Politicains Play Cops and Robers as People Suffer

In his chapter on Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft, Tullock uses the example of theft to explore the wasteful social costs of attempting to transfer wealth or attain rent, that are ignored by the Harberger method. In Tullock's example, as thieves invest more into trying to transfer wealth from others to themselves, those people and even the thieves themselves, invest more in trying to prevent this wealth transfer and therefore, reduce the the potential returns on the thieves' investment. And though the act of purely taking or retaining belongings is not a cost to society, allocating resources towards wealth transfer and protecting against wealth transfer carry an opportunity cost that, according to Tullock, is wasteful, "from the standpoint of society as a whole"(Tullock,  47). Which is why societies put in place laws, police, and courts, to prevent this type of wealth transfer as best as possible. 

Though political parties are not thieves and homeowners, their fight to influence the government and the country can be explained by examining their activities through a similar lens. Republicans currently control the Senate, the Presidency, and have more of their judges on the Supreme court and federal benches across the country. If we consider this power as units of wealth, Republicans have much they need to protect, which explains why they are wasting no time to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court right after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Democrats clearly want to take this power for themselves and have broke fundraising records trying to do so. In fact, Democrats and progressive groups raised a record $90 million, directly after Justice Ginsburg's death. Therefore, as democrats' investments have increased the chance that they will take over the senate and win the presidency, Republicans have stalled coronavirus relief negotiations and have invested time and resources into their last best chance at protecting their wealth, and in their view Americans' wealth, by putting a conservative judge on the Supreme court that may be able to use the judiciary to reduce the amount of power or return that democrats will get from their investment in controlling the white house and congress.  

Finally, though Democrats or Republicans having power or wealth is not a cost to the American public, the large amount of time and resources that both parties are using have a large opportunity cost to society as a whole. Opportunity costs are especially large now due to the fact that both parties could be investing this time and resources in fighting the coronavirus that has taken over 200,000 lives and has caused an economic recession.

Maybe if it still took 60 senators to confirm a supreme court justice or if we had public funding of elections, we could prevent this type of wasteful wealth transfer.