Big government is a religion

I am very grateful for the broad spectrum of readers we have at Against Crony Capitalism. We certainly have a particular take on how best to deal with the growing crony capitalism in this country, and that is for the most part to shrink the enabling organ, government. It seems plain as May Day to us that this is the best way forward and we have considered the ins and outs of crony capitalism for a long time. But there are those who disagree with us.

Even with the piles of evidence we have amassed (we started writing on crony capitalism in 2011), and which is available from other sources, some people continue to believe that if only we could get “good” people in government, things would be great. It’s not the size of government they argue. It’s the nature of government. If only we could get the corporate money out of politics (rarely is the same said of unions which at times give more than corporations to politicians) things would work for “the people.”

We could have a single payer health care system that is top flight. Vacations for 2 months. Free college. Social equality with the less fortunate brought out of systematic poverty (created by a bourgeois power structure of course) and the systematically rich brought down to size. We could have a fossil fuel free economy. Mass transit could whisk us from place to place for “free.” And golf courses could be converted into picnic grounds for the newly vacationed.

There used to be a tendency among big government people to at least call for a reduction in the size of the military (sigh) which I always found laudable. But since the military is no longer a threat to the Soviet Union (and is no longer seen as a weapon of “capitalist” imperialism) it has become cautiously embraced by statists in recent years who now see the value of large works programs emanating from the Pentagon. (The US military has become by far the world’s largest social engineering petri dish.)

“Liberals” have also cautiously (sigh again) accepted the surveillance state. The general tendency to fight Big Brother, often found on the left of my childhood is pretty much gone. As the state has become ever larger Big Brother has become a friend to statists. To make a revolution one must break a few eggs as they say, even if one of those eggs is human dignity and privacy. The ends justify the means.

I used to wonder why it was that in the face of what seems fairly obvious, that markets are as natural as water flowing downhill, that a society should make it as easy as possible for the people with the best ideas and most outstanding work ethic to create value for the rest of society, that governments are always used to enrich an establishment at the cost of the everyday person, that so many people continue to believe that perusing an ever larger state is somehow good for society. How could anyone believe that the state ever could work generally for the benefit of “the people?” It seemed (and seems) insanity to me. Government just doesn’t work that way. It never has.

But I don’t wonder any more at such things.

I believe there are 2 main factors involved with people who are enamored with the state. One makes sense. One makes less sense.

The sensible factor as I see it is that people just value different things in life to varying degrees. Many people are not entrepreneurs and could really care less about pushing the business and intellectual envelope forward. It has been said for instance that in Denmark, supposedly the happiest country on earth, people feel comfort in not reaching too high. In not challenging the status quo. In being part of the collective. If life is the life of a cog in a machine, so be it. At least I get my vacation at mid-summer.

The Scandinavian “Law of Jante”

Believe it or not I respect this worldview and understand it. There is something to be said for a life without too much excitement. Banality is under appreciated by those who have never experienced too much “excitement” in their lives.

That being said, it’s not any kind of life for me nor for many others. We are a species that explores. That pushes toward the horizon. It is our nature. To some degree we need to put miles under our feet. To take pleasure in the next hunt. To enjoy spoils and to some degree to cry tears.

But to be part of a collective, to find a kind of identity within a group is understandable. In certain situations one can argue that it is entirely rational.

I don’t think however that of the two main factors (as I see them) that drive people to statism that the “cog in the machine” mentality is the most important.

The most important factor is the “religion” of statism, of big government, the cult of societal management, a Utopian vision of heaven on earth.