Our Friend, the State?

Plus: the first major government scandal via leaked group text.

Did he get it wrong?

I have a new piece up at The UnPopulist taking what may seem like an unorthodox angle on the recent mania for—well, not exactly budget cuts, because the budget isn’t really getting any smaller—but rather the manic, haphazard rearrangement of government. Or perhaps its rapid unscheduled disassembly.

I make the case for something along the lines of “State Capacity Libertarianism,” a mirror image of “Supply-Side Progressivism.” In this case, it’s small government types like me acknowledging the need for “state capacity.”

Economist Tyler Cowen first talked about “state capacity libertarianism” in an early 2020 blog post—fittingly enough, just before the pandemic gave a demonstration of the need for state capacity. But Cowen’s description could use some clarification and elaboration.

“State capacity” is a term used by political scientists to describe the ability of a government to accomplish its policy goals. It’s not about the size of government but about its effectiveness. After all, a giant government that is bloated and overly bureaucratic can spend billions on high-speed rail and not get beyond Bakersfield.

The UnPopulist likes to post my articles under titles that are blandly explanatory and good for search engines and, well, kind of boring. My original title for this was the one I use above, “Our Friend, the State?” You can consider it a rejoinder to Albert Jay Nock.

I give what I think is a simple and very familiar example of state capacity.

We have all encountered the issue of state capacity in the form of the Department of Motor Vehicles. In the scheme of things, having to get a driver’s license is a trivial burden. The problem comes when you show up to renew your license, and there are a hundred people waiting and only two windows for processing paperwork—so there goes your day.

The same thing applies, on a larger scale, to other regulations. The delay caused by regulatory requirements is not just the result of the need to file paperwork. It’s what happens when bureaucrats don’t or can’t speedily process that paperwork.

In short, there are conditions in which an ineffective government can be more damaging and intrusive than a big one.

I give some examples in the article, but just as it posted, I came across an even better one.

In Oklahoma, DOGE shut down the office that issues permits for oil drilling, directly undermining the administration’s stated goal of increasing oil production. As one local put it, “If you threaten to close the agency without a solution, when really you should triple the budget so we can ‘drill, baby, drill,’ the effect of that on the industry is ‘kill, baby, kill.’”

This is part of a wider problem:

The cuts since mid-February have hit employees at agencies that play a crucial role in the process needed to issue permits for new federal and tribal energy production, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

As I put it in my piece:

In the populist imagination, simply firing bureaucrats means that everyone will become freer because the laws can no longer be enforced. But it also means that no one can get anything positively approved because there aren’t enough people to do it. When that happens, people become risk-averse and don’t build projects whose legal status is in a state of perpetual doubt. It’s possible we’re headed into a recession because nobody knows what tariffs will be imposed tomorrow or a year from now, or which businesses currently have the favor of the White House, or what government programs will be shut down without notice. As one CEO put it, “The chaos that is reigning right now is causing everyone to sit on their hands.”

I describe the need for state capacity in jobs that the government has to perform, including important foreign policy goals that were supported by some USAID funding, along with all the people who were fired and then hastily rehired at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

I also talk about things that the government does not necessarily have to perform, which could be private, but which somebody has to do, like air traffic control.

But to transition these functions from government to private actors would require years of planning and careful transition. We would have to build up civil society capacity to replace state capacity. If you just knock these programs down without any idea how they could be replaced by private institutions—for example, by firing a bunch of air traffic control staff—you are not striking a blow for small government. You’re striking a blow for air crashes, infectious diseases, and ignorance.

That last link about ignorance goes to a story about DOGE slashing federal funding for scientific research in a malicious attack on the universities. Conservatives hate the woke humanities departments, so they took their anger out on the only part of the universities that receive significant funding: the science departments. The result is likely to set America back for decades to come by cutting off the careers of young scientists. Combine that with the current assault on immigrants, and you have the ingredients for a brain drain—this time away from the United State.

Then there is the prospect of Social Security breaking down, which is already happening.

The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones in place of receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. Amid all this, the agency no longer has a system to monitor customer experience because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.

And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.

That’s what happens you when put economically important government programs in the hands of a 19-year-old cybercriminal.

