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

Kevin Freels reasonerkevin at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 23 02:16:10 UTC 2010




>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

Some really good points here. I certainly prefer the "big" government we have to the smaller "governments" of Somalia, Congo, and other such places. Although government slows capitalism, I'm certain that's not an entirely bad thing. I think the key is to create an environment where the people with money feel comfortable investing it. A big bloated government that can't move very quickly to change anything at all and is shackled by it's own bureaucracy is much safer than one where some twit can get some crazy idea and make drastic changes quickly. I don't recall that ever being considered in the frequent debates about lilbertarianism.  
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