Systems and Society #004 - Should government be bigger or smaller?
And why this is the wrong question to ask
Lately, I’ve been reading posts and listening to podcasts by moderate Republicans, and a common theme that comes up is the size of government. Many libertarians and libertarian-leaning Republicans speak of making government smaller as an end goal. From a decision science standpoint, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Government by itself is not a value to be minimized or maximized. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s the government’s actions and the outcomes it creates that are either good or bad. Things like individual freedom, security, happiness, health, equity, and so on are the fundamental values we’d like to maximize. Government can either be beneficial or detrimental to those values.
There is a technique in project management known as the “five whys” which can be helpful here. The idea is to ask “why?” in response to a problem to get to the root cause. This approach works for value statements in decision analysis. Here is an example of how it might work:
“The government needs to be smaller.”
“Why?”
“Well, because more government is bad.”
“Why?”
“When the government tries to get involved, they make things worse.”
“Why?”
“There are always unintended consequences. They fix one problem, and other problems come up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just know that my life is worse when trying to navigate the maze of government regulations. “
“Why?”
“I pay a ton of taxes, and for what? High crime? And I still can’t afford health insurance. I’m working two jobs just to make ends meet, but if I use marijuana to relax at the end of the day, I can get arrested.”
After this chain of questioning, we now know some of the things this individual actually values. It’s not the size of government for its own sake. It’s safety, health, economic wellbeing (including both taxes and wages), and personal freedom.
Such a person, who probably identifies as a libertarian, may even be convinced to support certain government programs if it materially benefits one of those core values. For example, expanding government health care support would both benefit access to health care and economic wellbeing.
If this sounds farfetched, consider some of the signs seen at protests:
This person values their access to health care but appears to also value a small government, which is why there is some dissonance. Medicare, of course, is run by the US Government. But since this protestor has the belief that government is bad, and Medicare is good, they conclude that Medicare must be separate from government somehow. Regardless, the end result is this “small government conservative/libertarian” supports a government program because it directly benefits one of their core values.
Rather than considering whether the government should be big or small, we should all be focused on whether the government is effective, efficient, and equitable.
An effective government can accomplish the things it sets out to accomplish.1
An efficient government accomplishes those things in a way that isn’t wasteful.
An equitable government sees the benefits of effectiveness and efficiency spread out equitably across the population. (This is different from evenly across the population, but that’s a topic for another post)
Different people may have different sets of underlying values, or they may place different weights on those values. For some people, personal liberty is extremely important, but they aren’t particularly concerned about their health. For others, physical safety is the most important issue, even if they have to sacrifice personal liberty to get it.2
Rhetoric aside, if elected officials can deliver to their constituents what they actually value (and not necessarily what they claim to value), they will likely be successful as politicians and the lives of their constituents will be materially improved.
There is a line of political thought known as State Capacity Libertarianism, which has virtually nothing to do with classic libertarianism, which preaches “State Capacity,” which is the ability of the government to do what it sets out to do efficiently. They don’t say quite as much about equity, but that’s a part of it too.
This is a big part of the COVID-19 lockdown and mask debates. People who value individual liberty over health don’t want shutdowns. People who value health over liberty do. People who value the economy over both might want masks, but no shutdowns. See my paper about this tradeoff here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10479-022-04592-9