Administrative State

Even if we assume that sclerotic bureaucracies are able to identify the ever-elusive “public good,” what incentive do they have to serve it and not their own ends? Progressivism and its crusaders simply never bothered to answer this fundamental question.

Given any quantifiable standard, freedom and private property have proven themselves superior to planning, bureaucracy, and the welfare state. As the great laissez-faire economist Jean-Baptiste Say wrote in 1803, “Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!” Say’s message is as clear now as it was then: the mechanics of liberty work precisely because they respect our individual rights.

The progressive left and the technocratic right want the whole world to look like the political machines they know and love. They cannot tolerate the idea that self-governing communities outside their approach to dealmaking and spoils-centered politics could give people an attractive alternative.

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a decline in the level of trust in government, and a rise in distrust, to levels unprecedented in American history. But to think this is an entirely new phenomenon is a mistake: trust in government has steadily declined since the Great Society and the Vietnam War under Lyndon Johnson.