I’ve just barely started on this.
It’s barely the start of a rough draft so far.
“Big Government.” “Small government.” These are basically meaningless terms politicians use to confuse and persuade. Think about it; government shouldn’t be “big” or “small”—it should be the size it needs to be, no more, no less. Whatever services we need, we should have. Those we don’t need, we shouldn’t have. Do that, and the government is the size it needs to be, automatically, whether you wish to call it big or small. We should focus on what services we should or should not have the government manage, and then support our decisions by funding the desired services and making sure government operates efficiently. Any politician who starts ranting about “big government” should be forced to discuss the real issues, because it’s all about what is or isn’t needed, and how it’s managed—not what’s “big” or “small.”
Imagine not going to the dentist, even when you could afford it, because you want to be a Small Spender. Or, conversely, imagine buying lots of things you don’t need, just for the sake of being a Big Spender. Like you and me, government shouldn’t pick a size and then cut or add services, needed or not, just to fit the size. The size should be precisely what it is when the desired services are efficiently provided.
When politicians pretend that giving certain federal responsibilities to the States is more efficient, it’s a joke; because then you create 50 bureaucracies where there was one. The federal problem isn’t “bigness,” it’s inefficiency. And what determines efficiency isn’t the size of it, but the competence of its managers. In fact, by definition, a single large bureaucracy is more efficient than several smaller ones. Are we to imagine it’s easy to get competent managers for state bureaucracies, but impossible to get them for federal bureaucracies? At whatever level, if managers are incompetent, fire them and get competent ones. Fix it. Make it efficient. You and I save money not when multiple small bureaucracies are created, but when (1) there is reasonable consolidation and (2) there is competent, efficient management. Don’t let them tell you it’s impossible to have efficient “big” government: the military is one of the biggest bureaucracies known to humankind—and it is efficient. (Well, not the accounting end of it, but you get my point.)
So why is it, then, that our leaders keep harping on the evils of Big Government? It’s not hard to understand. When they say they don’t want “big government,” it’s regulation they don’t want. Loggers want to log anywhere they please, auto makers don’t want to have to be fuel efficient, laboratories don’t want to have to worry about waste, banks and lenders don’t want to be told they can’t gouge or expose our money to excessive risk, manufacturers don’t want to spend money on safety and decent wages. Being against “big government” is code for removing all oversight and regulation from big business, so that they can behave with impunity in service to greed.
When they harp about wanting to turn more things back to the states, supposedly in order to get rid of “big government” in Washington, there’s a reason—and it has nothing to do with ending bureaucracy or giving back more control to the states. By “giving it back to the states,” the Republican Party of big business knows at least some states will have far less regulation than others. Businesses can then headquarter in those states. More banks, for example, are headquartered in Delaware than any other state, because that state has the least regulation, and thus the fewest protections for consumers.
Whenever you see some politician harping about “big government,” you’re almost certainly looking at a Republican. That’s the party big business looks to, to get rid of regulation—regulation that protects us, the people. We get the short end, while they make more money.
They get traction out of this rhetoric because everybody’s for “smaller government;” it just sounds like a good thing not to waste money on government we don’t need. But of course we do need government services, and we should keep moving the discussion away from the nebulous rhetoric of what’s “big” or “small,” to what we need or don’t need. Government must oversee and regulate business practices, and the only question for discussion should be, to what extent? Let’s keep our focus on what the balance should be, and then doing it. Efficiently. And remember, railing against “big government” is code for railing against regulating business to protect the people.