Without slogans some politicians would be speechless. The catchphrase presently doing the rounds in the UK and America is ‘small government’. Like all such rallying cries its precise meaning is unclear, so allowing a range of interpretations. When I suggested to one of its users that the mess Britain is in resulted from ‘small government’ in financial services and other fields, he replied ‘I take it that you mean regulation.’
Well, yes, I regard regulation as an important function of government. It is surely the government’s job to legislate, either to regulate activity, or to enable it. Certainly, one can imagine regulation operating in some areas without government involvement, but there are many activities that need to be regulated by disinterested parties, and that often means by government. Absence of the government from these activities leaves a vacuum that is invariably filled by those with a vested interest in what is and is not regulated. We find government regulation replaced by direction from self-serving cartels, or industry associations working to diminish competition. I recall that price rings were common in the fifties, with cut-price retailers being investigated by private detectives to find out where they got their supplies.
One definition of small government that I have seen is along the lines of ‘government should be confined to defence of the realm and the few other areas that people cannot manage themselves’. Ironically, it is often the people who subscribe to this view that call for the abolition of trade unions, or the banning of strikes. It appears to escape their notice that if government had been confined as they wish, many of the benefits of a developed society that we take for granted would not exist. Even in the USA, many of the technological developments that we enjoy emerged from government funded research, not from the private sector. Ironically, when the technology is handed over to the private sector production is outsourced abroad, thus leading to technology transfer to a foreign government.
In my view, we need to distinguish between the private individual and the corporation when we think of ‘small government’. I believe the French government to be too intrusive into private life, with its inheritance laws for instance, but I prefer that to its withdrawal entirely. As Isaiah Berlin put it, ‘Freedom for the pike means death for the minnows’.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Tom
Just some random thoughts on your blog.
Of course political slogans are ambiguous. The ‘best’ ones pandering to all prejudices.
Regulation is a tiresome by product of government whose true objective is to cling onto power or at least the trappings.
Regulation being subject interpretation (even on the increasingly rare occasion when the real intent is clear) is bound to cause difficulty.
Humans are too smart for their own good……….or maybe not quite smart enough?
Hello, Jazz. Not much there that I would argue with.