What Government Is For

Americans are going to hear a lot about The Proper Role of Government in the coming months as we work through this election season. As one who is prone to over-analysing just about everything and naturally distrustful of the very concept of the political party, I thought I ought to lay it out myself.

Any just government must provide its citizens with four critical services.

1. The Ability to Hold It Accountable

In all of human history, the only demonstrated way of consistently achieving good governance without tyranny is to make government accountable to the governed. And the only systematic way ever devised to hold anyone accountable for anything is to make their successes, failures, and methods transparent and to reserve the right to fire them in the event of poor performance in any of those respects. If you're only concerned with a dozen people who all know each other, you can achieve good results on the basis of mutual trust and a shared desire for excellence. But for reliable results managing millions of strangers, nothing beats transparency and free elections.

This service comes first in the list, because without it, no government can be trusted, regardless of what else it might do. But clearly, one that provided only this service and no other would be useless. In order for a government to provide this service and also the services below, it must do so in an equal-opportunity manner. By equal I mean that all citizens in good standing must have the same ability to exert the same level of control over their government. By opportunity I recognize that not all citizens will avail themselves of this ability; any resulting poor outcome for themselves in such a case is their own fault.

2. Protection from Violence and Exploitation

This service was what our ancestors had in mind when they invented government. It started with a bunch of people agreeing that they would all get hit with rocks a lot less often if they charged one guy (you know he was a guy) with deciding who to hit with the rocks, and then the rest would just follow along.

Or as Douglass Adams put it, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy. Thus:

1. Retribution: "I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother."
2. Anticipation: "I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother."
3. Diplomacy: "I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it."

3. Conservation of the Commons for Common Benefit

This item will be the most controversial. Nevertheless, I believe that the only way to address the tragedy of the commons without including it would be to claim either (1) that there should be no commons -- that is, that rights to every drop of water and breath of air ought to be sold off to some private party -- and/or (2) that what common property exists is in practice nearly impossible to destroy. Indeed, there are those who make both of these claims. However, I submit that alternative #2 is shown to be false by everyday experience, and that alternative #1 could not be achieved without sacrificing the first two services described above.

This service necessarily comes before the following one because it limits the freedoms of individuals. Furthermore, a benefit in common may be less for any given individual than if he or she were considered in isolation. For example, oceans may be enjoyed by fishermen, oil drillers, and sightseers. Industrial activity may decrease fish catches and degrade the view, and oil yields may be decreased by the requirement to protect habitat. Throughout, the interest of the state must be in the sustainable stewardship of the overall environment for the current and future generations.

4. Equal-Opportunity Access to a Transparent Marketplace

Individuals naturally posses the ability to negotiate with one another the trade of less valuable property for more valuable property. Economic development beyond the level of subsistence agriculture requires such activity. Government must not suppress this natural right except as required by the provision of the first three services.

Note that equal-opportunity does not mean that all individuals have property of the same value to sell. It means that the same rules for how to buy and sell, and what happens when you do, apply to everyone. And a transparent marketplace is one in which the goods and services exchanged, and the terms under which those exchanges occur, are clearly understood by all participants in the trade.

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In addition to the four items appearing above, I would like to point out four additional services that explicitly did not make the cut. These four things are not the job of government.

-. Making Us Richer

This road is fraught with peril. What makes one person richer may make another poorer, and which actions are likely to make a particular class of people richer or poorer are often not obvious. Furthermore, which trade-offs a person may be willing to accept in exchange for more or less wealth differ significantly among individuals and for the same individual across time. The result is that it is quite difficult to define what exactly this service would be, harder to implement it, and harder still to do so while preserving the original four critical services.

-. Making Us Happier

See the previous item, replacing "rich" and "poor" with "happy" and "unhappy".

-. Protecting Us From Ourselves

In most cases, a person is more likely to know what they themselves want, and what they are willing to risk in order to get it, than anyone else. Furthermore, while that may not be true in a minority of cases, which cases those are is unlikely to be agreed upon, especially not ahead of time. Therefore, any systematic attempt to wrest a person's self determination from them "for their own good" is unlikely to succeed.

Educate people, so that they understand the choices they're making. Use all practical means to prevent them from harming others. But if a behavior stands only to harm the perpetrator, let him have at it.

-. Doing Big Projects

Some jobs, including some that are very popular, require big organizations with deep pockets. Governments are often such organizations. That does not mean that governments should be in the business of doing those things. For reasons why not, see the previous three items. For alternative courses of action, see the first four.