Big Government? Blame
James Watt.
A lot of people wonder how in the world we have come to have
such big governments - federal, state, local, you name it. I, for one, blame
James Watt the guy who invented the steam engine. To explain I need to start
even earlier in time.
I recently finished a book called “Sapiens: A Brief History
of Humankind” by Yuval Harari. It’s a very intriguing book with a lot of
concepts and theories that will make you really think about us as a species,
the good and the bad. One particular claim he makes made me sit back and say “whoa!”
He suggests that we were all probably better off as hunter gatherers or farmers.
That’s right, in his opinion we gave up the natural life that humans had led
for thousands of years; we just had to go get food then enjoy the simple pleasures
of family and friends. Perhaps he had read Thomas Jefferson, noted urban hater,
who said, “Agriculture is our wisest pursuit,
because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.”
Like Jefferson, Harari blames a lot of our real (and imagined) problems
on leaving the fields to go work in the factories. I’m not doing justice to his
elegant theory but the key element is that it made me think differently about
modern life and more importantly about what we can control in our modern lives
– and what we cannot.
So I blame James Watt who was inventing his steam engine, ironically,
about the same time that Jefferson was spouting off about the pastoral life. If
it weren’t for Watt maybe there wouldn’t have been an industrial evolution.
Without the industrial revolution maybe we wouldn’t have become slaves to
capitalism. Without capitalism most of us wouldn’t have abandoned our pleasant,
agrarian lives (whistling while we work from sunrise to sunset) to take up “working
for the man.” So maybe he’s the guy that led us to long commutes, endless Power
Point presentations, tons of paperwork . . . and Wall Street? I guess you might
as well also blame him for Facebook, Twitter or any of the other essentially
worthless advances in communication technology and fact-free existence that we
live in today. (Okay, settle down, some of this is tongue in cheek – I think.)
Alas, the toothpaste is out of the tube on progress though, even
if you foolishly wanted to go back to when America was great, it ain’t
happening. Besides, I admit that I like garage door openers, dish washers,
flying to Florida for golf in the winter and a lot of other cool things; this
is the world we live in, a world of constant change and progress. These
ruminations have, however, made me think I may have overlooked some hidden
costs for our modern reality.
When the Constitution was drafted the US had about 4 million
people. Most of them were farmers or lived in small towns and were generally
able to fend for themselves: no telephones, no super highways, no public
education, no food inspections – no crop price supports. Also no FAA, no
national parks, no huge standing military - and no strawberries in winter. Life
may not have been easy but it was fairly simple and folks were mostly
self-sufficient.
Today there are about 330 million of us and a large majority
now live in cities (only 3% of the population grow all our food.) In order to
have cheap food, live in nice houses, drive nice cars (and play golf?) life
today depends on very complex interactions among people and nations. Our cars
and computers come from all over the world; we shop at Target and other stores
for clothes and essentials made elsewhere. Most people make a living by
creating spreadsheets or work in healthcare or some other service industry.
To illustrate the change from then to now here’s a
story many people of a certain age might recognize. During the Great Depression
my mom lived in the small Minnesota town of Osakis while pop lived on a farm
outside of town in an area called Snoose Valley (where all the Norwegians
farmers lived.) Those were truly terrible times – especially for my mom’s large
family. Mom’s family, like most “city slickers,” struggled to find work in town
to support themselves. My dad’s large family, on the other hand, also had a
difficult time but there was always milk, eggs, meat and bread; they were not
going to starve. I bring this up not to imply that we should all go out and buy
a few acres to support ourselves come the revolution but simply to make the
point that modern life stealthily crept up and changed our relationship with
nature and with each other.
Our modern society, however wonderful its fruits, often
breaks down and at the worst possible time for many. This is not a bug of the
system it’s a feature called “creative destruction.” In the modern world you
don’t need to do anything “wrong,” you just kinda get steamrolled by
“progress.” Generally most of us do okay and understandably don’t think much
about how complex modern life is so most may not grasp how fragile our existence
has become because of that complexity. In fact, many of us seem to live under the
illusion that we still live in that earlier America - strong, silent individuals; masters of our
domain; the Marlboro Man, we don’t need no help from others or the stinking gubmint!
Ah, no. In the blink of an eye any of us can lose our job, health, home – our future.
Even the Marlboro man.
So here we are today.
Many Americans have a strong distrust of government including
me. Some of this is by the design of our Founding Fathers and in many cases that
distrust has certainly been well earned. Yet Madison, Hamilton, Mason, Rutledge,
et al were all smart guys and recognized that we do need government and I’d
like to think that they hoped – no, they knew - that America was bound to
change and grow in ways they couldn’t even imagine. I think they also knew that
government would be called on to help deal with at least some of that change.
(Well, for sure Hamilton would have!)
There’s no question that government at all levels has grown
enormously and it can legitimately be questioned given the many bad decisions
made by our peerless leaders over the years, among but not limited to: contributing
to our bloated military-healthcare-education industrial complex(es), huge
welfare programs, deteriorating infrastructure and much of the income
inequality in the country. You can blame big business, big political parties,
big money, unions, lobbyists, liars,
schemers – and politicians (often all rolled in one), that entire group of
charlatans that has turned our government into a “ Parliament of Whores” as
author PJ O’Rourke so aptly named it.
I won’t pretend to know how big or how small governments
should be nor do I think it can solve
every individual’s problems or pick winners and losers. I do know that there
are just no other entities besides government that are big enough to counter those
forces of the modern world that are seemingly trying to push many of us back into
some sort of feudal existence. It can create policies that gives everyone at
least a fighting chance to get ahead in a constantly changing modern world. Okay, we definitely do not need a bigger
government but we absolutely do need a lot SMARTER one. If that’s true then it’s
time to roll up our sleeves because WE have got a lot work to do and that starts
with electing a LOT smarter people on both the left and right at all levels of
government. Simply
stated, we need representatives who are interested in more about the future
than just getting re-elected.
I wish life was as simple as good old Tom Jefferson
envisioned but it isn’t. It’s a complex and changing world that was impossible
to foresee in the 18th century. That doesn’t mean, however, it has
to be as Thomas Hobbes predicted, “ . . .
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” If government can help alleviate that then it should.
If
not, well, you can still blame James Watt.
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