The
science of thermodynamics may provide a means of assessing Obama's
likelihood of re-election. Political machines are much like heat
engines and tend to obey the same laws.
In thermodynamics, all steam and fuel engines are treated as "heat engines," wherein a source of heat (red) is created and the heat is allowed to flow to the colder "sink" (blue) through the engine (yellow). Some of the flow is converted into useful work (purple), but a fraction of it must of necessity flow from hot to cold as waste or "increased entropy" (gray arrow) [1].
A tyranny
is much like a heat engine. It extracts labor and goods from its
people and gives some of it back -- but keeps a fraction (gray arrow)
for the ruling class and the supporting
military. If this "graft" is too small, the regime loses support; if
it keeps too much, it runs the risk of either a revolution or a collapse
of incentive in the work force. Tyrants usually rely on a combination
of nationalism, repression, isolation, and public apathy to keep the
engine working.
In a free society, where the machine depends on popular votes to stay in power, the situation is more complicated. In the classic Tammany model, votes and taxes are coaxed from the public by promises, but, in addition, campaign money and labor are extracted from special interest groups (green) in exchange for the legislation and funds that the government doles out to them. These favors, in addition to campaign expenses and graft, constitute the waste flow (gray arrows) that does the public no good but keeps the machine going.
And
therein lies the problem: the relative sizes of the arrows. The
general public expects proportionate results for its votes and taxes
while the major donors and special interest groups (SIGs) expect a much
greater return from their donations, by favorable legislation and/or
government spending. If the gray arrows are too small, the machine will
lose the votes and support of its donors and SIGs. But if the gray
arrows become too large, public anger may vote the machine out of
office. Therefore, the machine bosses must optimize a delicate and
complex equation to try to satisfy both the public and their supporting SIGs. Usually, as with some heat engines, there just isn't enough output to justify the input.
In thermodynamics, all steam and fuel engines are treated as "heat engines," wherein a source of heat (red) is created and the heat is allowed to flow to the colder "sink" (blue) through the engine (yellow). Some of the flow is converted into useful work (purple), but a fraction of it must of necessity flow from hot to cold as waste or "increased entropy" (gray arrow) [1].
In a free society, where the machine depends on popular votes to stay in power, the situation is more complicated. In the classic Tammany model, votes and taxes are coaxed from the public by promises, but, in addition, campaign money and labor are extracted from special interest groups (green) in exchange for the legislation and funds that the government doles out to them. These favors, in addition to campaign expenses and graft, constitute the waste flow (gray arrows) that does the public no good but keeps the machine going.
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