Limited government, not small government

Professor Hale put up an interesting comment on my last post.  He pointed out that a part of the problem here is that the government has any say whatsoever in who you hire.  Not only does this type of government interference represent a wide divergence from the principles that our country was founded on, it is the antithesis of true freedom.  When government gets to dictate how you run your business and with whom you choose to associate, you have little left.  The giant bureaucracy required to oversee these mandates consumes vast chunks of output to no productive purpose.  Requiring that I hire a representative number of whites, blacks, asians, gays, etc does not improve my business, and therefore does not improve my community by providing more jobs or income for the local population. 

So am I condoning discrimination?  Actually the market will deal with this issue without any help from the federal government.  If I want to provide the best product for the best price in order to maximize my own return, I need to hire the best people and I need to create and keep customers.  If I discriminate against the best workers due to some ridiculous standard like skin color, my productivity will decrease and I will be less able to compete.  In the long run, I either don't survive or I survive as a much smaller, less efficient, and therefore less profitable enterprise. Government mandates on the other hand interfere with this process by preventing me from hiring the most qualified regardless of skin color or some other artificial designation.

So is hiring the only area in which government interference becomes an issue?  Well, the second part of my last post, mandates on health coverage, now can be seen in a different light.  Why exactly does the government have any say at all in what type of health coverage I provide to my employees?  If they don't like the coverage I offer, are they  not free to go find a job that offers what they do want?  For that matter, why does health coverage have to be provided by employers anyway?  The main reason that most people currently get health coverage (I reject the words "health insurance" for our current system for reasons which I will discuss another time) is that the system has been tilted towards the employers by the federal government. They get a tax break for providing you with coverage, if you buy it yourself, not so much.  It is government meddling in the health care market that has driven up prices and made it so unaffordable.

There are countless other examples which I won't detail here.  The Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the list goes on and you can read the arguments for and against by checking out organizations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.  I will explain the title of this post, however.

Conservatives are often described as proponents of "small" government.  I believe this is misleading and wrong.  I don't think a "small" bureaucracy devoted to violating my right to freedom of association is the answer.  What really matters is "limited" government.  A limited government would not be interfering in hiring decisions, would not be mandating a particular kind of health plan, would not be deciding what kind of energy should be emphasized, what kind of mathematics education should be taught in local schools, or how many housing projects should be built in a city.  A limited government would do the things allowed it by the Constitution: providing for the national defense, controlling immigration, and those other duties specifically listed.  They should be as big as they need to be in order to effectively do those things. When we have limited government again, we will be a free people.  Until then, when the government can decide who we hire, who we fire, what goods and services we can or must purchase, with whom we associate and the limits of that association, we are not a free people.