Discussion for the “small government” advocates

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

I see this idea of “small or limited government” get thrown around a lot and I will admit it sounds nice but what the hell does it mean in practice?  
 

Is there currently or has there ever been a society with “small government” that you would like to emulate?  
 

Do you have an articulated plan of how to get to this utopia? 
 

How does this idea work in conjunction with the celebrated American ideals of self government and democracy? 
 

Just asking questions...

[ztejas 43266]

I mean I know you're probably just baiting people in here to shit on them, but if you're actually in the dark about how these things work then you could start by looking at how state governments operate - California vs. Texas for example.

[Francisco 2.0 32341]

It's gonna get thrown out a lot more beginning in mid-January.

 

[CooterBrown 17911]

It's code for "no taxes".  There's really nothing else to it.

 

[TwiceHorn 31282]

Probably better characterized as "smallER, more local" government.

To overgeneralize, there has been a trend in a number of policy areas to attempt a one-size fits all federal solution to "national" problems without consideration of whether it really is a national problem or whether the federal government is best suited to address that problem.  It is, in one sense, a form of political laziness.  Why lobby for legislation in 50 states when you can do it in DC?  Or, on a different level, why convince a majority of 535 legislators when you can convince 5 of 9 instead.

As Trump has demonstrated, the answer is not "no federal government," or "no government," or "all private sector."  It's a general skepticism toward "universal" solutions provided by the least democratic of the legislative institutions in our country.

The idea of "enact one, repeal two" is impractical, but it comes from the right place.  The government almost never "reverses itself."  It has an inertia.  We must respect and attempt to control that inertia.

Federal legislation frequently is costly, inefficient, and has unintended consequences.

There are a lot of cases where federal legislation is the only answer, but it's not and should never be the default answer.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

2 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

It's gonna get thrown out a lot more beginning in mid-January.

IMO the “small government” narrative is rhetoric designed to protect existing power (the billionaire class) from being held accountable by the people or democracy so they can continue to exploit the population and the environment for insane profits without interference.   It’s a great trick b/c it presumes the government is more dangerous to society than they are. 

[TwiceHorn 31282]

3 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

It's code for "no taxes".  There's really nothing else to it.

 

That's certainly a big part of it, yes.  But not the only part.  

[TwiceHorn 31282]

Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

IMO the “small government” narrative is rhetoric designed to protect existing power (the billionaire class) from being held accountable by the people or democracy so they can continue to exploit the population and the environment for insane profits without interference.   It’s a great trick b/c it presumes the government is more dangerous to society than they are. 

That may be true in the case of some. It's a bullshit shibboleth as wielded by the GOP.

That does not mean that the idea itself is devoid of merit.

But it is bloated federal government and a bloated administrative state that goes a long way toward entrenching existing power.  It's one of those unintended consequences.

[Parliament 14138]

I'm no expert, but I AM in the Surly 10%, so here goes:

Zero-based budgeting

End earmarks of course

More block grants to the States

[Continental Op 3934]

The people who say that generally mean "a government that only does the things I want it to do." 

[David Dennison 18658]

Small government is meaningless in a nation where the annual military budget hovers around $800 billion regardless of the party in power.

Cooter is right. "Small government" is just bitching about taxes.

[Incredulity 11555]

Airline Deregulation Act of 1978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act

In 2011, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was a special counsel to the U.S Senate Committee on the Judiciary in the 1970s and worked with Senator Kennedy on the bill, wrote:

What does the industry's history tell us? Was this effort worthwhile? Certainly it shows that every major reform brings about new, sometimes unforeseen, problems. No one foresaw the industry's spectacular growth, with the number of air passengers increasing from 207.5 million in 1974 to 721.1 million last year. As a result, no one foresaw the extent to which new bottlenecks would develop: a flight-choked Northeast corridor, overcrowded airports, delays, and terrorist risks consequently making air travel increasingly difficult. Nor did anyone foresee the extent to which change might unfairly harm workers in the industry. Still, fares have come down. Airline revenue per passenger mile has declined from an inflation-adjusted 33.3 cents in 1974, to 13 cents in the first half of 2010. In 1974 the cheapest round-trip New York-Los Angeles flight (in inflation-adjusted dollars) that regulators would allow: $1,442. Today one can fly that same route for $268. That is why the number of travelers has gone way up. So we sit in crowded planes, munch potato chips, flare up when the loudspeaker announces yet another flight delay. But how many now will vote to go back to the "good old days" of paying high, regulated prices for better service? Even among business travelers, who wants to pay "full fare for the briefcase?"^[6

 

Motor Carrier Act of 1980 (trucking deregulation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Carrier_Act_of_1980

 

 

[wildcat09 29256]

20 minutes ago, Continental Op said:

The people who say that generally mean "a government that only does the things I want it to do." 

