What is Government For?

Here we are, three weeks into Trump.

I’m amazed at how effective he’s been. The incompetence of his first administration, and Trump’s general disinterest in doing anything hard or detail-oriented didn’t portend success in remaking the whole federal government. The immigrant raids, gender declarations, and climate treaty withdrawals were easy. What has surprised me—and maybe him—was the Musk-Vought takeover of the government’s finances: the sudden and radical defunding of the US government.

Granted, that defunding project has a long way to go. Firing the entire federal workforce would only trim the budget by 4%. Big savings can only come by cutting the military, Social Security, and Medicare. And it’s not clear that anything that Musk is doing is actually legal—separation of powers used to say that funding decisions belonged to Congress, not the executive. I’m not holding out hope for Congress to step in.

But I’m most interested in the ideological project that the administration is advancing: that small, efficient government is better. I think they’re winning that argument. The liberals I read who are responding to Trump right now are avoiding that question. They are shocked by the cruelty and the illegality. To me, the only important question is “what is government for and is what Trump is doing consistent with good government.” If liberals can’t articulate a vision and rstionale for the larger, more engaged (and costly) government, we will lose.

Trump/Musk/Vought are crusaders motivated by an ideological vision that government must be tiny, unobtrusive, and “efficient.” It’s actually an appealing vision on its face, especially if you are motivated by the idea that taxes are theft. A small government does only what it must in order to keep public safety and ensure ordered markets. It’s a tool of the market—the market is the true guiding force that creates the common good. 

It’s this idea that I want to attack and reveal as morally abhorrent. Markets do not create the common good. Markets distribute goods and services, set prices, organize labor and capital. Markets cannot and will never create the common good. They are PART of the common good, but don’t begin to touch the breadth and depth of what “goodness” is. Markets are cruel. They require winners and losers. The profit motive relentlessly externalizes costs—to people, to the earth. Markets elevate greed and discourage self-sacrifice and sharing. Markets are important for human flourishing, but they distort and disfigure people, and divide human societies into capital and labor, winners and losers. Markets have no capacity to “think” about the common good.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these ends, we have government. That’s a shorthand of the way Declaration of Independence begins. It’s a statement about why we have government—what it’s for. To help people have life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Only the most narrow market fundamentalist would construe providing for “life, liberty, and happiness” as a government whose only role is to protect private property and facilitate efficient markets.

Ontologically, the human being is not a “profit maximizer.” We are souls. We long for healthy relationships. We want to live in healthy, thriving communities that are ecologically sustainable. We want to alleviate one another’s suffering and create beauty. We want long lives in healthy bodies. We want to learn and play with ideas. We want peace and freedom from harm. We want to laugh and dance. We want to work and we want to rest from our labors. The market can’t do all of these things for us. Nor can government. But government—a more active government than the one Musk/Vought are fashioning—can and does move us closer to these ends than markets alone. It does this by promoting common goods that the market can’t—and will never—promote, because they aren’t “profitable.” Education for every citizen. Environmental protection. Healthcare for everyone. Public safety for everyone (not just capital). Labor laws that protect workers. Public arts (not arts for the wealthy). Protecting the rights of unpopular minority groups. Scientific research that isn’t directed toward private profit. You get the idea. Governments have a role in life, liberty, and happiness beyond being a slave of private profit.

Our government and federal bureaucracy IS bloated. There is waste. It’s become horribly stagnant and unresponsive, so much so that people feel justified in demonizing it, and treating taxes like theft. Part of me is relieved that this moment has come. The great violent fantasy of a “government small enough to drown in a bathtub” is upon us. The pain of these cuts will be excruciating. People will suffer grievously.

Now is the time for fierce pronouncments about what government is for. It’s time for liberals to stop rubbing our hands in consternation about USAID and start talking about life, liberty, and happiness and the role good government plays in that profoundly moral vision for human flourishing.