No. 23: Smaller Government Is Better Government
November 5th 2008 20:12
One may ask: "What is the purpose for government?" The definition I learned in college political science class is: "To resolve conflict." Three simple little words say it all.
Without a common need, desire and goal, conflicts will always arise during living interactions. Conflicts are only resolved when either compromise or force is applied. Standing by and hoping the conflict will go away only happens with friends who internally recognize the common need, desire or goal respectively and respectfully, and then each acts accordingly. Normally, however, people compromise by outwardly identifying the common denominators of need, desire and goals. If this is not obtained, then force will be applied by the more powerful. The least powerful will have to submit to the will of the more powerful or revolt, resulting in an escalating conflict that requires the increasing application of diplomacy or force.
For example, if one wants to drive down a smooth navigable road, he or she wants a well-engineered and constructed paved road. Conflicts arise by where the road will be located, whose property is affected, which firm will construct it and how, costs, who pays the costs, its maintenance, and so forth. The same general idea is applied to education, welfare, the transfers of goods and services, tariffs, taxes, defense interests, and other needs, desires and conflicts, whether politically or religiously administered..
In order to identify, validate, track and settle the interactive human conflicts, man has organized itself to avoid as much conflict as possible by
establishing powerful controlling entities, empowering them with rights not usually granted to individuals or small groups. Although these are easily recognized as governmental entities, the same applies to religious and other civic organization also.
All control in human interactions is pyramidal. Just take a look at your governmental entities, religious affiliation, lodge, employer, club or sport team. All have to be organized into hiearchies; the leaders holding the most power diminishing it down, level by level, to the lowest unit.
Administering the demands of such entities requires delegating the responsibilites of internal and external recognition, oversight, and enactments. The larger the organization the more information gathered and the more people needed to transfer this information, resulting in an ever-growing bureaucracy.
You may ask why if, as an organization grows requiring more bureaucracy, would this post's heading imply that a smaller government is better? Would not the ratio of governmental size be directly proportional to its personnel numbers? Efficiency is the answer. Depending on the organizational structure, a government can become more efficient if it lays out certain guidelines to control its bureaucratic growth.
I submit that the nature of a bureaucrat is to move information or tasks from oneself to another. One cannot expect to be promoted unless one has more information to transfer. For example, if a bureaucrat is given the responsibility of providing rental assistance to new immigrants, then the more immigrants arriving increases the informational transfer requirements per capita. For the individual bureaucrat to rise in the ranks, thus receiving more responsibility, pay and power, then more information must be received and transferred to another entitity. More people will need to be hired below this particular bureaucrat to transfer the information and on and on until the informational flow becomes self fulling. In order to supply the workloads, efforts will be made to increase the inflow of immigrants and also the information gathered on each respective immigrant. Both actions will increase the informational flow. All bureaucracies fill workload voids by creating unnecessary data to increase the informational flow! (i.e. More and more details per immigrant and family will be gathered and documented.)
This law of direct portion between the flow of information and the hiearchial rise of the bureaucrat applies to all levels of government from the Federal level to the town council, from the church administration to the pastor, from the pastor to the church secretary... It applies to finance, education, economic, defense, infrastructure, transportation, law enforcement, judicial, taxes, tariffs, donations, harbors and etc.
One of the largest of many reasons Marxism and socialism have generally failed is that there were not enough checks and balances on their bureaucratic growth. Over time, far too many people were sucked into the systems to feed the resultant informational requirements.
The way to a more efficient and smaller government is to periodically "sunset" departments, divisions, work pools and workers if the need is not verifiably justified through appropriate analyses. Note: I said, "verifiably justified." It is inhumane and unethical for anyone to fire or lay off another without due cause.
It all goes back to the famous axiom: "Moderation in all things."
As I write, the U.S. is embarking on roads that will unnecessarily increase its bureaucratic size. Let us hope wisdom will prevail by its leaders reflecting on past mistakes and from what other countries have learned already.
Please keep it between the lines.
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