Have you ever been stuck in messy mud? Huh? Never heard of "mud farming?"
What is 'mud farming'? It comes from William Faulkner's "The Reivers". The farmers would go out in the middle of the night and plow up the roadways and drench the road with water. Then when people or businesses got stuck in the road the next day, the farmers would come out and pull the hapless souls out of the mud -- for a price.
Sadly, today there are lots of political mud farmers on the left, on the right and in the middle. Their primary goal is not to design and operate a functional and fair (social) marketplace, but to create a (social) marketplace that pays good (extortion) money for the mud farmers (politicians) to continue to manage. Or plainly put, the common political goal of most politicians these days is to be good 'mud farmers'. Sadly, as one starts to look at politics these days, one becomes acutely aware that there are very few, if any, honest (non mud farming) politicians left.
Mud Farming does kind of hit home on many of our contemporary political efforts, regardless of which side of the political spectrum you are looking at. Seems, at best, we (the people) end up spending more time focusing on whose muddy roadway we are using and who we are paying to haul us out of the mud. Instead, we should be promoting development of a solid well designed (social) marketplace whose operation is guided by the checks and balances of strong individual involvement in that marketplace, not political (mud farming) micromanagement.
BTW, my awareness of the concept of mud farmers in politics comes from an article by Fred McChesney, "High Plains Drifters: Politician's Lucrative Protection Racket". The Freeman, vol 48 pg 4. January 1998. The Freeman's home page (Foundation for Economic Education) is at www.fee.org.