Imagining Less Government

Most people cannot imagine living without government any more than they can imagine living without oxygen. In medieval times, the serfs had trouble conceiving of life without a powerful Church; they had trouble envisioning self-rule rather than rule by lords. Modern Canadians are not so different. We take a massive state for granted. We not only endure big government; we demand it. We expect politicians to provide us with a whole range of services; we look to government in times of crisis and conflict. Whether the problem is SARS or university tuition, 9/11 or street crime, the media and the electorate have learned to look to government for answers. We demand action and intervention. We punish politicians when a situation goes wrong.

Whether Canadians cast ballots for the Tories, the Liberals or the NDP, Canadians cast ballots for the status quo. An entire infrastructure of lobbyists, big unions and patronage appointees exist to keep the machinery of state funneling money to established interests. Furthermore, as occurs so often in human culture, traditions becomes expectations. Past social patterns become not only habit; they become sacrament. Even if charity is a better deliverer of aid than bureaucrats, a politician who cuts services is condemned as heartless. Even if past involvements overseas have resulted in hostility and dysfunction, a politician who refuses to fund a new war is viewed as weak on Communism or terror.

Human society in many ways follows laws of elementary physics. The size of the state is dependent on physical inertia. There is resistance to change in human society as much as there is resistance to change in a boulder at rest. And conversely, just as a body in motion will stay in motion, our expectations of government are driven forward by their own momentum. Government may solve one social problem by creating another, but the voter and the special interest will most likely seek yet a third action or program to remedy the distortions created by the first two.

However, as a student of history might observe, the patterns in a human society can change. A unitary Church is often replaced by freedom of religion; long-time dictatorships have given way to democracy. So too a libertarian society can replace a Canada of centralization and control. There is nothing inevitable about having government take up half of our society. There is no reason why so much of our income has to be taken from us in taxes. Like 19th Century peasants or women, we have been raised to be passive. But we retain the means to freedom.

The market mechanism is responsible for a great deal of the social progress we have witnessed in the last two hundred years. We live longer, safer, and healthier because of the social and technological innovations brought about by capitalism. Although social scientists and historians typically give credit to heroic protagonists and social movements, a more honest assessment would suggest that it is usually capitalism which produces innovations, and civil society and the state which apply these innovations to enact change. In the case of governments, the state can redistribute the market's resources; the state can parrot, copy or hold back. But rarely can the state innovate in the way in which charities and companies do.

We do know that the Communist Bloc collapsed miserably because its state enveloped the entire economy and society. The massive state crowded out the market, and thus destroyed the mechanism responsible for progress and prosperity. Likewise much of the Western world hobbles along a little more successfully than the Communists, arguably held back to a proportional degree by a large and error-prone state. Societies with somewhat less state control than the norm, such as Ireland, Singapore or the United States, are typically the most innovative and productive nations on Earth. And given the insights coming to us from economic research, there is reason to believe that voyaging further away from Communism and statism will produce even greater vitality.

Perhaps our state-enveloped country is much like an ancient tribe. We remain constrained by tradition and fear, when we would benefit from embracing change.