We are imprinted to prefer a world that is “fair.” Our close relatives the chimpanzees freak out when one chimp gets more than his fair share, so zookeepers are careful about food portions. Chimps are hardwired to get angry when they think they’ve been cheated — and so are we.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk. One person takes out a second mortgage to start a business. Another thinks that sounds nervewracking, if not insane. Neither person is wrong. Government cannot know each person’s preferences, or odds of success.

The human brain is torn between simple intuition and the more complex hard work of figuring out the unintended consequences of any policy. Who doesn’t like thinking about trees and greenery and happy animals? Who doesn’t want to see steps taken to protect those things, all else being equal? But all else is not equal.

The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry about that later.

Since this current post-recession job recovery is the slowest in 80 years, you’d think that even know-it-all politicians would want to sweep away the labyrinth of government regulations that hinders job creation.

Advocates of big government believe fairness means taking from rich people and giving to others: poor people; or people who do things politicians approve of, like making “green” energy equipment (Solyndra); or old people (even rich ones) through Social Security and Medicare.

many rules that legal specialists can’t keep up. Criminal lawyers call the rules “incomprehen- sible.” They are. They are also “uncountable.” Congress has created so many criminal of- fenses that the American Bar Association says it would be futile to even attempt to estimate the total.

Give me a break. “Greed” means you want more for yourself. Fine. If you obtain it legally, without force or privilege — say, by buying a business and making it more efficient, or shifting resources to where consumers prefer them — that is a good thing. “Creative destruction” makes America richer.

Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled! “Frequently,” he said. “That was the point.” People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking weed.

Yet if you add eight zeroes, that’s America’s budget. The president says again that he will cut spending — but don’t be fooled. He wants to spend more on some items, those he euphemistically calls “invest[ment] in the things that will help grow our economy.

That was reassuring. The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction” — about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, Obama misleads..

Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth..

With an election approaching and at least some Americans upset about irresponsible spending, the president has finally expressed a political interest in cutting something. He says the Pentagon will spend “only” $525 billion next year. That’s slightly less than the current $531 billion.

Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? During his State of the Union address, he promised “a blueprint for an economy.” But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances.

Opinion polls show Americans are very dissatisfied with government. Congress has only a 12 percent approval rating. Good. People should be suspicious of what Congress would design. Central planners failed in the Soviet.

It’s election season, and so once again people look for heroes. Is Ron Paul one? Maybe. He’s fought a long, lonely battle to limit the power of government. As government grows, I yearn for champions of freedom who fight back. Rep. Paul has done that..

President Obama says his health care “reform” will be good for business.

Some politicians claim that politicians create jobs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, “My job is to create jobs.”

Have you noticed how often government takes sides against the little guy? Street vending has been a path out of poverty for Americans. And like other such paths (say, driving a taxi), this one is increasingly difficult to navigate.

In John Adams’ administration, the Sedition Act made it a crime “to write, print, utter or publish... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government... or to excite against [it] the hatred of the people....”.