Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste

Posted on | December 3, 2008 | Comments Off by Aschwin de Wolf

On the Cato@Liberty blog David Boaz observes how opinion makers and politicians prepare to exploit the current financial crisis to implement regulatory policies and entitlements programs that would not get broad support in calmer times:

So . . . Emanuel. Krugman. Huffington. They’re all rallying around the theme that, well, that a left-liberal government should use this crisis to implement a more sweeping agenda than it could achieve in the absence of crisis. That’s the Shock Doctrine. Where are Naomi Klein and her legion of fans to expose and denounce it?

The current developments should not be a surprise to readers of Robert Higgs’ Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, or his more recent work Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. When people believe, or are made to believe, that the end of the world is near unless government intervenes, the state can expand in major leaps instead of the slow and steady growth that results from the pathologies of public choice. Most of these government interventions are not rolled back after the “crisis” is over and are often used for other regulatory objectives.

This raises a broader issue about liberty and public policy. Evaluating government policies on their (expected) individual merits fails to take into account the redistributive and regulatory potential of any kind of government intervention. Government feeds upon itself because its growth increases the gains that can be secured from further redistribution and regulation.

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