Esto.

[Anastasis 23395]

57 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Small government is meaningless in a nation where the annual military budget hovers around $800 billion regardless of the party in power.

Cooter is right. "Small government" is just bitching about taxes.

Start with an immediate 25% haircut. 10 years to trim another 25%. And none of the bullshit DC math, real year over year cuts. We can quibble about the actual numbers, but those numbers would leave us spending approximately 40% more than #2 (China). Over that 10 year span redeploy the reduced military spending into various infrastructure jobs programs.  The military is mostly a job program as it is anyways. Trim the fat, focus the military mission, redeploy a big cut to domestic needs rather than policing the brown people of the world and essentially subsidizing the domestic programs of other wealthy nations.

If the military is your biggest obstacle, let's address that one first. 

Then we can talk about all the other bloat and waste and opportunity to streamline at the federal level.  

Edited October 22, 2020 by Anastasis

[ndawg 1242]

18 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Start with an immediate 25% haircut. 10 years to trim another 25%. And none of the bullshit DC math, real year over year cuts. We can quibble about the actual numbers, but those numbers would leave us spending approximately 40% more than #2 (China). Over that 10 year span redeploy the reduced military spending into various infrastructure jobs programs.  The military is mostly a job program as it is anyways. Trim the fat, focus the military mission, redeploy a big cut to domestic needs rather than policing the brown people of the world and essentially subsidizing the domestic programs of other wealthy nations.

If the military is your biggest obstacle, let's address that one first. 

Then we can talk about all the other bloat and waste and opportunity to streamline at the federal level.  

"Trim the fat" is a terrible approach to reducing waste in private enterprises. What makes you think it would work for our government?

[Anastasis 23395]

2 minutes ago, ndawg said:

"Trim the fat" is a terrible approach to reducing waste in private enterprises. What makes you think it would work for our government?

Don't get twisted up about three words.  Do you agree that we can trim military spending? 

[hornmpa96 2598]

3 minutes ago, ndawg said:

"Trim the fat" is a terrible approach to reducing waste in private enterprises. What makes you think it would work for our government?

I disagree with this point. I've worked for 2 Fortune 500 companies. Each company went through a period of downsizing and layoffs and in each, the first layoff was clearly easy. In all large organizations (including the government), there are people who aren't adding value, performing tasks inefficiently or doing things that aren't necessary especially if limited people are ever let go. I'm guessing the federal government has to have some of the same.

[babysdaddy 2718]

2 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

It's code for "no taxes".  There's really nothing else to it.

 

Rather, no new taxes plus there are certain things people don't think the government will be good at doing.  More/Larger government programs should require additional revenue through tax increases.  So when a politician says something like "free healthcare for all", small government advocates get antsy because it means their taxes are going up (to the reduced spending ability of their own family) and they expect the government will run it like a shitshow.  

[Neonmoon 38127]

1 hour ago, Continental Op said:

The people who say that generally mean "a government that only does the things I want it to do." 

This is the correct answer

[ndawg 1242]

26 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Don't get twisted up about three words.  Do you agree that we can trim military spending? 

Oh, absolutely. I think there's a lot of waste all over our government, not just the military -- just like there is a lot of waste in private enterprises. Our government could almost certainly provide more value to Americans for substantially less tax revenue. To narrow this to the military, Americans (and American interests) could be made even more secure for less total cost.

Slashing budget at the top is what I have a problem with. It's wishful thinking for how we'd like things to end up, without a plan to get there.

24 minutes ago, hornmpa96 said:

I disagree with this point. I've worked for 2 Fortune 500 companies. Each company went through a period of downsizing and layoffs and in each, the first layoff was clearly easy. In all large organizations (including the government), there are people who aren't adding value, performing tasks inefficiently or doing things that aren't necessary especially if limited people are ever let go. I'm guessing the federal government has to have some of the same.

