To shrink government, you need to love government. Most liberals believe deeply in government. As a result, they sit on school boards, city councils, and regional planning boards. They become expert at navigating through the bureaucracy and know which bureaucratic levers to pull to make their policy vision reality.Many conservatives and libertarians come from the world of business. They don’t particularly like government. They view it as merely a necessary evil. As a consequence, they rarely immerse themselves in the intricacies of governing, preferring to make their case from a safe distance.
Once in power, they tend to have far more difficulty navigating the complex terrain of the public sector. The result? From Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission to the 1995 government shutdown by a GOP Congress, most high-profile attempts to shrink government fail.
Until small-government types better master the nuts and bolts of the public sector—how to design policies that work in the real world and how to execute on large public undertakings—their initiatives to downsize government will continue to disappoint.
Jan 20, 2010
Libertarians And Social Security
William Eggers and John O'Leary have an interesting piece on Reason.com with the title Five Reasons Why Libertarians Shouldn't Hate Government. Here is an excerpt that should have some resonance for those who saw what happened at Social Security during the last presidential administration:
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It all starts with a libertarian individual freedom, single pebble droppers. “Don’t make waves,” and “Don’t rock the boat,” yet, no one has ever seen a boat going anywhere that was not making waves and rocking from side to side, making the placid water choppy. For new start-ups and jobs we need to continue welcoming the wave-making pebble-droppers or secure the peace of the pond. Governing elite tell us the interests of the pond, the community, are more important than are the interests of the individual, the pebble-dropping wave makers. Pebble-droppers made America what it is today, giving form and shape to our American Evolution. Pebble droppers made us prosperous and only they can keep us prosperous. Without pebble droppers, America will have no prosperity, no growth, no entrepreneurs, no small business and no new jobs. Government managers cannot control pebble droppers, only prevent their disturbing behavior. See Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on Amazon.com and claysamerica.com
You know what? Push metaphors too far and they become silly. Or at least very uninformative.
What is a pebble dropper anyways, and what does it have to do with anything?
From the article:
"The deregulation of the airline and trucking industries were two of the biggest and best things done by government in the 1970s."
So we are going to measure good government by government doing away with something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
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