Can the Rampaging Leviathan Be Stopped or Slowed?

Liberty and Power at the History News Network ^ | November 3, 2009 | Robert Higgs

[Captain Kirk]

In a recent commentary titled “Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Political Economy,” I endeavored to show that an analytical understanding of past growth in the government’s size, scope, and power does not permit us to prescribe effective means of stopping or slowing this growth, particularly any simple “silver bullet” remedy, and I specifically disclaimed any personal knowledge of “what is to be done” toward this end. Responses to this commentary, some of them from keenly intelligent friends of mine who insist that diagnostics and therapeutics must be firmly linked, lead me to believe that I did not make myself sufficiently clear.

One respondent wrote, “Higgs must be speaking with tongue in cheek, for a man of his intellect simply must have a few solutions at least.” Well, yes, on one level, I have many “solutions” to propose. The problem comes when we ponder why I’ve just put quotation marks around the word solutions. The reason pertains to the links that connect my understanding of why government has grown with measures that might be taken to stop or slow its ongoing growth.

My understanding of the process by which government has grown in the United States and many other countries since the late nineteenth century is not easy for me to summarize briefly. It involves (1) a structural-ideological-political process operating in a persistent manner to produce long-term trends, (2) a crisis-ideological-political process operating during a series of discrete episodes of “national emergency,” and (3) interactions between these two processes, which should not be understood as independent of one another, but as identifiable aspects of the single herky-jerky historical evolution - sometimes regular, sometimes erratic - of a politico-economic order. One upshot of this complex process might be seen if we were to examine a series of “snapshots” at, say, thirty-

[Uncle Sham]

Just a few states need to pass one law, This One, and the shrinkage will begin immediately.

[Dudoight]

What I want to know and no one can tell me....if we get govt health care in the form they are presenting....can we revoke it if we ever get sanity in the congress?

[BlackVeil]

In addition to his three causes, I would add the natural tendency of the state, as an entity, to proliferate and add to its powers.

[Uncle Sham]

See link from post two.

[Dudoight]

I would love for each state to have that right...but the states depend on so much in federal funds....I doubt if such legislation would ever even be considered. (in re: link)

[Old_Grouch]

I love Robert Higgs, he always writes thought-provoking pieces. This one is quite discouraging, but very realistic.