Once again, the electorate is not monolithic, but highly fragmented. To pretend otherwise is to endorse the divide-and-conquer approach of professional lobbyists. Whenever someone proposes reforms it's billed as an attack on freedom, whenever someone complains about the absence of reforms, it's billed as the electorate's own silly fault. This has been pointed out to you before, and you're an intelligent person, so I think it's rather disingenuous of you to keep trotting out the naive form of the argument.
It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency. Public choice theory explains why this line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. If you don't understand this then all I can suggest is that you spend some time thinking it over, because you have certainly not articulated a coherent argument in defense of your position and I grow tired of explaining the obvious.
> It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency.
No, it doesn't, even if your argument requires that it does.
Yes, some folks support structures that make rent-seeking easy while others oppose. In both groups, you have folks who want govt to provide a particular good and some folks opposed. All of thse are still responsible for the resulting rent-seeking, even though clearly they're not "unitary".
> I grow tired of explaining the obvious.
You haven't explained anything. You've dropped a buzz-word that is only tangentially related and made some false assumptions.
I like public choice theory, but it isn't a complete explanation of everything in govt. In particular, while it talks about treating govt as an economic problem, it makes some assumptions about govt that aren't necessary.
So the people who are opposed to rent-seeking are just as responsible for the phenomenon as the people who are supportive of it, even if the former have voted against it. Riiiiight.
There are lots of ways to oppose rent-seeking. One is to oppose situations where it is inevitable. The other is to support measures "intended" to limit it. Since the latter don't work, said support is meaningless.
And yes, an unsuccessful opposition bears some responsibility.
Surely you're not arguing that all responsiblity is the same....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory