In a <\/span>recent piece for <\/a>The Unpopulist<\/a><\/em>, I argued that being anti-state isn\u2019t the same thing as being pro-liberty, and that libertarians should put more weight on the latter. Today I want to follow up by looking at one way anti-statism can go wrong: when the urge to cut government outpaces a plan for how to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n Suppose you think the state should be much smaller than it is. It doesn\u2019t follow that any cut is good, or that we should just start hacking away with a chainsaw at a stack of programs. The details matter \u2014 and they\u2019ve rarely been thought through. Libertarians, classical liberals, and conservatives have all made the case for a smaller state. But what we still lack is a theory of <\/span>how<\/em> to shrink it.<\/span><\/p>\n The most obvious task for such a theory will be to distinguish between those government programs that should be eliminated from those that shouldn\u2019t. Of course, this is also where we will find the most well-trodden divisions between established political theories. Those on the political left will want to keep or expand most existing welfare programs and environmental regulations, for instance, but maybe to cut corporate welfare and military spending. Moderate libertarians like me will want to cut or eliminate some but not all of the above. And anarchists are happy to put the whole turkey on the chopping block.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s once we get past these initial questions that things get more interesting, and complicated. Because even if we could all agree in theory what an ideal government would look like, the fact that we need to <\/span>transition <\/em>there from where we are makes the whole process much more difficult and morally fraught.<\/span><\/p>\n For instance, suppose you thought that there\u2019s no principled reason why government should be in the business of regulating food and drugs. Or caring for the poor and elderly. Or whatever. Maybe the market or civil society could do those things just as well if not better. Even still, it doesn\u2019t follow that if you could <\/span>push a button<\/a> and eliminate those functions <\/span>today<\/em> that you should do so.<\/span><\/p>\n Why not? Consider the following (incomplete) list of the problems with which a theory of shrinking the state would need to grapple.<\/p>\n <\/a> (1) <\/strong>The Expectations Problem<\/strong> <\/span>– <\/strong><\/em>Even if you think a particular government program shouldn\u2019t exist, the fact that it <\/span>does <\/em>exist arguably creates a reasonable expectation among people that it will continue. That reasonable expectation, in turn, arguably creates both moral and pragmatic reasons for a gradual transition, rather than an immediate one. The most obvious example here is something like Social Security, where immediate abolition would seem to be both unfair and disastrous in its effects. That said, there\u2019s a lot more to say about this issue. What makes an expectation \u201creasonable\u201d rather than \u201cunreasonable\u201d? My sense is that there is a moral dimension to reasonableness, not merely an epistemic one. I\u2019d want to say that slaveholders did <\/span>not <\/em>have a reasonable expectation that slavery would continue in 1860. Or, alternatively, even if they did it is not one that ought to have carried much weight in deliberations about how and when to abolish the institution.<\/span><\/p>\n (2) <\/strong>The Distributional Problem <\/strong><\/em>– <\/strong>Suppose the state has a bunch of policies which, in theory, ought to be abolished. These policies impose costs and benefits on different groups, with some policies conferring net benefits on one group, other policies benefiting some other group. Now suppose that a reformer arrives and starts eliminating some, but not all, of these policies. But the policies he cuts are all ones that benefit group X, while the policies he keeps are ones that benefit group Y. Even if, like me, you\u2019re skeptical about most claims of distributive justice, you\u2019ll probably think there\u2019s something objectionable about this situation. It seems to run afoul of the idea of equal treatment that is central to the rule of law. Still, there are puzzles here. If the government is unjustly coercing everybody, and then shifts to unjustly coercing only 20% of the population, is that better or worse? How do we balance the concern to minimize coercion with the belief that when state coercion is applied, it ought to be applied in a way that is compatible with norms of equal treatment and non-discrimination?<\/span><\/p>\n (3) <\/strong>The Vacuum Problem <\/strong><\/em>– <\/strong>It\u2019s tempting to think that when we abolish government programs or agencies that we are <\/span>destroying <\/em>power. The reality, however, is that power is never really created or destroyed. It is merely redistributed. Sometimes, to be sure, that redistribution can be enormously beneficial. Taking power from the state and putting it into the hands of ordinary people is almost always good, both in terms of giving people more control over their lives and in terms of avoiding the dangers inherent in concentrated, centralized authority. But ending a government program doesn\u2019t always mean that power goes back to the people. Sometimes, the vacuum created is filled by powerful private interests (think Russian oligarchs after \u201cprivatization\u201d). And sometimes it is filled by <\/span>other elements of the state<\/em>, as when the weakening of independent federal agencies is used to concentrate power in the hands of the unitary executive. As Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rusenblum write in their important book, <\/span>Ungoverning<\/a><\/em>, sometimes \u201cwhat replaces governing is not more freedom but the arbitrary rule of personal will.\u201d See also Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein\u2019s recent book, <\/span>The Assault on the State<\/a><\/em>, along with <\/span>this fascinating Reason interview with Mark Pennington<\/a> about his <\/span>new book on Foucault and classical liberalism<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n (4) <\/strong>The Politics Problem <\/strong>– <\/span><\/em>As an effort to dramatically cut back on wasteful government spending, <\/span>DOGE was a failure<\/a>. Some of my libertarian friends were surprised that Musk wasn\u2019t able to do more. But they shouldn\u2019t have been. DOGE was never about reducing government spending in the most effective way possible. DOGE was a <\/span>political <\/em>operation, and everything it did was shaped and constrained by the political needs of the administration it served. \u201c<\/span>Condoms for Gaza<\/a>\u201d had nothing to do with shrinking the state. But it sent exactly the right signals to the president\u2019s MAGA base \u2014 and that was the point.<\/span>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!QhkO!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61657de8-4855-4ece-a11d-c10442e4207a_1024x1024.png)
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Most readers of this Substack will be familiar with the ways that <\/span>public choice theory<\/a> explains the growth of government programs. Public choice theory teaches us that government programs grow because they invite rent-seeking \u2014 and rent-seeking shapes policy to benefit insiders rather than the public. But here\u2019s the problem: the same forces operate in reverse. Just as the growth of government is determined by political factors that have little to do with the public welfare, so too will any effort to <\/span>shrink <\/em>government be shaped by those same factors. There is no magic button that allows us to avoid the political problem.<\/span><\/p>\n