Sure, but, those two anecdotes have a long way to go to suggest that both companies are any less wasteful over the long haul. Layoffs are the norm for these kinds of corporations. Remember, though, that the same dysfunctional managers responsible for accumulating all that dead weight are generally spared from layoffs. So what happens after the investors and executives make out like bandits from the drastic bottom line impact? The company promptly resumes course right back to where it started. And Fortune 500 companies have so much inertia behind them, as well as so much leverage at their disposal to thwart thriftier competition, that they really don't have get serious about eliminating waste in order to survive.

If we project our government's "return on tax investment" over the span of the next, say, three decades, I think we'd find that slashing budgets would not bring about the long-term improvements we'd hope for. And in the short term, they'd run the real risk of jeopardizing the crucial infrastructure that Americans depend on.

Libertarian ideals have merit; they are an important part of the landscape of our political theory. But a lot of libertarians (especially on the internet) have an Achilles heel. They often see a kind of intellectual elegance in being able to settle difficult policy matters by reusing the same small set of simple foundational premises. However, they're usually high on their own supply, and the rest of us see it for what it is: oversimplification. Libertarians are like any other radical movement; they love to bet on those radical ideas when they feel safe from any consequences. The trouble is that other Americans wouldn't be.

Edited October 22, 2020 by ndawg

[hornmpa96 2598]

Agree with your point that any cuts will need to be executed with a well-thought out plan to afford the "take advantage of any crisis" mentality

[ndawg 1242]

13 minutes ago, hornmpa96 said:

Agree with your point that any cuts will need to be executed with a well-thought out plan to afford the "take advantage of any crisis" mentality

Yeah, and the frustrating thing to me is that the goal intended by "trimming the fat" is such a self evident one that everybody should be on board with the idea. If Americans could have every benefit afforded by the government at a lower price, you could split the difference and give Americans even more using half the savings, and both conservatives and liberals would be happy.

Unfortunately, liberals would be suspicious that American citizens would end up with less (which, to be fair, has merit; budget cuts always trickle down) and today's conservative politicians are just too fucking stupid to be capable of pulling off any kind of well-thought out plan.

So, in reality, we're back where we started. It's a systems problem that can only be addressed with systems thinking.

[Incredulity 11555]

1 hour ago, ndawg said:

"Trim the fat" is a terrible approach to reducing waste in private enterprises. What makes you think it would work for our government?

What’s the quintessential difference between private and public entities?

[Anastasis 23395]

56 minutes ago, ndawg said:

Oh, absolutely. I think there's a lot of waste all over our government, not just the military -- just like there is a lot of waste in private enterprises. Our government could almost certainly provide more value to Americans for substantially less tax revenue. To narrow this to the military, Americans (and American interests) could be made even more secure for less total cost.

Great.  I don't have any disagreement. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Anastasis

[Damor 1232]

3 hours ago, Continental Op said:

The people who say that generally mean "a government that only does the things I want it to do." 

This is definitely true, but isn't it equally true for those who want the government to increase its influence and size?  They usually have pretty particular ideas about how they want it to 'do something about X.'

I'm pretty much completely politically disaffected these days, but what frustrates me about the growth of government (and especially the overreach of the executive) is that neither 'team' will consider the consequences of increasing governmental influence when they lose control of it.  If you give government the power to do something you want, you've also given it the power to undo it (or do the opposite).

After watching the unhinged mewling of birthers over Obama and the derangement that Trump has caused, with apocalyptic convulsions from both sides, maybe we should consider allowing government a little less control over our lives.  I had kind of hoped that the lesson we would learn from this presidency was that if we've given our government/executive so much power as to be seen as an existential threat, perhaps that's a little too much?

Edited October 22, 2020 by Damor
I'm already regretting posting in here

[TwiceHorn 31282]

1 hour ago, ndawg said:

Oh, absolutely. I think there's a lot of waste all over our government, not just the military -- just like there is a lot of waste in private enterprises. Our government could almost certainly provide more value to Americans for substantially less tax revenue. To narrow this to the military, Americans (and American interests) could be made even more secure for less total cost.

Slashing budget at the top is what I have a problem with. It's wishful thinking for how we'd like things to end up, without a plan to get there.

