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Warburton Expat's avatar

Firstly, I must thank you for laying this out. I believe this is the first time someone on substack's written an article in direct response to one of mine. I think my replies can be brief, however.

You state, "More spending ≠ more paperwork". But this is generally the case. It is not necessarily the case, but it is generally the case. Certainly if you implement more paperwork, then you must spend more to pay for it. But also, if you spend more, then people will appear with their hands out, and they will deliberately complicate the system in order to get their hands on some of the money. And so there will be a correlation between spending and complexity. Not 1:1, but a strong correlation.

The private sector most assuredly has plenty of red tape. Thus Pournelle's Iron Law refers to "any large bureaucratic organisation" - he does not distinguish between government, nonprofit, corporate, military, religious or whatever. All of them follow the same trajectory of bloat.

However, I would note that in a country in which corporations are allowed to grow so large, they are in effect part of the government. They cannot grow so large without grants of public funds, tax subsidies, regulatory capture and so on.

"Standards reduce chaos" - they can do so, yes. But they can also lead to "teaching to the test", and of course we also have the old saying, "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure." As an example, at one point the company running the train system in Melbourne had fines if they had a certain amount of trains late - but not if those trains were cancelled. So when too many trains were late, the trains kicked all the passengers off, and went express back to the depot. "Okay," said the government, "since the measure has become a target, we obviously have to add a second measure - cancellations." But then... you get the picture.

"A ‘small’ state often means pushing tasks onto a web of local authorities, private contractors, or overlapping agencies"

If there's a web of them then it's not "small" government.

"It’s tempting to blame complexity on government size alone. But the reality is messier."

Obviously, yes. Nonetheless there is a correlation. I am not an American libertarian, so I am less concerned with the overall share of the economy taken up by the government, and more the authoritarianism of the government, and the level of pointless fuckery. Most small businesspeople would gladly pay more taxes if they could get less paperwork in trade.

As for Peru: in many developing countries, some of the GDP is not really taxable by government. If a large chunk of "domestic product" is subsistence farmers growing $500 worth of food each to feed their families, none of which is ever turned into money, attempts to tax that would simply be collecting the corn like a Soviet collective farm, with the famine that always accompanies such efforts. So while Peru's government may have "only" 20% of the economy, this may actually represent up to 50% of the actual cash economy. Further, it's a measure of what the modern world is like that you would consider every fifth dollar spent in a country being the government to be "small" government. Consider again the chart in my article - Australia fought WWII against two great empires with 22-27% of the GDP, and I don't think anyone considered the government to be "small" then. Now it's 38% and we couldn't even defeat Afghan goatherds.

Lastly, there is to my knowledge no simple measure of government complexity. But we may take the number of lawyers as a proxy - their job is to navigate the complexity of government. As of the latest available data, Norway has approximately 5,703 practicing lawyers. With a population of about 5.5 million, this equates to roughly 104 lawyers per 100,000 people. In comparison, Australia had about 90,329 practicing solicitors in 2022. Given a population of approximately 25.7 million, this results in about 351 lawyers per 100,000 people. So we can reasonably assume that Australia's government system is more complex than Norway's, despite Norway's government making up a larger share of the economy than Australia's. As I said: the correlation is not 1:1.

Now, from G20 countries with available data:

Brazil 474 lawyers per 100,000

Italy 403

United States 402

United Kingdom 226

Germany 191

Turkey 154

South Korea 116

India 113

Japan 28.7

China 19.9

South Africa 37

Norway has five times as many lawyers as a communist country, who are not exactly known for small government. And it has more than triple the lawyers of Japan. Peru, by the way, has 15 lawyers per 100,000. If Norway's systems are genuinely much simpler than Peru's, why does Norway need 7 times as many lawyers? Do they all sit idle admiring the amazing efficiency of the system?

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Philippe's avatar

This is True but irrelevant.

In US, Those who argue against "big government" dont hesitate to support religion in government or means testing welfare.

A State can only succeed when it is Trusted by its population. Only when its population allow bureaucracy to collect taxes or provide service can its function. Without Nation to give its support, any State (no matter how its designed) cant function.

Hostility to bureaucracy is often because bureaucrats is "different" from them. This can be racial, religious, or ethnic reason.

This also why "nordic socialism" dont work in US. Nobody in South would support giving Blacks anything, whether government welfare or private charity.

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