Actually, I think the question wasn’t whether vice is suppressed less, the question was whether the government has an incentive to keep the population dumb enough to not see through its scheme.
In any case, it’s a mistake to think of government as a monolithic entity with a single will. It’s more useful to visualize government as a large number of poorly coordinated tentacles—some of them push, some of them pull, some of them just wildly flail about...
It’s quite common for different government programs to provide opposite incentives for some behaviour.
Actually, I think the question wasn’t whether vice is suppressed less, the question was whether the government has an incentive to keep the population dumb enough to not see through its scheme.
In any case, it’s a mistake to think of government as a monolithic entity with a single will. It’s more useful to visualize government as a large number of poorly coordinated tentacles—some of them push, some of them pull, some of them just wildly flail about...
It’s quite common for different government programs to provide opposite incentives for some behaviour.