Some political philosophy...

[Olin]

During the last few weeks I've been paying a bit more attention to the
political discourse by the two parties, and there are several things
that have caught my attention. I don't know if there are relatively
straightforward answers to these problems that I'm not thinking of, or
if there is a serious dearth of critical thinking at our highest
political levels. My biggest confusion is the 'Big Government' debate.
Now I've known for a while now that one of the Republican 'Big Tent'
issues is their fundamental aversion to and mistrust of 'Big
Government'. After watching the presidential candidates, their
surrogates, and everyone else jabber on about such things, and after
hearing my roommates (some of whom are considerably more conservative
than I) extol the virtues of small government, and the vices of a
large one, I found myself at a complete loss as to what anyone was
actually talking point. So my first question is this: What does it
even mean to say a government is a 'Big Government'? This phrase is
tossed about with startling ease considering (at least on my view) it
is very unclear what is meant by it. Is it one where the government
employs a large number of people? Is it one that has a lot of money?
Does it depend where it gets that money (taxes, trade revenue,
etc...)? Is it big if the number of people involved is big? The area
it covers, the legal power it wields, the number of programs (whatever
that means) it supports? I guess my point here is, that any one of the
metrics mentioned (and I'm sure I've missed many, or permutations of
the ones already here) can count as big government, and it's far from
clear which of these (or a combination thereof) we are supposed to
recognize as 'Big Government' and all that entails.

But this is simply a problem of the sloppy language, and while
important, it seems that by including a few more details, we might
come to a clearer understanding of what it is to be a 'Big
Government'. There seems to be a second question here, clearly related
to (and possibly even contingent on) the first, and potentially more
damning. That is: what exactly is it that is so bad about a 'Big
Government'? Try as I might, I cannot see how any of the previous
possibilities of what might count as a 'Big Government' might be
inherently bad, nor how their negations inherently good.
Instantiations of such governments can be bad or good, but I don't see
how the bigness or smallness in itself can determine the normative
worth of a government before the fact. There are certainly bad 'Big
Governments' - the USSR might be a particularly apt example. But this
fact doesn't necessitate that all 'Big Governments' are bad, nor that
a 'Small Government' is good. Juntas and Oligarchies might rightly be
considered 'Small Governments', yet there are many cases where these
might be very bad. This brings to mind another point, and that is, by
what standard to we evaluate good or bad governments? Morally,
logistically, economically, legally, socially? None of these seem
necessarily connected, nor even related, so which is it? Why is a 'Big
Government' bad for America? Is it morally bad? Economically bad? I
know these two in particular get run together in contemporary
discourse, but I think that reflects more on intellectual sloth, than
on any truth to their connection.

Does any of this make sense? Am I right to be confused about this
whole issue? Does anybody have anything to contribute, and can anybody
set me straight?

[Kevin]

I think these are all valid points, and I agree with them (I won't try
to address them all). My big issue is that "big government" tends to
be defined in terms of "excessive" regulation, which often means for
the people using these terms, "any regulation." The supposition is
that regulation is equivalent to restriction, and therefore entails a
restriction on individual freedoms. This assumes that all political
regulations are fundamentally negative, and impose lawful restrictions
on behavior. This is particularly insulting to people in populist
rural areas such as Montana and Alaska, because they are accustomed to
self-sustainment and independent living. The evaluative criteria to
judge "good vs. bad" governments, by superimposing an axis of "small
vs. big" governments does not really follow from a systematized
normative logic.

While I think there is a very dubious vagueness to all of these ideas,
I also think there is a fundamental incoherence in the ideas from
which I try to discern some semblance of reason. Often, objections to
"big government" have been justified by "free-market" economics--a
concept that most people don't really understand (me included). But I
think the idea that any regulation is bad does not make sense. Not all
regulations are negative (in fact, "regulation" is an inappropriate
term, and it is better to use something like "infrastructure," which
implies both constraints but also a productive capacity). We can think
of it this way: while there are restrictions on how we drive on a
highway--we cannot drive into the other lane, or off into the median,
etc.--the highway still produces certain freedoms of transportation
and enhances our overall social cohesion. Likewise, the Montanans and
Alaskans who want the "government off their backs" are only there /
because/ of the government, which subsidized these frontiers. More
fundamentally (and maybe more controversially), we can't take away
political structure and then have a "free" "unconstrained" economy.
Marx's point in "Das Kapital" was that the fundamental principles of
our economy are only possible /because/ of the political "regulatory"
structures. A free-market capitalist economy is not a natural thing,
but requires certain social, historical, and political institutions as
a backdrop to sustain it.

So we really can't just jump in and make a priori evaluations about
"big" or "small" governments. We have to look at the particular
instantiations and how they are conducive or not conducive to the
other political and ethical institutions that we value as fundamental.
The idea of "big government" is just political language, and really
effaces some of the fundamental relations underlying society. This
political language is also the reason that questions of how we are
actually quantifying "big" are so obscure. All these definitions are
blurred beyond recognition. The result is an empty designator that
derives its most important meaning from the emotive efficacy of the
phrase, not from its substantive content.

That might have just been a rant in response to a rant, but I hope it
had some relevance to the topic.