A RANT ON SMALL GOVERNMENT:
THE RICH & THE POOR
SMALL, SIMPLE GOVERNMENT
One of the ideas that right-wingers always love to bring up is ‘small government’. It’s an attractive idea at face value, because everyone likes the idea of more freedom and less bureaucracy. A small, simple government just sounds good. For a subject as complex and labyrinthine as government, small sounds like the best idea ever. But ‘small government’ is often code for making the government less effective. For limiting the scope of the government’s reach. For rolling back regulations and restrictions. For turning public services over to private companies and contractors.
In other words, ‘small government’ is another way of turning over power to the rich and, well, powerful.
Small government is an attractive idea, because big government is confusing and bureaucratic. But the answer to this problem is not to limit the power or scope of the government, because government is the only thing keeping the rich in check. And herein lies the problem: the rich have bought and paid for so much political favour that government more often than not works in their interest — and nobody else’s.
While the world is — and has been — watching this unfold in the United States, this is a problem affecting governments all over the world. Money talks, politicians squawk, and everyone else is locked out of the conversation. This is not the way government should work. If anything, the reverse should hold true.
BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
I don’t believe in the idea of ‘small government’ because I know that government — or rather, the ideal of government — is the best tool for the weak to stand up to and survive the powerful. Government by the people for the people is a good idea. That’s how it was intended to work in the best cases, and best places. The idea of government isn’t the problem — it’s the application of government. There’s a rot in the wood that might have been there from the start. Now it’s all we can see. By the people, for the people was the idea. The ideal. The dream. But government is now by the rich and powerful, for the rich and powerful.
‘Small government’ is, in part, a reaction to this idea. If government isn’t working the way it should, then let’s reduce it, the thinking goes. But we know where that leads. It’s a fool’s promise that makes everything worse. Small government doesn’t fix the problem, i.e., the rich disproportionately benefiting from policy — it exacerbates it.
This is because of one simple truth: the rich don’t need the government at all, except as a tool to insulate against the poor. Yes, both groups, the rich and the poor, use the government against each other. The irony is compelling, but the difference is clear: while the rich remain powerful with or without government, the poor only have power under one circumstance: collective action…which, in this case, means the government.
There’s only one thing the rich fear, whether as an abstract idea or an innumerable threat, and it’s the poor.
THAT DIRTY WORD: SOCIALISM
To be blunt: the rich don’t want socialism because they’re scared of the poor taking their money. They’re scared of not being rich, or of losing what they’ve worked for. To be fair, there are plenty of poor people who fear socialist policies for the same reason, but don’t realize how they stand to benefit.
Here’s the dirty little secret of socialist countries: rich people still exist in them. And to be perfectly honest, the poor still exist too. The difference in these places is that the poor are looked after. They don’t starve. They don’t die needlessly. Their government protects them.
This is what governments are for, and this is what we’ve lost sight of.
Whether through law and order, or healthcare (in most places), or infrastructure, governments are there to protect us. They don’t always succeed, and bureaucracy can often get in the way, but the ideal still remains.
Governments exist to protect the weak.
This is still the essential work of government, but its larger purpose has been skewed by partisan politics and greed. While a lot of this falls on right-wing institutions around the world for advocating pro-corporate/pro-wealthy/anti-tax/anti-poor policies, left wing institutions succumb just as easily to the pressures of the super rich.
FIX THE ROT. GET TO THE POINT
The rot in government is that it protects the rich from the poor, instead of the poor from the rich. Instead of the weak from the powerful.
Government can and should work — big or small, capitalist, communist, or socialist — as long as it exists to protect the weakest from the strongest.
Because the strongest don’t need protection.
The rich don’t need protection.
And as much as they benefit from the same roads and social safety nets and infrastructure as the poor do, they’ll continue to benefit without them. The primary purpose of government, if it is to succeed, is to protect the poor from the rich. To make sure the person with the least is taken care of and can survive, because the person with the most already will.
Calls for ‘small government’ are almost always cries on behalf of the rich to get this damn government out of their way. If you want a small government because you don’t like endless bureaucracy and confusion, I understand. But that doesn’t mean limiting what the government can and should do. The scope of the government — in most cases — is not there to oppress, but to protect.
And if your representatives are campaigning to join the government on the platform that they’re there to reduce it, please ask yourself why. Why join an organization only to undermine it? Why limit the very power they’re hoping to wield?
Ask yourself if you trust them, and then ask yourself who benefits if they succeed. Because it’s not the poor or the middle class — who throughout this rant, I assure you, are one and the same. It’s the rich and powerful.
Small government is great for big business.
