The U.S. now spends as much as Canada on government, according to Canada's National Post. That means, for better or worse (almost assuredly worse), government will dole out a lot more goods and services for "free." Nothing is free, of course. All government goodies are funded through taxation or debt, the latter being just more taxes for your kids to pay. In any case, power accretes around politicians who promise what people believe to be free -- or, at least, what someone else has to pay for.
As freedom fighters, what do we do now in the face of all this statism? How do we fight so much government growth and increased power? History has shown, after all, that there is nothing more permanent than a government program.
In what was perhaps a throw-away blog post, Arnold Kling suggests an approach I have been entertaining in my own thoughts for some time:
"I think that perhaps the best positive approach for libertarians right now is to support institutions that compete with government. That means charities, churches, charter schools, clubs, consumer information services, and other sources of public goods. I would count the traditional family as an institution that competes with government."
Kling's suggestion is important for a number of reasons:
First, government is pretty bad at everything it does. From the public schools to the DMV, the state as a provider is mediocre at best. This is because whether or not the bureaucratic heart is in the right place, the incentives in government are all wrong. And with taxed play money — i.e. no system of profit and loss — there is little need to be focused on customers. In a government monopoly, there is no need to change, adapt, reorganize, reward good performance, or encourage innovation. While there can be marginal improvements made in government-provided goods and services, these are usually spurred on either by popular outrage or competition from the private sector.
Nevertheless, I believe — and, admittedly, this only a hypothesis — that there is a point at which government cannot compete; a point at which it will fail to deliver the level of quality in some good or service also offered by the private sector, no matter how many resources they throw around (that is, if they leave us with enough of our own resources that we still can still afford private-sector alternatives). That's why I think it is possible to compete with 'free'.
Take the public schools, for example, starting in one state to test the idea: what if a group of philanthropists were to come along and establish a non-profit organization that franchised two or three proven educational models? Suppose they used these models to launch a slew of new private schools, all of which outperformed the public schools. (This is already happening right now, but on too small a scale.) If the quality differential were stark enough, you'd see people clambering to get their kids into these new franchises.
But here's the thing: these customers wouldn't all be rich people. In fact, since the franchises are run at cost, they can offer tuition for $4,000-$6,000 a year. (The national average public expenditure per pupil is about $10,000 a year, by the way.) If you could offer parents better quality private education for tuition lower than what they were paying for daycare, you would see an unprecedented middle-class exodus from the public schools. That means a middle class brain drain. The public schools downward spiral of performance would accelerate. Their per pupil expenditures would shoot up to absurd levels very quickly. Despite throwing more money at the problem, fewer quality teachers would want to teach in the dangerous husk of a school system that remained.
By then, you would also have an earnest, active, private school-loving constituency. And you'd need it, because as Arnold Kling reminds us:
"You are likely to see Democrats under President Obama launch assaults against all of the institutions of civil society. Already, the Washington DC school voucher program is [dead], as is the tax deduction for charitable contributions."
In any such competitive scheme you devise, politicians and bureaucrats know they can regulate you out of existence, if not regulate away your competitive advantage. They've already done this to homeschool teaching cooperatives in most states (associations that would allow homeschooling parents to share the burden of homeschooling among like-minded parents in their communities), not to mention doctors on retainer and affordable healthcare innovations.
In any case, if freedom lovers failed to organize rapidly and create fighting-mad constituencies that would push back against regulations, as sure to follow as effect follows cause, the competitive institutions of civil society would have no chance of survival. The key is: build 'em fast, make 'em competitive, and form interest groups around them. As the bureaucratic hordes come for our new super-competitive institutions, we can cry out: "They're trying to take away our X!"
