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Dec. 22nd, 2008 11:09 amI wonder about the myth of small government in modern societies.
The only small governments left in the world tend to be in autocratic states of mediæval kinds. It seems in the nature of any government which has to monitor and legislate for complex systems (like banking, derivatives, defense etc) that the government never has enough in the way of resources to police/regulate/oversee the needs of the governed.
What worked for frontier societies in the previous centuries now seems....unable to cope with the complexities of the modern world.
Smaller government and less regulation would not have made our present financial crisis any better, nor would it have prevented or deflected the massive frauds perpetrated by folk lining their own pockets at the expense of ordinary investors. Less regulation would not have nipped Madoff's schemes in the bud.
It seems to me that when things get large and complicated, governing them becomes more costly and time consuming, and mistakes become concomitantly more expensive.
Of course, we could always opt for libertarian ideals and everyone righting their own wrongs: whereon the queue of folk with shotguns outside Madoff's apartment would stretch from Manhattan to Illinois, and we'd have a traffic problem that would cost a huge amount to regulate to prevent line-jumping....
But I'm just thinking aloud.
The only small governments left in the world tend to be in autocratic states of mediæval kinds. It seems in the nature of any government which has to monitor and legislate for complex systems (like banking, derivatives, defense etc) that the government never has enough in the way of resources to police/regulate/oversee the needs of the governed.
What worked for frontier societies in the previous centuries now seems....unable to cope with the complexities of the modern world.
Smaller government and less regulation would not have made our present financial crisis any better, nor would it have prevented or deflected the massive frauds perpetrated by folk lining their own pockets at the expense of ordinary investors. Less regulation would not have nipped Madoff's schemes in the bud.
It seems to me that when things get large and complicated, governing them becomes more costly and time consuming, and mistakes become concomitantly more expensive.
Of course, we could always opt for libertarian ideals and everyone righting their own wrongs: whereon the queue of folk with shotguns outside Madoff's apartment would stretch from Manhattan to Illinois, and we'd have a traffic problem that would cost a huge amount to regulate to prevent line-jumping....
But I'm just thinking aloud.
