The Proper Functions of Government

The most fundamental ideological division between progressives and conservatives concerns their beliefs on the proper functions of government. What roles do we think should be given to government and what powers should be granted it to fulfill these roles? The answers to these two questions define our duties to each other as well as to what degree we can have individual freedom from the demands of our fellow humans. To answer these questions we should consider not only what we want, but also the general nature of society, and what is possible for government to accomplish. 

Whether we come to this inquiry as progressives, conservatives, or as followers of some other ideology or blend of ideologies, we should give special attention to our most basic assumptions. We have already had a look at  the basic assumptions of progressives in two posts, Progessives’ Basic Assumptions and The Complexity of Reality. I will reproduce them here.

1. Capitalism and free-markets are inimical to the material well-being of the people.
2. Ordinary people lack the power to withstand what progressives view as the rapacious oppression of corporations and of the wealthy “1%”.
3. Ordinary people lack the necessary knowledge and understanding to cause effective change, even if they had the power to solve their own problems. Therefore, it is the burden of the progressive, university educated nobility to do all the necessary thinking for the common people.
4. Reality is simple enough that educated, intelligent people in government can sufficiently control it  to do more good for society than harm over the entire country.

From what I have read, seen, and heard, if you were to take almost the exact opposites of these statements, you would be very close to the most basic assumptions of conservatives. Subtly modified, these would be the following.

1. Capitalism with free-markets is not only the most conducive organization of an economy for the material well-being of the people, they are the only way an economy can run with prosperity continuously for a long period of time. 
2. As long as government does not assist any corporations to obtain monopolies in their industries and the rule of law is enforced, ordinary people have the power to withstand economic oppression from anyone.
3. Although ordinary people often, but not always, lack knowledge and understanding of economic and social phenomena, they are the ones who best understand their own particular problems. Although some may lack knowledge and understanding, it is not because they are stupid, but because they have not given the time and effort to study and understand.
4. Reality, both in its social and economic aspects, is so exceedingly complicated that if a government tries to control it, it succeeds only with pure, dumb luck. Any government efforts to solve social and economic problems will more likely than not be counterproductive.

You will notice that despite the labels we take for their names, nothing in the basic assumptions of progressives says that they must  be more receptive to changes than conservatives, and nothing in the basic  conservative assumptions says that they must be generally hostile to all change. Both sides of this ideological war will be receptive to some changes and hostile to others. It is just that the lists of changes to be supported and changes to be resisted are different for progressives and conservatives. What these assumptions do display are different views of the role of government in society.

Let us begin with the so-called progressives. Because they believe people in general are lacking in knowledge, or wisdom, or power, or in any combination of these three, progressives believe they must use the government to solve the people’s problems for them, particularly those concerning rapacious capitalism. Because of the history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, progressives have had a long time to learn a certain contempt for capitalism. To some extent this disrespect was justified. One business cycle after another, with one depression following another seemingly endlessly, they could easily believe there was a flaw in capitalism. Bad economic times were due to “free-market failures”, they believed. At the beginning of the Great Depression, many contemporaries believed that the free-market failure leading to depression had been speculative excesses by investors and fierce competition between businessmen leading to business failures (See the sections “Contemporary Explanations” and “Liquidationist Theory” in the Economic History Association post, An Overview of the Great Depression).

Given this jaundiced view of capitalism and their opinion that the government must be the primary agent of change for the benefit of the public, progressives were particularly receptive to Keynesian views and doctrine. Keynesian theory justifies the extensive projection of the government into the economy’s affairs that progressives crave.

And it is not just intervention into economic affairs progressives desire. They have also viewed themselves as the agents for progress in other social problems as well.  Priding themselves on their sophisticated, scientific knowledge of complicated social systems, progressives have viewed themselves as the natural agents of change in such diverse social problems as a war on poverty, civil rights and race relations, and sexual relations. No matter how complicated the social problem, they were up to the task. In all problems involving humanity, they could use the powers of government to make life better for all humanity.

Noting these influences on progressives, there should be no surprise that progressives have developed a pronounced autocratic (I hesitate to use the word “fascist”, although I think its use is probably accurate) tendency. It is a much remarked-upon attribute of the Obama administration that, without Democratic control of Congress, it is ruling more and more by fiat (see here and here and here). Some Democratic intellectuals have even wondered if a form of democracy is an appropriate form of government for the United States, or if opposition to their programs should be criminalized,

Next, we will continue with the views on government of so-called conservatives. Probably the single most important aspect of reality that informs the views of conservatives is the all-embracing, mind-stretching, and ever-present complexity of reality. This property of reality applies to both the economic and social systems of humanity. I have already commented extensively on how this appreciation affects conservative views on economic problems. Because of the economy’s complexity, almost any government intervention in an economy, in the view of conservatives, is almost certain to be counterproductive in one way or another. See all of the posts linked on the thematic posts pages for Laws of Economics, Economic Crises, the Federal Reserve System, and Leftist vs. Neoclassical Economics for more on these views.

This conservative modesty on the capability of government to solve complicated problems extends to social problems as well. Problems concerning people interacting with each other in complicated social systems could hardly be less complicated than those for economic systems. Indeed, an economic system is just one example of an intricate social system of interacting people. Some conservative arguments concerning economic systems can be lifted wholesale from that context and applied to other social systems, with an appropriate change of verbiage for the change in context of course. For example, the conservative would argue that small groups of individuals are better placed to understand and solve their own problems than government is in solving everybody’s problems of the same type.

The conservative generally holds that as much as possible governments should stay out of the lives of people and to let them solve their own problems for themselves. This does not mean people must necessarily solve their problems as solitary individuals. As we noted with the Amputee Coalition in the post Progressives’ Basic Assumptions, people of similar interests can band together in special interest groups to assist each other in solving problems. We could expect that being closer to the problem, they would find at a socially less expensive cost generally better solutions than a government bureaucrat could. If for some reason it is impossible for the government to stay out of social problems, they should attack the problem at the lowest possible level of government, closest to the people involved.

We should take note of a minimal set of government functions that all progressives and all conservatives (with the exception of anarchists) would agree upon. Virtually everyone would agree government should enforce contracts, defend civil rights, and provide for public safety with police forces and an armed force to defend against foreign attack. Also, government should regulate land, air, and maritime traffic to avoid traffic accidents. Somewhat less unanimously, most would agree that the government should provide for some kind of monetary system, and to protect quality of the environment and regulate hazardous materials to avoid Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons”. Beyond this set of functions there is little agreement between progressives and conservatives. Given the starkly opposite basic assumptions they have about reality, they can have no further agreement.

Progressives believe that government should address all economic and social problems, and government should be given any power necessary to solve them.

Conservatives believe that government should not intervene in economic and social problems as much as possible. In some cases as in the guaranteeing of civil rights, this is not possible. In such cases, government should intervene as little as possible to achieve the government’s purpose. They believe government should be given only as much power as is required to meet their limited functions, and not one iota more.

So which set of basic assumptions do you believe best perceives the nature of reality: those of the progressive, or those of the conservative? How much power over your life do you want to give to government?

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