Decisions, Decisions

More government vs less government for some reason this seems to have become a left right battle and it is not obvious to me why this should be so.


Potentially it seems to me to depend on your ideas on the role of government so I thought I would advance an answer which may or may not be the standard answer for I don’t know of a consensus on this point.

For me the government is there to provide the goods and services I would not be able to provide for myself, either through my own efforts or via purchase from other providers.

Obvious examples are the court system and defence forces. Roads are another example of something it is almost impossible to provide for yourself and while there are example of privately owned toll roads in reality these are just adjuncts to the main network provided by the government. Toll roads that went from your house to all of your friends houses would be a difficult ask for a private organisation.

There are other things that governments provide that are up for debate, an obvious an often debated one is health care. Through the world we have examples of an almost totally government funded and supplied health system such as NZ or the UK or essentially private only provision such as the USA and many hybrid versions in between. So the role of government in this is up for grabs.

Education is another issue where it is clearly possible for people to arrange for themselves and many do but in almost all jurisdictions especially the base level education of the young always falls to the state. This mostly seems to be part of a social contract whereby the state has deemed some level of compulsion into education and in return has provided the means of affecting this compulsion. Why this should be so for general education is not obvious as for example it is also compulsory for you to obtain a driving licence but governments do not seem inclined to hand out free driving lessons to enable you to reach the required standard.

The education anomaly seems to be government indulging in social engineering, e.g. the notion that governments have a role in promoting a “good” society for us all to live in and without exception a better educated populace results in a more harmonious society. But this is a very slippery slope as once you start telling people how to live their lives it is very hard to stop.

For example the NZ government along with others around the world has decided that smoking is bad and are doing their best to wipe out this habit with restrictions on advertising, the places you can smoke etc. Now I don’t smoke so I guess I should care less but on the other hand what business is it of the state if you smoke?

The much trotted out line is that the societal health costs burden outweighs your right to smoke. (a greater good for the greatest number argument) This is of course complete rubbish as the solution to this (assuming it is correct and I have my doubts about the maths, I mean what about the significant savings in superannuation payments as an offset) is to raise the tax on tobacco until it equals the costs, not run advertising campaigns trying to persuade people to quit or put gruesome pictures on the packets for the same reason.

Another example is superannuation, it is pretty clear I can save for myself so why do I need the government doing it for me?

When you look at a lot of examples of government, they fall into the “good” society category rather than my original definition and this where the big versus small comes in.

If you believe in my definition of government then it would tend to a smaller government, if you prefer the “good” society idea then I suspect it will be bigger. There are lots of reasons advanced for various policies but a lot of them are just meddling in peoples right to choose in the belief that it will make for a “better” society.