Sure, but, those two anecdotes have a long way to go to suggest that both companies are any less wasteful over the long haul. Layoffs are the norm for these kinds of corporations. Remember, though, that the same dysfunctional managers responsible for accumulating all that dead weight are generally spared from layoffs. So what happens after the investors and executives make out like bandits from the drastic bottom line impact? The company promptly resumes course right back to where it started. And Fortune 500 companies have so much inertia behind them, as well as so much leverage at their disposal to thwart thriftier competition, that they really don't have get serious about eliminating waste in order to survive.

If we project our government's "return on tax investment" over the span of the next, say, three decades, I think we'd find that slashing budgets would not bring about the long-term improvements we'd hope for. And in the short term, they'd run the real risk of jeopardizing the crucial infrastructure that Americans depend on.

Libertarian ideals have merit; they are an important part of the landscape of our political theory. But a lot of libertarians (especially on the internet) have an Achilles heel. They often see a kind of intellectual elegance in being able to settle difficult policy matters by reusing the same small set of simple foundational premises. However, they're usually high on their own supply, and the rest of us see it for what it is: oversimplification. Libertarians are like any other radical movement; they love to bet on those radical ideas when they feel safe from any consequences. The trouble is that other Americans wouldn't be.

Another super-solid post.  Libertarians border on anarchists, to me.

"Smaller government" isn't a cure all for anything.  But it's something that should enter into the legislative calculus every time.

[washparkhorn 9935]

Small Government = Neoliberal Economic Policy - in play since the late 70's/early 80's. Think Thatcherism. 

Neoliberal economic policies have lost their luster. In reality, it came to mean private enterprise performing government functions and manufacturing sold off to China and other low wage and low employment and environmental protection nations. 

Now that Communist China gains wealth through our brand of capitalism, there is little needed from the US (other than our military might). Our citizens are broke and cannot be depended on to spend their way out of deflationary trends.  

Our military and the dollar as the reserve currency are all that we have in the barren cupboard thanks to 50 years of neoliberalism disguised as small government. International capital doesn't give a fuck about US citizens. Rather than preparing for this reality, austerity measures have left us unprepared. 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11810]

4 hours ago, ztejas said:

I mean I know you're probably just baiting people in here to shit on them, but if you're actually in the dark about how these things work then you could start by looking at how state governments operate - California vs. Texas for example.

Are bathroom bills and Israel pledges "small government"?

[Continental Op 3934]

1 hour ago, Damor said:

This is definitely true, but isn't it equally true for those who want the government to increase its influence and size?  They usually have pretty particular ideas about how they want it to 'do something about X.'

I agree with this to a certain degree.  The difference is that people who want to increase the size/scope of government tend to at least be straight about it and tell you what they want done whereas Limited Government Guy is quite often being disingenuous and only wants to shrink the size of government as long as it doesn't involve his ox getting gored and/or only wants the government to be smaller when his party isn't in power and is cool when spending like a drunken sailor when his party is in power. 

[TwiceHorn 31282]

2 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

Small Government = Neoliberal Economic Policy - in play since the late 70's/early 80's. Think Thatcherism. 

Neoliberal economic policies have lost their luster. In reality, it came to mean private enterprise performing government functions and manufacturing sold off to China and other low wage and low employment and environmental protection nations. 

Now that Communist China gains wealth through our brand of capitalism, there is little needed from the US (other than our military might). Our citizens are broke and cannot be depended on to spend their way out of deflationary trends.  

Our military and the dollar as the reserve currency are all that we have in the barren cupboard thanks to 50 years of neoliberalism disguised as small government. International capital doesn't give a fuck about US citizens. Rather than preparing for this reality, austerity measures have left us unprepared. 

I think this is true, but recall that Thatcherism was at least partially in response to the disastrous nationalization of many British industries.

Just as you can blindly and stupidly deregulate industry/capitalism, you can blindly/stupidly over-regulate industry.

SmallER government is not a universal answer to anything.  Neither is big government.  There's a happy medium in there somewhere.  I tend to prefer to err on the smaller side, without being stupid about it.

Edited October 22, 2020 by TwiceHorn

[Incredulity 11555]

11 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I think this is true, but recall that Thatcherism was at least partially in response to the disastrous nationalization of many British industries.

