A Simple Theory of Government

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From Kevin Williamson,

The problem for the U.S. political class is that the provision of actual public goods is nowhere near large enough of an enterprise to justify all of the clients they want to pay on the public payroll or all of the large, complex, lavishly funded agencies that they want to establish for the purpose of putting themselves in charge of them. So they have to return to the old protection-racket model: Much of American government today exists simply to stand between you and your own goals to collect a fee.

I agree with the theory that government evolved as a protection racket. I tend to think that protection rackets are very natural forms of business. You start out by protecting someone from another bad guy. And when you become the top-dog shakedown artist, it still pays to claim to be protecting someone from another bad guy. One can argue that this is why disparagement of the market is such a core part of the ideology of government expansion. What this ideology says is, “You don’t want the market to steal from you, right? Give us money and power, and we’ll protect you.”

Of course, from the point of view of those who support government expansion, it is the market that is a protection racket, and those of us who advocate for markets are the ideologues.

18 thoughts on “A Simple Theory of Government”

  1. To me it looks like Government in most of the developed countries conform pretty well to the stationary bandit model, with the bandits being the median voter, but with lots of scams mixed in by which the median voter is scammed by the politicians.
    The median voter is like the mob demanding things, but the politicians are like corrupt accountants messing with the books to hide what is really going on. Intelligent, high SES Democrats are happy with the Politicians scamming the people (things like hidden matching FICA) because they think it is for the good. They think what the voters do not know allows for more charity for the poor (the average USA think he pays into SS and everyone gets out of SS in direct potion to what they put in even though the low earners get more that double high earners per dollar they were taxed). Intelligent Republicans do not like it so much know fighting it too much is a losing proposition.

  3. The bootlegger/baptist model is the most accurate of the simple non-charitable views, IMO. Market disparagement is appealing to both groups. The bootleggers prefer rent-seeking over actual competition, and the baptists just don’t like how the market can facilitate vice (or perceived “unfairness”, or whatever…) I don’t like the Rothbardian government-is-a-gang-of-thieves conception. The little old lady in the children’s section of the library is less of a mob extortionist and more of a product of people’s sincere desire to provide useful library services, coupled with a librarian union that opposes privization

    • You’ll find that every gang of thieves finds jobs for family members who, if you try not to think too hard about how they got their jobs, are perfectly nice people.

  4. That’s what’s so special about Nudge. Once you run out of other bad guys, you can run a protection racket protecting people from themselves.

  5. Is that the political class that has presided over the reduction of public employees for the last eight years?

    • Table here.

      On the one hand, non-military executive branch has been quite stable over the last 50 years, but on the other hand, it’s dropped considerably on a per-capita basis, but on the other foot, bureaucracy is much more productive with information technology, but on yet the other foot, this doesn’t capture contractors of various kinds.

      At any rate, most of the drop was military, which is one of those weird situations in which one might expect the fiscal-stimulus Neo-Keynesian Economists to have been railing against, “Keep the armed forces manning levels stable! It’d be a huge mistake to drop them significantly in a state of prolonged low growth and liquidity taps! Let’s build a new Carrier Strike Group or add another Army Corps – that’ll prime the pump of the economy’s engine, just like in WWII!”

      But they didn’t. Some of them talked about ‘federal workers’, but that’s obscuring what was really happening, since all other federal workers continued to grow during the recession, and even peaked in 2011 and that number has barely declined at all since.

      I mean, it’s like there’s some amazing coincidence where all the Keynesian economists also aren’t big fans of the military, an orthogonal issue to the imperatives dictates by their macroeconomic models. What could cause such mysterious perfect correlation?

      • Liberals don’t like military types, being that they are on the civ-barb spectrum. So that they are paid by taxes wouldn’t offset the political incompatibility.

        Even if it did support for a clearly superfluous military level would really test the “bury jars of cash” conceit.

        • Btw, the military (and increasingly medical costs) are also viewed as taking the money away frI’m the discretionary and redistributitive arms. Note how the military was used as a political football and wedge during the sequester. So in a big way this proves the point.

          Also, the more legit actions of government are increasingly used as hostage bargaining chips by the bureaucratic administrative arms as a parasite becomes inextricable from the host.

          So, which arms 8f government have receded in a time where they had zero choice but to recede, and which have advanced?

      • No, most of the drop wasn’t military but it doesn’t look like much a drop either. Civilian employment jumped during the crisis peaking in 2010, but the peak was still below 1989 and had dropped during the 90s. Military did drop during the 90s but has been more stable than civilian since though it also peaked in 2010 and has dropped slightly as well since.

      • As in, sometimes they can’t even save their disoensible lackeys. And maybe it is even their fault. So yeah, if they overexpanded, then of course they have to retract when the sicker goes down. I am curious as to why you think that means anything? Nobody said they were already omnipotent.

  6. The Mafia was just government for criminals, along with being criminals themselves. I remember a movie about Lucky Luciano that ended with the “commission” being formed. Luciano makes a speech describing what they’re doing as being like a corporate board. But really they were the UN for the crime families. Another is the scene in ‘Goodfellas’ that introduces Paulie (the boss). There the mob is described as police for those who can’t go to the police. But really, the “boss” and his capos are the government for his territory. The boss gives crews license to do conduct their business, mediates disputes, metes out violence to, fines, violators, etc. And, of course, the most fundamental of government, imposes taxes on criminals working in their territory and lawful businesses (for protection).

    If only the crime bosses got past the feudal lord stage and controlled their immediate greed, they might pose a real threat to “official” government by permitting a free market to operate and currying favor with the “voters”.

  7. “Hello, operator? What’s the name of those war criminals turned mercenaries who get paid to protect you from criminals who want to get paid for protection? (gasps) Oh yeah! The A-Team!”

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