As I pointed out recently:

I have regarded Social Security as a kind of Ponzi scheme way longer than Elon Musk has, which is why I have backed various plans for partial privatization and gradual reform. This idea has always been a bit out of the mainstream and perhaps quixotic. But I was never so crazy as to think that if you just cut off the Social Security checks, everyone will celebrate your bold effort at reducing the deficit.

If it shocks you that I would oppose suddenly and radically breaking up Big Government, I can call in as support for my position no less a personage than Ayn Rand.

Here’s what she said in a 1962 Q&A that has been making the rounds among Objectivists. She was asked, “If you were elected president of the United States tomorrow, what changes would you institute?” Her first line is exactly what I would expect. “This”—running for president—”is the last thing I'd attempt or advise anyone to try.”

But to the hypothetical question, “What would I advocate if my advice were immediately put into effect?,” I’d answer: Start decontrolling the economy as fast as rational economic considerations permit. I speak of “rational economic considerations” because today, every part of the population is dependent on government controls. Most professions have to function under controls, and their activities are calculated on that basis. So if anyone were to repeal all controls overnight, by legislative fiat, that would be a disastrous, arbitrary, dictatorial action. What a free country needs is to give all the people concerned sufficient notice to readjust and reorganize their economic activities…. Any sudden changes could create disastrous dislocations, and so we should decontrol gradually.

She was speaking extemporaneously, so I should note that the phrase “legislative fiat” is not very exact. Legislation is the opposite of fiat. But you can imagine how “dictatorial” she would have found Elon Musk and DOGE.

In my article, I name the question this poses for us, which I think explains some of the temptation toward the DOGE approach.

Do we want Americans to be free to build and prosper—or do we just hate bureaucrats?

If you just hate bureaucrats, then anything done to make federal employees suffer must be good, no matter the real-world consequences. So you will embrace a strongman and sign away everyone’s most basic freedoms so long as he promises to kick the bureaucrats in the teeth.

Ayn Rand’s priority is that she wanted Americans to build and prosper, not just to vent anger on the state. I have the same priority.

Read the whole thing.

Trump’s Indiscriminate Destruction of State Capacity Will Lead to a Dysfunctional, Not Cheaper, Government

I begin my piece with something my readers might find intriguing.

People like me—small-government types who were once considered on “the right” but have never reconciled ourselves to supporting Donald Trump—are often asked by our old conservative friends, “What happened to you? Why did you change?” The question invites a grim chuckle, because of course we did not really change; the questioners did. They’re the ones who flipped on free trade, on the separation of powers, on Russia, for crying out loud, and a great deal else. When everyone else is shifting their convictions, it’s amazing how fast you can move just by standing still.

Yet it would be strange if the big and unexpected events of the day did not cause us to rethink at least a few things.

So you might be wondering what else I have been rethinking. I’ll just drop a teaser that I intend to write a note on how and in what areas the Trump years have changed my views. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, speaking of state capacity and its absence, we have just had the first big Trump scandal that seems to be breaking through to the normies. I’ll just have to quote the opening of Jeffery Goldberg’s blockbuster piece in The Atlantic:

The world found out shortly before 2 PM eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 AM. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

It turns out that Mike Waltz—the national security advisor, for crying out loud—accidentally included the editor-in-chief of a magazine on a group chat where the secretary of defense was sharing secret war plans.

James Fallows describes it as “the most shockingly careless and sloppy security lapse by senior US officials that I’m aware of at any point” and points out that anyone else who did this would be facing criminal charges. People have actually gone to prison for this sort of thing, and the gang currently in the White House, including many who were on this chat, wanted to throw Hillary Clinton in the slammer for less.

(I should also point out that in addition to being less than secure, a private messaging app is also a way for top administration officials to conduct their deliberations in a way that avoids leaving official records as required by law.)

In a sane world, everyone on this chat except Goldberg, up to and including the vice-president—oh, yes, J.D. Vance was there, too—would be forced to resign. Instead, they’re lying and stonewalling and trying to brass it out.

I think the concept of “state capacity” includes knowing the very basics of how to conduct top-level government operations securely. But this administration is too busy tearing down the government—including its most important and necessary functions.