Small government
It is believed by many that making government "smaller", or even dismantling it altogether, will result in a more peaceful and less coercive society.
The method almost always proposed for accomplishing this is to reduce or eliminate taxes (especially income tax) in order to "starve the (government) beast" of the revenue it needs in order to operate.
What will happen if such initiative succeeds, however, is not absence of government but an oligarchic quasi-government that is more deeply hierarchical and more coercive than what we have at present. This is largely because destroying government will not destroy political power; it will only remove the means by which we attempt to channel political power towards the general good. Political power comes from technology, not from government.
Some myths about small government:
- government is the source of all political power
- government is the source of all oppression
- government has a monopoly on force
- monopolies would not exist without government
Related
- Republican Party/small government: the Republicans seem to be simply exploiting the popularity of small government ideals for their own gain.
Memetic Responses
- "You want more freedom, don't you?", said the fox to the chickens.
Links
Reference
Discussion
- 2014-07-31 (reshare of James Carville meme/quote)
- You can't just make political power go away. If you try to shrink it in one place (e.g. "defunding" or otherwise disempowering the federal government), it grows in other places -- corporations take over, or local warlords/fatcats take over, because there's nothing to stop them.
- if you just "defund" the government as a whole, the parts you like are going to be the first parts to go, and the parts we all hate will take over. Why? Because those are the parts that benefit the special interests -- the Big Money Entities who are increasingly in control of the process and who will make sure the most oppressive and awful parts are maintained even as the democratic process is "defunded" and destroyed.