Robert Higgs on the irrationality of pursuing ends through political means

To elicit the desired response from government, people take costly actions.  They sacrifice valuable time, effort, money, and other resources in order to send letters and telegrams to politicians, campaign and vote for candidates and pressure groups, and act in other ways as members of large political groups.  Although such actions are utterly familiar, the first theorist to inquire seriously whether they are rational concluded that, except under special conditions, they are not.

~ Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan, p. 39