Government is being sold to Americans as a panacea for every problem. But since government is a massive organization of people with less information and worse (often conflicting) incentives than citizens acting for themselves, augmented by coercive power, those are false promises whose main result is eviscerating liberty. The only way government can really benefit all Americans is when tightly constrained to the small realm of enforcing only equal, “natural” rights for all, reserving other choices to individuals.
Philosopher Herbert Spencer may have best analyzed the appropriate limits on what government can do well enough that citizens would want it to do in his “Representative Government--What is it Good For?” His insights merit repeating on his April 27 birthday.
“Our political machine…Its parts are extremely numerous: multiplied, indeed, beyond all reason. They are not severally chosen as specially qualified for particular functions. No care is taken that they shall fit well together: on the contrary, our arrangements are such that they are certain not to fit...had the problem been to find an appliance for the slow and bungling transaction of business, it could scarcely have been better solved...”
“Besides devising measures to prevent the aggression of citizens on one another, and to secure each the quiet possession of his own...[governments] unhesitatingly take on themselves to provide for countless wants, to cure countless ills, to oversee countless affairs...confident that they know what knowledge is most required...”
“[W]hat must be the knowledge and capacities of those who shall achieve it?...If there be any lack of insight respecting the mutual dependence of the many functions which, taken together, make up the national life, unforeseen disasters will ensue from not perceiving how an interference with one will affect the rest...”
“See, then, the immense incongruity between the end and the means…on the one hand the countless difficulties of the task; and on the other hand the almost total unpreparedness of those who undertake it...”
“Countless facts prove the Government to be the worst owner, the worst manufacturer, the worst trader: in fact, the worst manager, be the thing managed what it may. But though the evidence of this is abundant and conclusive...Legislators, thinking themselves practical, cling to the implausible theory of an officially-regulated society in spite of overwhelming evidence that official regulation perpetually fails.”
“[I]ncompetent to oversee and regulate the countless involved processes which make up the national life; [representative government] nevertheless has quite enough intellect to enact and enforce those simple principles of equity which underlie the right conduct of citizens to one another...it does not unfit it for discharging the comparatively simple duties of protector…this all-essential role of government…”
“Moreover, the complexity, incongruity of parts, and general cumbrousness which deprive a representative government of that activity and decision required for paternally-superintending the affairs of...millions of citizens; do not deprive it of the ability to establish and maintain the regulations by which these citizens are prevented from trespassing against one another...the objections which so strongly tell against it in all its other relations to society do not tell against it in this fundamental relation.”
“The original and essential office of government is that of protecting its subjects against aggression...In becoming so constituted as to discharge better its essential function, the government becomes more limited...Increasing its ability to perform its true duty, involves decreasing ability to perform all other kinds of actions.”
“[R]epresentative government is the best for securing justice...the worst for all other purposes...These various incapacities, which seem to tell so seriously against the goodness of representative government, are but the inevitable consequence of its more complete adaptation to its proper work...”
“[T]hese deficiencies tend to hinder it from doing the things which no government should do.”
Herbert Spencer saw representative government’s infirmities as limitations on government’s ability to do what it has no business doing, but not for its one essential role of defending inalienable rights from trespass. Americans should pay renewed attention to that lesson, because a government constrained to that role, rather than one which increasingly violates citizens’ rights as it expands its reach in all directions, was why our founders entrusted our liberty to democracy. And it is the only basis that can maintain our liberty today.
No comments:
Post a Comment