The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government by Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer
Authors: Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer
Ads: Link
Peter Lindert writes in his comprehensive international study Growing Public , increased public investments have always resulted in increased economic growth, and the net costs of social spending are essentially zero. Common sense suggests why. If less were always better, then the least regulated economies would be the most successful economies. The opposite holds. It is, in fact, the rules, regulations, standards, and accountability that government provides that fuel and lubricate markets. It is the investment in schooling, infrastructure, and health that maximizes the number and capacity of participants in the private sector. A robust state is not mutually exclusive with a free market; it is required for it. This is why there is no robust private sector on earth that isn’t accompanied by an equally robust public sector.
Consider that many of the 195 countries in the world have been running experiments in “limited government.” All are abject failures. If minimalist government worked, Somalia would be rich, stable, and secure and Canada would be a hellhole. Afghanistan would be a coveted destination and Denmark would be like a leper colony. In the comfort of a think tank in a country with air-conditioning and running water, to say nothing of the rule of law, it is very easy for American right-wing libertarians to pontificate about slashing government to the bone.
But ask any of them where they’d move their families if they had to leave the United States. Few would choose Afghanistan—a limited government state if there ever was one—over, say, Sweden or Japan.
Now, one might contend that setting up this slippery slope to Somalia is as much a debater’s cop-out as crying communism. Granted. But we state the case this way to highlight a simple truth: freedom isn’t free. This is true not only in the sense that it costs blood and treasure to defend freedom. It is true also in the sense that freedom, in anything other than an academic conception—that is, in the real world, with other people—means limiting one’s own sphere of action in the short term so that over the long term we can all do more.
Political failure. Perhaps the most practical test of the limited-government idea is whether its adherents, when they are in power, can put the idea into practice. They cannot. They never have. Ronald Reagan, who told us government was the problem and not the solution, increased government spending 69 percent during his administration and removed the stigma from massive budget deficits. George W. Bush gave us Medicare Part D, the Department of Homeland Security, and two wars that have cost trillions. We grant that there are many libertarian conservatives who, because of this political fact, are as frustrated with establishment Republicans as with Democrats. But libertarian conservatives have always had the luxury of criticism from the sidelines. They have never had to govern—until, perhaps, now.
Libertarian Blindness: No What, No How
It’s worth pausing and addressing the heart of the limited-government view and its libertarian roots. Libertarianism is Machinebrain thinking at its worst. It rests on a linear understanding of social and economic systems and on the falsehood that humans are reliably and inherently rational, calculating, and selfish.
David Boaz, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, writes that “Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And that “Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property—rights that people have naturally, before governments are created.”
Unobjectionable, this may seem. Until you think about it. For this worldview assumes that all humans can be counted on to be rational and to actually and always defend every other person’s rights. It also assumes that human societies are equilibrium systems, not prone to toppling over
Consider that many of the 195 countries in the world have been running experiments in “limited government.” All are abject failures. If minimalist government worked, Somalia would be rich, stable, and secure and Canada would be a hellhole. Afghanistan would be a coveted destination and Denmark would be like a leper colony. In the comfort of a think tank in a country with air-conditioning and running water, to say nothing of the rule of law, it is very easy for American right-wing libertarians to pontificate about slashing government to the bone.
But ask any of them where they’d move their families if they had to leave the United States. Few would choose Afghanistan—a limited government state if there ever was one—over, say, Sweden or Japan.
Now, one might contend that setting up this slippery slope to Somalia is as much a debater’s cop-out as crying communism. Granted. But we state the case this way to highlight a simple truth: freedom isn’t free. This is true not only in the sense that it costs blood and treasure to defend freedom. It is true also in the sense that freedom, in anything other than an academic conception—that is, in the real world, with other people—means limiting one’s own sphere of action in the short term so that over the long term we can all do more.
Political failure. Perhaps the most practical test of the limited-government idea is whether its adherents, when they are in power, can put the idea into practice. They cannot. They never have. Ronald Reagan, who told us government was the problem and not the solution, increased government spending 69 percent during his administration and removed the stigma from massive budget deficits. George W. Bush gave us Medicare Part D, the Department of Homeland Security, and two wars that have cost trillions. We grant that there are many libertarian conservatives who, because of this political fact, are as frustrated with establishment Republicans as with Democrats. But libertarian conservatives have always had the luxury of criticism from the sidelines. They have never had to govern—until, perhaps, now.
Libertarian Blindness: No What, No How
It’s worth pausing and addressing the heart of the limited-government view and its libertarian roots. Libertarianism is Machinebrain thinking at its worst. It rests on a linear understanding of social and economic systems and on the falsehood that humans are reliably and inherently rational, calculating, and selfish.
David Boaz, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, writes that “Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And that “Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property—rights that people have naturally, before governments are created.”
Unobjectionable, this may seem. Until you think about it. For this worldview assumes that all humans can be counted on to be rational and to actually and always defend every other person’s rights. It also assumes that human societies are equilibrium systems, not prone to toppling over
Similar Books
