[ExI] How Big is the Ideal Government? was Re: 78 percent don't trust big government -- well, DUH!

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message ----
> From: samantha <sjatkins at mac.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Thu, April 22, 2010 2:03:34 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] 78 percent don't trust big government -- well, DUH!
> 
> Giulio Prisco wrote:
> We Italians don't trust governments, big or small. 
> Ask anyone on the
> street, and they will say that the government is a big 
> machine to
> steal money from the citizens, and all politicians are greedy 
> thieves
> who go into politics to steal money.Yet, the government is still 
> here,
> even in our country, and shows no sign of going away or 
> becoming
> smaller. Actually, over the last 35 years I have only seen 
> government
> becoming bigger and bigger and more intrusive nanny-states, 
> everywhere
> (even in the US).

In some sense the size of government is necessary for the checks and balances of a parliamentary form of government to operate. Sure dictatorships are more efficient than beauracracies but what does efficiency matter when the aims of the dictator are self serving and corrupt? Better to let them waste money holding commitee meetings on how best to change lightbulbs than have the whim of a madman start a war or something. In addition, I am somewhat skeptical about what the "size of government" really means. If you are simply talking about the absolute number of federal employees, then it is natural for it to rise along with the population growth of the country overall. The current federal payroll according the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is currently about 2.8 million or about 0.9% of the U.S. population. This figure is dwarfed by those employed by state and local governments (19.7 million).
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Furthermore federal government is listed as a rapidly declining industry sector in this table.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_203.htm

Curiously there are approximately as many federal employees now as there were total Americans in 1780 but since then our population has grown over a hundred fold. So were there less than 2800 federal employees back in 1800? I don't know. 

I am curious if any of the Italians (or any non-Americans really) on the list know the percentage of their population that work for their respective governments? If so please post.
 
> How to run things without 
> government?

Well the number of possible alternatives is limited by our primate natures which make us naturally heirarchial. We tend to act like we need alpha-monkeys to pound on us if we start swiping bananas from our neighbors. Sadly the weight of historic and current evidence is that humanity either governs itself through the rule of law or the rule of men with guns. Take Somalia for example. It should be a anarchocapitalist paradise but instead it is a Hobbesian jungle. It has a per capita GDP of $600. Compare this with neighboring Ethiopia with a corrupt communist regime and a per capita GDP of $900 and it seems that even a very flawed government is better than no government at all. 

> I don't know of any alternative
> system that can work in 
> practice. If there is a viable system without
> government (or with a 
> minimally small government), how to implement it
> in 
> practice?

I am not sure it is simply size that is the problem. One could imagine distributed forms of government where *everyone* has some role in governance beyond a simple binary vote every 2-4 years. Perhaps a circular hierarchy for example. Imagine a hypothetical society wherein the population was equally divided into three castes: Rocks, Paper, and Scissors. Each would take orders from one caste and lord it over the next by the established rules of the universal childrens' game. Primate instincts for dominance and submission are satisfied and no one person has the power to break the world.

Well, we had a small government in the US before the 16th 
> Amendment allegedly made a general tax ok although expressly forbidden in the 
> Constitution as I read it.  At the time we passed it no one believed the 
> tax rate would every be over 5%.  Big laugh.  Give a government the 
> ability to tax everything just be saying so and it will get big and bloated fast 
> and power hungry.  Even then we didn't have that big a government until 
> post "Great Society".

We didn't have that big a society until post "Baby Boom". Security and freedom are somewhat mutually exclusive. If you want government to protect your property from petty warloards and armed criminals, expect to pay taxes. If you want to get rid of taxes altogether, then expect to get into a lot of gunfights with people who want your banana. 

So there have been historical instances of much 
> smaller governments even in quite powerful countries.  I don't think you 
> need government at all personally but that is a longish subject.  Besides 
> Murray Rothbard made the case a lot better than I can.

What would Rothbard say about Somalia, I wonder? There are not many places after all where one can buy assault rifles and rocket launchers at the local swap meet.


Stuart LaForge 

"What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight." - Joseph Joubert