Right-Sized Government: What "Right" looks like

BELIEVE IT OR NOT:  the primary reason for creating our Constitution was to expand the size and scope of America’s central government, not reduce it... In the fall of 1786, just three years on from the end of the American Revolution, Congress called for a Constitutional Convention because it was clear to any serious patriot at the time that the central government devised under the Articles of Confederation had not been provided with the tools it needed to match its responsibilities. By the time delegates convened in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, our infantile country was already well on its way to becoming more accurately known as the “Disunited, Quarrelsome, and Internationally Impotent States of America.”

The means, however, by which our Founding Fathers set upper limits on this governmental expansion – Federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. – usually get all the press; and it’s this extra focus that causes some people to unwittingly come away with the sense that the Constitution ultimately reduced the size of our national government, when in fact it substantially expanded it.

Ever since 1787, the effort to strike the right balance between too much and too little government has been the American people’s ongoing and very honorable calling.

GOOD GOVERNMENT

Societies form whenever groups of people discover they share the same collective goals, and they unite to pursue them.  Societal goals ultimately fall into one of three categories:

· Way of Life:  promoting/enforcing religious, cultural, and values-based norms

· Universal Usefulness:  providing interstate infrastructure, universal services, and basic research 

· Insurance (against): 

o   Unfairness:  mean people, tyrants & cheaters (justice & regulatory systems), free-loaders & gangs (education), and international bullies (defense & diplomacy)

o   Physical or Economic/Financial Disaster:  Response agencies, catastrophic risk funds, and income/market safety controls/nets

o   Illness & Old Age:  Safety nets, basic research, and some healthcare services

Societies form governments to facilitate and administer their efforts, enabling their people, as Jefferson observed, “to live in safety and happiness.” The degree of balance that a government achieves – between large and small, state and federal, democratic and representative, etc – is what ultimately “promotes the General Welfare.” America’s Founders designed the federal government to limit its activities to facilitating interstate cooperation and providing the public with goods that the private sector cannot adequately (or profitably) provide them.

But being “limited” doesn’t mean our central government can’t be vigorous – as long as government stays focused on its legitimate roles and gets managed efficiently, bigger can mean better. Unfortunately, however, our central government has never been less vigorous or effective. Its current impotence is the end result of decades of widespread and worsening gerrymandering, an absence of reasonable congressional term limits, the lingering existence of an outdated Electoral College system, and an inexplicable leadership deficit from successive Presidents who have lacked the courage to tell the American people ground truths about America’s existential issues because these truths have run against their polarized political exigencies.

RIGHT-SIZING GOVERNMENT

Capitalism is supposed to create winners and losers. And that’s fine except for the fact that, in unfettered capitalism, winners gain increasing competitive advantage with each successive economic success, tilting the scales evermore in their favor and creating ever-widening economic disparities. Eventually, the “have-nots,” with nothing to lose, seize the “have’s” property, and take down society in the process.   

In a capitalist society, therefore, right-sizing government means avoiding one that’s too small – a government that stands aside while winners soar ever-higher and losers sink ever-deeper – and one that’s too big, where society wastes its resources by over-insuring and/or asking government to do tasks that the private sector can (profitably) do better.  

Whenever government gets too small, capitalism’s “vanquished” will either, 1.) “Hang in there” and become exploited by their “conquerors” … or 2.) Drop out of the “game” once it grows too unfair … or 3.) Get knocked out of the game involuntarily when their out-competed enterprises go bankrupt (“creative destruction”) and there's no recovery ladder available for them.

On the other hand, whenever government becomes too big, it eventually quashes the People’s Spirit by sucking vitality and opportunity out of their economy. High taxes and onerous regulations render economic participation “no longer worth it” – there’s just too little expected gain to justify exerting the efforts required. Contestants step away and human potential grows increasingly untapped.

Small government is the “survival of the fittest & luckiest.” Big government is the equal distribution of "quiet desperation." Success lies in creating a government that’s “Radically Medium.”