Is Less Government Better?

When Ronald Reagan was running for President of the United States, in 1980, he argued that government was too big—and even was evil. (Logically, one might have wondered why he wanted to be the head of something which he believed was bad. Presumably to cut it and gut it, and he did, cutting and rendering ineffective many government regulatory agencies.)

Someone said that "Reagan won that debate." Maybe he did insofar as many people today believe that less government is better. Economic conservatives and libertarians believe that the economy would be better, and everything would be rosy, "if we could get  government off our backs." Something—presumably the workings of the marketplace—would ensure that businesses did not screw their customers, the public, and their employees.

I have said much of this before but I want to remind us of some of the things government does for us.

Government builds and repairs roads. It puts up stop lights, stop signs, and road signs.

It provides us with police and fire protection.

It ensures the safety of our food and our medications. Someone said that public health is the big success of government. Government finds the causes and sources of food-borne illnesses. It ensures that there is vaccine to protect us against flu and epidemic diseases. These are only a few of thousands of possible examples.

But I really want to look at one story, auto safety, because I was recently reminded of this by an article I read.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed. As a result of the changes in US cars to make them safer that were the ultimate result of Nader's crusading efforts and his book, US deaths from auto crashes dropped by 32%.

You just have to contrast the situation in the US with that of Brazil. In Brazil, safety standards for cars are very lax or nonexistent. The Brazilian government is just getting around to requiring air bags and anti-lock brakes in cars made and sold in Brazil. Worse, there are no government crash standards for cars in Brazil. If and when cars are crash-tested, the testing is neither carried out nor validated by the government.

Therefore, cars made in Brazil (by Volkswagen, Fiat, GM, and Ford) are often made without many of the spot welds to the body structure that the very same models would have if built in Europe. As someone put it, where the welds should be, "there's just a gap." With Brazilian car manufacture virtually unregulated, cars in that country are not safe and the rate of serious injuries and deaths in car accidents is much higher than in the US.

The US auto industry did not improve auto safety out of concern for the public's safety, and they did not improve auto safety until they were forced to—by the government and ultimately because of the activism of Ralph Nader. That has not happened yet in Brazil and will not happen until the Brazilian government enforces crash-safety rules similar to those of the US.

The case of the respective US and Brazilian auto industries speaks for itself, but I feel compelled to add: So much for government keeping hands off, just letting business alone and trusting that they will do the right thing.

Update July 8, 2013
The recent collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh is another example of what can happen in an environment of lax or even totally lacking government regulation and oversight. I believe about 100 workers were killed. Bangladesh has poor, if any, oversight of building construction and nothing like our OSHA which exists to ensure the safety of workers.

Update August 18, 2013
I learned something interesting not long ago. Maybe Ronald Reagan does not get all the credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for the "government is evil" idea. It seems that in the 1960s, when Governor George Wallace of Alabama was trying to preserve segregation and keep black students from entering schools in his state, he faced the prospect of federal intervention and began to rail about the goverment in Washington being too powerful and evil-ly trying to dictate to the sovereign state of Alabama and tell them what to do and make them change their long-cherished ways. That should make people look at motivations of those who complain about "interference" from the federal government.

Copyright © 2013