrational and destructive tendency to keep pouring money into failed endeavors because we fear to "waste" or "lose" what we've already spent. In statist politics, it's not a fallacy - it's a key tactic, indeed a core principle.
Statists make sure to hire as many government workers as they can with the money they grab, so when critics call for spending reductions or seek to abolish wasteful programs, the statists can howl about all the government jobs that would be lost. Thrift is denounced as cruelty.
Of course, progressives invariably define "progress" as the growth of the State. Nothing that makes the State smaller, or the people richer and freer, can ever be "progressive." Any attempt to escape from the Sunk Costs Fallacy becomes "regressive" or "turning back the clock."
This dovetails with the Left's wanton destruction of cost-benefit analysis. They seek to render the public incapable of asking whether the benefits of any government action are worth the cost, especially marginal benefits achieved at staggering expense.
That's how the Left keeps planting their Sunk Costs flag of conquest deep into the territories of freedom. You're not supposed to ask if the cost of their plans is worth the purported benefits - or question their (always wrong!) estimates of the cost and benefits.
Any "benefit" from the growth of the State is worth any cost in the Left's eyes. "If it saves just one life, we must..." is a characteristic mantra. They insist that even questioning the cost of a noble left-wing goal is evil. It's one of the reasons they hate capitalism so much.
Of course, they never tell the public their plans are irrevocable no matter how badly they fail. They never explain that you'll never be allowed to vote against their schemes again, never be permitted to re-evaluate or change your mind, never allowed to regain your freedom.
As soon as even the most crackpot left-wing program gets off the ground - even if it's immediately exposed as foolish, corrupt, counterproductive - it's permanent. The costs are sunk, the flag is planted, and if you try to shut it down, you must hate whoever purportedly benefits.
In so many ways, statist politics are the twisted mirror image of economics. The core principles of politics are the acknowledged fallacies of economics. Politics is a promise to transcend logic, common sense, and basic economics through state force and collective will. /end
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