Uh-Oh

The thing you should always worry about in democracy is that you’re voting for a package deal: if you like the person/party and vote for them, you get all their positions … not just the ones you like.

And what if those positions are bizarrely dumb? What does that say about the rest of the package?

So, in Greece, Syriza … within a week of winning the election … has put limiting all-inclusive vacation resorts on its agenda of things to fix.

You can’t make this stuff up.

When a new Greek activist government — under pressure to look like it’s doing something — declares that they believe all-inclusive resorts are bad because tourists stay on property instead of benefiting the local town economies nearby but promise they’re only talking theoretically and you should trust them that they aren’t going to do anything about it… you should trust them as much as you do that they’ll repay all of their bonds in full.

…

Tourism represents about a fifth of GDP. All-inclusive package tours are a key segment of the European market, especially for tourists coming from the UK and Germany.

Since tourism is important to the economy, and the economy is doing badly, it must be tourism’s fault.

FWIW: That makes the tourism industries size in Greece comparable proportional to the largest industry in the U.S. That would be FREI: finance, real estate, and insurance. Except that the latter are difficult, and people get paid a lot to do them because they’re valuable.

Via Marginal Revolution.