The Paradox of Tiny Government
by Art Jacobson on Aug. 02, 2010, under Politics
Thomas Hobbes
Tea Partiers are big boosters of “Tiny Government.” You know, the kind that’s small enough to drag into the bathroom and drown in the tub.
They want “liberty” and “freedom.” Like the classical anarchists they view government as the problem and not the solution. Until, that is, they have a problem that needs a solution.
The paradox of tiny government is that what most of us would consider a life freely enjoyed, what in its most universal statement we know as the pursuit of happiness, is only possible because of government, not in spite of it.
It’s worthwhile considering that Thomas Hobbes might have been right. Because all men seek their own wellbeing at the expense of others life without government would be a war of “all against all.” Not the best situation in which successfully to pursue happiness.
In the state of nature, should we approximate it, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