Just as you can blindly and stupidly deregulate industry/capitalism, you can blindly/stupidly over-regulate industry.

SmallER government is not a universal answer to anything.  Neither is big government.  There's a happy medium in there somewhere.  I tend to prefer to err on the smaller side, without being stupid about it.

Die!!!

 

bothsider!!!

 

die!!!!

[Cacti 191]

5 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Trim the fat, focus the military mission, redeploy a big cut to domestic needs rather than policing the brown people of the world and essentially subsidizing the domestic programs of other wealthy nations.

In order to make significant military cuts, we’re going to have to drastically modify or perhaps even phase out some of our many outdated military treaties. Either because of formal treaties or ‘understandings’ the U.S. has obligated its citizens to, in effect, subsidize generous social programs of many of our so-called allies. Several of those countries—South Korea, Japan, and the whole of Europe—are, or should be, capable of defending themselves, yet they refuse to significantly increase their defense budgets (I’m specifically looking at you, Germany). Those countries (and others) have depended on our military largesse for over 70 years, and it is past time for these countries to leave our ‘basement’ and make their own way.

[TwiceHorn 31282]

16 minutes ago, Cacti said:

In order to make significant military cuts, we’re going to have to drastically modify or perhaps even phase out some of our many outdated military treaties. Either because of formal treaties or ‘understandings’ the U.S. has obligated its citizens to, in effect, subsidize generous social programs of many of our so-called allies. Several of those countries—South Korea, Japan, and the whole of Europe—are, or should be, capable of defending themselves, yet they refuse to significantly increase their defense budgets (I’m specifically looking at you, Germany). Those countries (and others) have depended on our military largesse for over 70 years, and it is past time for these countries to leave our ‘basement’ and make their own way.

This is true.  It's a shame that the way Trump has approached this has tarnished the idea, because it is a valid one.

And, we're going to have to face the fact that military spending is an indirect jobs program.  One of, if not the, largest.

You can't "wholesale" deregulate, and you can't wholesale cut military or any other spending without some dire consequences.  And you shouldn't do it as some sort of punitive measure, as Trump is wont to do.  You gotta be smart and strategic about it.  Which may be beyond our elected representatives.

[Cacti 191]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

And, we're going to have to face the fact that military spending is an indirect jobs program.  One of, if not the, largest.

Yes. And if there ever is a large military reduction, it would necessitate a massive program for retraining affected personnel. Such a bill would rival the W.W. II G.I. bill in both scope and cost but would be a sound long-term investment, imo.

And who knows. Maybe the savings—along with higher taxes—would allow us to provide basic health care to all our citizens.  

[Fudge Nuggets 19151]

9 hours ago, Incredulity said:

Airline Deregulation Act of 1978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act

In 2011, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was a special counsel to the U.S Senate Committee on the Judiciary in the 1970s and worked with Senator Kennedy on the bill, wrote:

What does the industry's history tell us? Was this effort worthwhile? Certainly it shows that every major reform brings about new, sometimes unforeseen, problems. No one foresaw the industry's spectacular growth, with the number of air passengers increasing from 207.5 million in 1974 to 721.1 million last year. As a result, no one foresaw the extent to which new bottlenecks would develop: a flight-choked Northeast corridor, overcrowded airports, delays, and terrorist risks consequently making air travel increasingly difficult. Nor did anyone foresee the extent to which change might unfairly harm workers in the industry. Still, fares have come down. Airline revenue per passenger mile has declined from an inflation-adjusted 33.3 cents in 1974, to 13 cents in the first half of 2010. In 1974 the cheapest round-trip New York-Los Angeles flight (in inflation-adjusted dollars) that regulators would allow: $1,442. Today one can fly that same route for $268. That is why the number of travelers has gone way up. So we sit in crowded planes, munch potato chips, flare up when the loudspeaker announces yet another flight delay. But how many now will vote to go back to the "good old days" of paying high, regulated prices for better service? Even among business travelers, who wants to pay "full fare for the briefcase?"^[6

 

Motor Carrier Act of 1980 (trucking deregulation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Carrier_Act_of_1980

 

 

I would love for the cost of air travel to go up if it kept the poors away.

[formermav43 4599]

32 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

I would love for the cost of air travel to go up if it kept the poors away.

If you’re having to deal with the poors on your flight, then you’re one of them.