A letter to those who cry for small government...

[Locut0s]

Many of you are suffering, I see it. I acknowledge it. But please understand that those you fear are not the source of your pain.

Two of the core principles on which America was founded were individualism and self sufficiency. And they have taken America far! At face value these are commendable traits. But like any ideology upon which you found a nation they hide dangers.

The founding fathers were some of the wisest people to found any government. They were fearful of tyranny and the rise of monarchical power. Very good things to fear. But they presided over a nation of a few million people during a very different time. There was no way they could have foreseen the tectonic shifts of the last 240 years. Of course tyranny is still something to fear, perhaps more than ever. But monarchical power is no longer the dominant form of tyranny. We live in an age of billions, the majority of the global suffering we see now the result of a different form of inequality than seen in the days of the founding fathers. No ruler wearing a golden crown dictating to his struggling subjects that their taxes will be raised again. Today's tyranny is more elusive, more sinister, as it is baked into the fabric of the engine that drives this vast juggernaut we see as modern progress. This is not to say that tyrannical dictators are a thing of the past of course. Just turn on the news and you will immediately see the opposite is the case. However today's dictators feed off the unrest and dissatisfaction caused by the underlying tyranny that already exists. We no longer live in a day and age where subsistence farming and the simple life that comes with it is the norm. Not that that wasn't back breaking labour, it was. But those lives, if properly supported fuled a sense of satisfaction in life. We live in a day and age where the norm can be bagging groceries at the checkout for 30 years till the mind numbing disconnection from anything resembling fulfilling, fuels resentment and hatred. And ironically much like in the days of the founding fathers, god help you if you became ill. The engines that drive this world are economic in nature. And small governments are not suited to regulating or ameliorating the pain and suffering in this world.

The small government, self made man, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, besides being cruel, misses the point in today's world. Small government works well when the rulers you fear live in a castle. Small government doesn't work so well when the rulers you fear wear suites, when the threats to life and satisfaction are more existential in nature.


Note: this was a repurposed reply to a FB post I made so it may not hold tegther as well as it was written in response to a question.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I think your points are well taken, my dear Locut0s.

Thank you for posting it here!

[Locut0s]

7. Thanks :-) nt

[lamsmy]

2. A shorter post

The most comprehensive studies (including this one:https://lanekenworthy.net/is-big-government-bad-for-the-economy/) of the effect of government size on economic growth show no real benefit to small government.

Government expenditures taken from taxes can put a brake on individual (business or personal) performance, but this expenditure also creates opportunities for growth.

The key is managing waste. Small government fans often decry government workers who are paid to do little or nothing and thus drag everyone else down. To be sure, this does happen sometimes.

But waste can also take the form of underutilized resources, especially people and capital. Unmotivated high school drop outs with no health insurance are almost certainly going to become a burden on the tax payers. Investing in schools and health care for all just makes economic sense.

And billions of dollars of GDP growth may look good in headlines, but if the bulk of that money is going into the private bank accounts of a few individuals, that is wasting money that could be reinvested into the wider economic community. Tax policies that encourage reinvestment as opposed to personal hoarding just make economic sense.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. One Add To Your Thoughts

The small government types tend to pursue the notion that private business is always more efficient.

But in terms of capital, the problem with all layers being privatized is that this creates a minimum of one more layer of profit taking that adds zero value (or close to it).

So, there is an inherent capital inefficiency that may or may not be compensated by the "more efficient" private sector.

[Locut0s]

5. I've worked long enough in retail to know that waste of this type...

Is not relegated to the public sector. Those who prey at the alter of the all mighty free hand of the market, who dream of a world fully privatised, have a false understanding of how efficient the private sector actually is. While it's true that government money can prop up such inefficiencies for longer within any one single agency, my experience is that it's the exception, not the norm, for private businesses to be models of efficient operation. Both are often terribly inneficient. The fact that a business may go under if managed poorly doesn't prevent the next business that arrises being equally poorly managed. Many like to point to the Darwinian nature of the private sector, how this kind of cut throat competition mimicks survival of the fittest in nature and thus pushing the whole toward something that better survives. The problem with this view is that it's completely wrong. Because businesses don't mate and have offspring that share genetic information from their parents. That is the engine that drives Darwinism. It's true that good practises can be shared within companies and spread across the private sector. But this kind of lateral movement of good practises isn't Darwinian at all, and isn't relegated to the private sector. Plenty of public sector agencies borrow ideas from others and the private sector as well.

And as you said the flow of money to the top where it just sits does no one any good except for a few at the very top. It isn't indicative of any kind of Darwinian economics either. In nature some of the most efficient and successful species are at the bottom of the food chain.

The ultimate problem in this kind of world view is the failure to integrate compassion into the picture at any point. Human beings aren't cold robotic shells.

[Leith]

3. Smaller Government Hides the Real Objective

The oligarchs don't want small government. They want weak government - for themselves, anyway. They are trying to take that power and lord it over the rest of us. When it comes to the military & police, they love big government so they can control it as it controls us.

[Locut0s]

6. I agree. My post was more hypothetically directed at the poor...

Or at least those who are struggling but still vote to prop up the oligarchs out of a misguided idea that they are their friends. They have been fooled into thinking this because it serves the new ruling class for them to think so. They dream of one day being the next millionaire themselves. After all if the American Dream is to be believed (it died a long time ago) nothing but yourself should be holding you back from being the next millionaire. But these people look around and see that this is not the case, they are stuck at the bottom in dead end job, lacking skills, education, opportunity. They work damn hard too. They climb the economic ladder only to find everything above the first 3 rungs have been sawed off. And they have been fooled into believing that Obama and the "socialists" are the ones that sawed them off. When the truth is the ladder was always contested that way so that those at the top didn't have to share as much.

[trof]

8. Last line..."suits".

Very good.