It may be a mistake to conflate "smaller government" with "less intrusive government". More to the point, the number of dollars in the budget or the number of people employed might very well be poor metrics of how much government actually intrudes in the lives of its citizens. This may be because it's difficult to get one's head around how to quantify the absence of something. If one prefers to frame public policy thinking in terms of personal liberty, perhaps we should develop something that attempts to quantify the negative consequences of an overreaching state on the lives of individuals...some sort of "net tyranny".
Taking this a step further in the counterintuitive direction, a "larger" government-- particularly one in the form of a sprawling bureaucracy--may actually result in less net tyranny experienced by the average citizen, because a sprawling bureaucracy is (potentially) more amenable to massive decentralization of power. The extreme counterexample should be obvious: the most tyrannical form of government imaginable would be absolute power vested in a single person.
The real-world tradeoff is not trivial; one positive feature of a tyrannical dictatorship is that a dictator is (comparatively) easy for the disgruntled masses to dispatch; it's been done repeatedly throughout history from Caesar to Ceauşescu.
Bureaucracies, on the other hand, have a rather stubborn tendency towards immortality...
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large govts, by nature, are overly intrusive. true, they move not-very-well.
but, that largness needs to be fed by taxpayers.
a larger confiscation of property/money is itself an affront to liberty.
add: the inability of bureaucracy to effectively enforce law, also makes it ineffective to protect rights.
so, if you just wanna get stoned, large govt is in your favor as crime needs to be prioritized prior to enforcement.
a breakdown of even low-end law and order (anti stoner laws) leads to a breakdown of general law and order, and law is seen as the enemy of freedom by default, leading to a more libertine lifestyle by the masses. ever call for a cop in the ghetto? i have. they dont show up. too much 'other' more serious crimes to answer than the rapist crawling through your window.
big democracy presents its own list of failings, as the power is centralised too often on the unelected,unaccountable.
case in point: fannie/freddie.
the folks are ready to toss the gop, when it was equally, arguably more so, dem oversight and policy that led to it.
leaving the same folks in charge to fuck it up again.
good discussion.
"but, that largness needs to be fed by taxpayers.
a larger confiscation of property/money is itself an affront to liberty."
Yes, of course.
Maybe an important question then is how much does a marginal change in taxation affect net tyranny experienced? And how might that be weighed against more permissive social policy? All other things being equal, 10% taxation is certainly preferable to 20% taxation, but 20% taxation in a more permissive society might be preferable to 10% in a police state.
Clearly, not everyone is going to have the same preferred equilibrium...but I guess my main point is that less taxation does not (by itself) necessarily net you more liberty, nor does more necessarily net you less.
Right. It's yet another logical fallacy to say the size of government directly affects personal freedom. Also money is not freedom, and taxes are not slavery. It's an oversimplification.
The true is test is the individual's relationship to the state and how the state views the individual.
Fascism and communism are more similar that different in that the life of the individual in both is sublimated to the condition and advancement of the state. This is why there ended up being no precious difference between Hitler and Stalin (did I just Godwin my post?).
The measuring stick should be the evidence of the level of individual liberty a citizen enjoys. The size of the government is just an easy way to frame it when you don't want to have to think too hard.
RW:responding to me? i didnt say money was freedom, but i did liken money to property.
taxes are not slavery, but income taxes are a form of serfdom.
another question: can you separate financial liberty from personal liberty, and still have a libertarian state?
many celebrate personal liberty (getting stoned, to oversimplify), while decrying economic freedom.
many who push for economic freedom are aghast that some folks really just wanna get stoned and be left alone.
I think that the index of economic freedom published by Cato/Heritage is a good index of government intrusiveness. It leaves certain things out such as abortion and the drug war, but it does in a way cover gambling and prostitution (to the extent these are economic freedom issues).
The size of the deficit or the size of government is one of the reasons I can't get too worked up in an anti-Bush rant like other Paultards. War spending can be ramped down just as quickly as it can be ramped up. All things being equal, I'd rather have an extra trillion spent on a war in some country I'm not likely to visit than that money spent on another entitlement program, or in "investment" in infrastructure or our failing public schools.
Starve the beast, dontcha know. I'd love to see the government forced to sell off assets in an economic crisis similar to Iceland's. USPS sold to FedEx; interstate system contracted out to GE or Halliburton; SSA sold to Fidelity; military sold to Blackwater; the 70% or so of the state of Nevada owned by the feds sold to the highest bidder. It's the best chance for liberty in our lifetime.
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