It's primary time!

The original version of this was written shortly after the State of the Union address, but with the ongoing budget fights and GOP primary season filling the airwaves with talk about the size, scope and sustainability of government programs, now is as good a time as any to publish it.

The idea for this blog began when your pie maker was riding his bike to the farmer's market and contemplating the surprisingly complex web of connections required to support his pie-a-week habit. It's hard to imagine a more "progressive hipster" image than the twenty-something pedaling off to buy local produce while thinking about the environment and social justice. However, of the many things your pie maker has been called, "hip" is rarely mentioned and "progressive" hardly ever.

Instead, consider that this particular twentysometing was traveling on an unlicensed vehicle that requires no credentials to operate and for which he paid no special fuel taxes on a trail built with funds from leasing a public toll road (Public-Private Partnerships!). His objective was to conduct cash transactions with multiple small businesses, some with "employees" clearly under 14, many who were clearly related to the owner, and some who's documentation status was probably suspect. The purchased food had no FDA labels or any inspection beyond the seller's and buyers' (caveat emptor!). There was at least one case in which an offer was made to partake in the production of a highly regulated and subsidized product in a way that involved neither regulation nor subsidy, and yet was still legal, mostly (moo!). Your pie maker baked in a home rented from the owner on the basis of a contract they negotiated with no federal interference. A company doctor handled most of your pie maker's medical care (and did an excellent job overall). Far from seeking an abstract notion of equality or justice, his wandering mind was concerned with how to avoid interfering with the complex systems required to keep pie fixings available. PMCIN, it seems, expands with little government help.

Ah, but it's GOP primary season year. What would the "Republican" version of this story look like? Based on demographic data from the last couple elections, your pie-consumer would travel to the nearest suburban big box or supermarket in his pickup truck or SUV while trying to decide whether to buy a pie from the store's bakery, freezer case, or maybe one of the chain restaurants in the shopping center. He would contemplate the necessity to maintain current regulatory, economic and military policies to support his pie-a-week habit because between the mortgage and car payments things are pretty tight, and while the system is clearly unsustainable, the day of reckoning has clearly not arrived. Economic growth requires specialization, and time spent making pies at home is time away from working or more thorough relaxation.

Let's look for the "small government" in this Red State version: Sitting on a state-issued ID card in a registered vehicle with government imposed safety, pollution and materials requirements on a tax-and-debt funded road and fueled by a hydrocarbon that provides more money for socialism than George Soros, the transportation side of this story is a story of central planning. At the store, staffed by people whose documentation, demographics, health and retirement plans all must match imposed guidelines and buying products from subsidized farms with mandated labels, the body politic has clearly chosen regulation over markets to manage information. Even the payroll of the store and its suppliers, likely traded on the commercial paper market, has implicit explicit backing from agents of the USG. Meanwhile, it's a safe bet that this fictitious pie-eater's home mortgage was backed by the US Treasury in hopes of increasing his consumption potential, and thus economic growth overall.

Is it possible to have suburban prosperity without a coercive agency to ensure that the food is safe, that enthnic agitation is minimized, that the roads are in good shape (without disruptive toll collection), that loans (like Savings Accounts) are guaranteed and that, in general, any individual's capacity to do harm is kept to a minimum while their capacity for consumption is maximized?

History suggests not. A "small government" is usually seen as a weak government by its citizens (like Mitch McConnell, look up his comments on last year's oil spill), who generally demand security and prosperity before their basic Lockean rights (see Hannity on torture and detention of US citizens labeled "terrorist"). This forces governments to restrict individual liberties as technology and economic progress give citizens greater ability to expand into their neighbors' interests. The Tea Party's response to the State of the Union Address supports this observation: replace "freedom" with "purchasing power" and Rep. Bachman's statement makes a lot more sense. The reason six years of the GOP holding two branches of government lead to government's largest expansion in history is not due to moral failings or the 9/11 attacks. Very simply, suburbanism requires too many assumptions be and remain true (so that people can borrow against them) for any free or unregulated system to be allowed to emerge. Not, of course, that any of the candidates for office can say that . . .