LESS GOVERNMENT

There is lots of talk about "less government" these days. But when you look at what some people are talking about, it is easy to understand why their schemes are just that: talk!

For example, many talk about eliminating one department or another or even a whole layer of government. What they do not talk about is doing away with the functions of that department or level of government.

The net effect of their schemes is that the "programmes" are shuffled into another department or layer of government which then expands to do the job. There are few, if any real cost savings or reduction in red tape and bureaucratic interference in the economy or private lives.

One part of government that is often overlooked are the more than 700 boards, agencies, commissions and tribunals that control just about everything in the province. There's lots of room here for less government!

When Libertarians talk about less government they mean it! Regional Government would disappear as would the Ministries of Citizenship; Culture, Tourism and Recreation; Housing; Francophone Affairs; Consumer and Commercial Relations; etc. Many others will be phased out or privatised.

The Provincial government would be cut back to basics in the first phases of the plan and limited to those basics. Similarly, municipal governments would meet the same fate with equally fixed limits on what they can do.

This is the only way that government will be brought under control and taxes reduced.

Libertarians have the plan based on principles that work. They are ready to start work!

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One of our members offered the following analogy.

Imagine 10 people are shipwrecked on a desert island. If they are to survive, all 10 have to "work" to meet their own needs and possibly to help others meet theirs. Now put 1 person in charge of overseeing the other 9. That is your "government." That leaves 9 people to do the work required to support 10. Or put 2 in charge. Now the other 8 have to provide for 10 and so on.

That in a nutshell illustrates a major problem with our economy. The bigger the government, the more the rest have to do to keep up our standard of living and why if this keeps going there will be no permanent resolution to our economic woes. The size and scale of the global economy temporarily hides and delays the inevitable.

The Fraser Institute is a great resource for information on the negative impact of government on the economy. The December 2009/January 2010 issue of Fraser Forum has an article titled Ontario's Spending Problem. Here are a few facts from this article.
- Government spending increased 30% during McGuinty's first term ($73.9B in 2003/2004 to $96.5B in 2007/2008), an average rate of 6.9%, twice the average rate of inflation plus population growth.
- The estimate for 2011/2012, the end of McGuinty's second term, is that government spending will have increased by 60% since 2003.
- Had the Liberals limited spending increases to the rate of inflation and population growth, the province would have a cumulative surplus of $25B by the end of the first term and could have reduced debt, interest payments and taxes.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent, Winnipeg-based "think tank". Its mission is to develop and popularize policy choices that will help Manitoba and the eastern prairie region live up to its vast but unrealized economic potential. They have a wide variety of articles mostly promoting smaller governemnt and free markets. For example;
- Ontario, like California, Going for Broke, A reprint of an August 25 article in The Globe and Mail. "California (population 36.4 million) has sovereign debt of $60-billion (U.S.) – $1,650 per person. Investors rate California’s 10-year bonds as slightly less risky than Croatia’s. ... On the other hand, Ontario (population 13 million) has debt of $220-billion (Canadian) – $16,900 per person. .. So why does no one appear fussed by Ontario’s record-setting accumulation of debt?"
- A People's Tax Cut: Abolish the corporate tax - only real people pay taxes by Maxine Bernier, MP.
- An interview with Maxine Bernier, MP and former Executive VP of the Montreal Economic Institute.

Gerry Nicholls wrote a column published in the Hamilton Spectator on Monday August 13, 2007 titled "That's Not Cricket! But it Could be ..."  In it he lists several of the 'grants' dished out from the Liberal 'slush fund' at the end of the 2006-2007 fiscal year.  These are excellent examples of how government thinks it knows how to spend your money better than you.  Read column

See a speech by Tasha Kheiriddinof the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to the 2004 Annual General Meeting.  In her talk, “Province Under Siege: Fighting for the Rights of Ontario Taxpayers,” she explained how we can hold politicians accountable.  She addressed various taxation issues - from over-taxation to unfairness and discussed the growing role of the state and what to do about it. 

Also at the 2004 AGM, Gerry Nichols of the National Citizens Coalition discussed how politicians, bureaucrats and the courts have imposed an election gag law on Canadians that strips away our most basic and democratic freedoms. He explained why gag laws are wrong; why they are dangerous and how the National Citizens Coalition is battling to restore free speech.  His presentation is here.

Self-government versus the State

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” wrote James Madison. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” From this basic insight, Madison then went on help forge a Constitution whose “checks and balances” would, he believed, effectively curb potential abuses of government power.

In If Men Were Angels, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs examines some of the key assumptions that underlie Madison’s analysis. Unlike Madison, philosopher John Locke, and the late economist Mancur Olson, however, Higgs is skeptical that a limited government, protective of individual liberty, is sustainable.

Higgs’s argument, however, never lapses into the utopian assertion that a stateless society would be without problems. Rather, he argues, a stateless society—or, to put it in positive terms, a society of self-government—would have fewer problems than a society under a state. There are two basic reasons behind his argument. “[F]irst, the most vicious people in society will tend to gain control of the state,” Higgs writes, “and, second, by virtue of this control over the state’s powerful engines of death and destruction, they will wreak vastly more harm than they ever could have caused outside the state.”

“My arguments in support of self-government, as opposed to society under a state, may have little point, of course: if people do not choose the state, but as I think, simply have it imposed on them, then it makes no practical difference that the state is unnecessary to solve any particular kind of problem and that life without the state would be superior,” Higgs continues. “Here, however, I have tried only to show how we may think more clearly about the choice between a society under the state and a society composed of self-governing individuals. Assuming that we really had such a choice,” he concludes, “the better option seems to me fairly obvious.”

“If Men Were Angles: The Basic Analytics of the State versus Self-government,” by Robert Higgs (7/11/07)

Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government, by Robert Higgs

Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, edited by Edward P. Stringham

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