Answered by Bitarch

History shows that over a long period of time, the “size of the state” (the volume of resources it controls and the degree of influence over the lives of its subjects) constantly grows. This applies to all forms of government—liberal democracies, republics with census-based democracy, ideocracies, theocracies, and even monarchies. Some states were initially created on the idea of minarchism (“limited government”), such as the USA, where the founding fathers understood the possibility of the state’s growth and tried to prescribe mechanisms to restrain this process in the constitution. In all cases, this did not work, and even the “smallest” governments grew to gigantic proportions.

So why does this always happen? There are many versions, but the most plausible seems to be the idea expressed by Pavel Usanov in his recent lecture “Spontaneous Orders as an Alternative to the State”. Growth occurs because every official is interested in redistributing rent (resources taken from the population through taxes) in their own favor. If they do not do it themselves, one of their colleagues will. A constant temptation arises to engage in populism and invent new functions for state intervention in areas related to the interest group that put this specific official in power. For example, officials from a state social insurance agency are interested in INCREASING the number of unemployed and poor people, as they can then “secure” more funding for themselves and, accordingly, increase their salaries, hire their friends, or award themselves bonuses.

Если вы пришли сюда по ссылке из других соцсетей, напоминаю, что на мой канал можно подписаться в телеграме, а для обсуждения деятельности канала там же, в телеграме, создан уютный чатик.