Thursday, September 14, 2006
Libertarians are always talking about how big government is inherently tyrannical. Maybe they're right - but it suddenly came to me today that a government that's too small can also be tyrannical. I was teaching a large class like a real drill seargant, because I have to in order to keep them in line, and then I had a small class where everyone was laid back and relaxed.
So from this comes my theory: A government that is too small relative to the population it wants to control must resort to harsher methods. Specifically, if a government is too small to effectively co-ordinate with and monitor the population, then it must in some way terrorize it.
I'm not sure there's too many historical examples of a "too small" government - I'm excluding states where a minority ethnic group dominates, for obvious reasons. The Spartan 10,000 comes to mind but that was a long time ago. I suppose you could do a statistical study of US states, but I doubt the results would be that convincing: The Southern states would have smaller governments and harsher laws, but it's much less likely that the former is causative of the latter than it is that the underlying culture of the South gave rise to both factors.
Anyone out there know of a political theorist who's written about this issue? I'm sure there have been some.
So from this comes my theory: A government that is too small relative to the population it wants to control must resort to harsher methods. Specifically, if a government is too small to effectively co-ordinate with and monitor the population, then it must in some way terrorize it.
I'm not sure there's too many historical examples of a "too small" government - I'm excluding states where a minority ethnic group dominates, for obvious reasons. The Spartan 10,000 comes to mind but that was a long time ago. I suppose you could do a statistical study of US states, but I doubt the results would be that convincing: The Southern states would have smaller governments and harsher laws, but it's much less likely that the former is causative of the latter than it is that the underlying culture of the South gave rise to both factors.
Anyone out there know of a political theorist who's written about this issue? I'm sure there have been some.
# posted by mjk1093 @ 8:21 PM 
