Entry Points Into Our Lives. The politically-driven expansion of the federal government is what enables special interest distortions to penetrate deeper and deeper into every aspect of a society. Each new special interest issue creates an “entry point” for politicians to burrow their way into our communities and into our homes. As the physical and financial size of government grows, more and more frequent opportunities emerge for politicians to abuse their power and tinker with the citizens’ lives at ever-more granular levels within a society.
Size is Everything to Politicians. The temptations are irresistible for politicians who must showcase their power and influence to their special interest benefactors to survive each political election season. The politicians have learned that the easiest way to prove their ability to get things done for their benefactors is by the number of government programs they create, the number of committees they’re on that manage ever-more government programs, and the size of the total budgets allocated to all these programs.
Self-Spawning Political and Economic Despotism. The survival instinct of politicians in today’s dysfunctional political system spawns a sinister, self-perpetuating cycle of government expansion, more regulation, deeper government reach into our lives, more expansion, more regulation, deeper reach into our lives, ad infinitum. As this process continues, the reach of government inevitably becomes all-encompassing; nothing in society is free from the manipulation and distortions of politicians and their legions of lobbyists and consultants.
The River of History Reveals Currents of Reality. Profit- and politically-driven legions of political operatives fiddle endlessly with the DNA of the communities they increasingly control through the financial dependence they consciously or unconsciously thrust upon their constituents. Indeed, the history of all despotic governments is the history of politicians who habitually fiddle in the pursuit of self-service until a free society is no longer free at all.
A Politician’s Support Always Comes at a Price. The incentives that politicians have to expand the Regulatory Protection Racket, and the proliferation of government agencies to administer their regulatory regime in every industry, have a profound impact on the integrity of the democratic process. Recall the “entry points” I mentioned previously: What does it mean for a politician to have more “entry points” into our communities? From a politician’s perspective, it has a very specific meaning: More entry points produce more manufactured reasons for special interest groups to seek a politician’s “support” on a perpetually increasing number of special interest issues. Naturally, a politician’s “support” always comes at a price: a large contribution to their election campaigns.
Small Government Reduces the Impact of Corruption. The principle of “small government” is not merely a partisan platitude. A desire for small government reflects an accurate understanding of how human nature and the destabilizing affects of large, complex systems inevitably drift toward systemic corruption and collapse. When systems of accountability are no longer effective, those systems mutate into politically-driven platforms of waste, fraud, abuse, tyranny, oppression, and all manner of human atrocities.
Citizens Should Relentlessly Demand Government Fat Trimming. The citizens of a country must consciously and continuously resist and trim the size of government with steadfast determination if they wish to live in a free society. Supporting public policies that minimize the size of government is the only political vaccine available to a citizenry to arrest the virulent mission creep that infects every aspect of a society within the ever-expanding reach of politicians and their special interest benefactors.
Size of Government is a Policy Byproduct, Not a Policy Objective. Partisan political operatives on both sides of the ideological spectrum like to cherry-pick facts to support various “big government” or “small government” agendas, but their ideological frenzy blinds them to a very simple principle: The size of government is a byproduct of the spending priorities of the politicians who control the government. Size is not a policy objective; it’s a policy outcome, a symptom of the collective fiscal discipline and ethical integrity of the politicians in control of the government.
Quality of Governance Matters More than Size of Government. If a government’s primary mandate is to deliver the most essential services to its citizens with a genuine intent to create an economic and cultural environment that empowers citizens to enjoy the most personal liberty and the highest quality of life possible, then all other policies will naturally and efficiently flow from that mandate. In this context, it doesn’t matter how big or small the government is as long as it is delivering the most essential services necessary to create the highest quality of life for the broadest number of its citizens.
About Ferris Eanfar
Ferris Eanfar has over 20 years of experience in technical, financial, media, and government intelligence environments. He has written dozens of articles and several books in the fields of Economics, Crypto-Economics, and International Political Economy, including Broken Capitalism: This Is How We Fix It and GINI: Capitalism, Cryptocurrencies & the Battle for Human Rights and the Global Governance Scorecard. Ferris is a cofounder of the Gini Foundation, which builds unique cryptocurrency systems to protect human rights, among other benefits; and the CEO of the AngelPay Foundation, a nonprofit financial services company with a mission to “return wealth and power to the creators of value.” To learn more about Ferris, please visit the About Ferris page.Visit Ferris on:
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