http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Is-my-government-too-big-tp7580507p7580552.html
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 8:24 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Roger,
Two points:
2) I don't think
anyone has a problem with the government scaling in needed ways to the
population. Yes, as cities get bigger, they need more police officers, firemen,
etc. When people complain about "the growth in government", I think what they
are really complaining about is the proliferation of new laws, especially when
they involve "mission creep", in which the government starts to regulate newer
and less necessary parts of their lives. When there are too many rules for
people (i.e., legislators) to keep track of, you start to get schizophrenic
sounding contradictions, which are necessarily enforced arbitrarily. Much of
our problems could be solved if, at least for a short period, we convinced
legislators to brag about how many laws they repealed, rather than them
feeling they had to justify their existence by proposing and passing new laws.
To make matters worse, when the per capita size of government remains the same,
and the number of new laws continues to grow at staggering rates, it must
be the case that enforcement of the old laws and regulations starts
slipping. This means even more arbitrary enforcement and uncertainty.
1) The federal government is only getting smaller because it's outsourcing essential services to private contractors.
2) When people say government is big, they mean the money.
3) When people say government is big, they mean the laws.
These are all interesting points, but I don't have any statistics to offer one way or the other.
My puzzle is that I truly believed that the nature of bureaucracies was to bloat, but these numbers don't support that hypothesis. Why? Are the results peculiarly American? Do they vary between cultures? Is there a right size for government? Can we stop arguing about big (at least in numbers of employees) and start working on better now?
-- rec --
PS - The Pennsylvania gun laws gave me a chuckle, because I can imagine how that mess started. I had ancestors carrying long guns around western Pennsylvania in the 18th century, there's a 1790's will by a great^n uncle bequeathing his rifle to his brother and his whiskey still to his father, unless dad got carried away, in which case mom should sell it.
This life-style lead directly to the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion. Western Pennsylvania rebelled and militia from the rest of the state had to invade itself to suppress the rebellion, all during the 8 years of George Washington's presidency. You're talking about a place with very complicated attitudes about firearms that go way back.
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