A National Nanny

The progressive view of government in action.

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Government Incompetency

What a week it has been. Georgia was suddenly cold, I am sick, Tennessee beat Alabama, and my wife was robbed. Okay, my wife wasn’t robbed by another person, but she was robbed by the government. She was supposed to start a new job this week only to be told that she couldn’t because the government hadn’t approved her license yet. As a result, my wife missed out on a week’s worth of pay because the government did not check a couple of boxes quickly enough.

I may sound dramatic, but the government is the only entity that we exempt from the normal rules of economics. For example, every year many people get a tax refund. They receive this check because the government throughout the year has taken too much of their money and is returning the excess. Unlike in every other realm of economics though, the government does not compensate citizens for the time away from their money. Essentially, millions of people loan the government money interest-free every year.

I understand that the government is different from private financial institutions because the government provides (theoretically) services when there is a market failure. I don’t expect the exact same rules of finance to apply to the government; however, that doesn’t mean that the government gets a pass all of the time. In fact, the government does more harm than good in so many areas and too often Americans shrug it off.

Usually, the government does the most harm when it interferes with the economy in unnecessary ways. As in the case of my wife, the government does significant harm in the area of occupational licensing. Through occupational licensing, the government determines what is required of a person before they can work in some capacity. In order to obtain a license, the government will frequently require some combination of hours under supervision, fees, and a college degree. In many especially egregious cases, licenses from different states for the same occupation aren’t recognized, so someone who moves must go through licensing again.

As a result, these barriers to entry prevent people who don’t have the money or time to jump through various hoops from working. The justification for such licensing is that it helps protect consumers from fraud and improves the overall quality of goods and services; however, many studies have shown that occupational licensing does no such thing.

In a related vein, the Jones Act is a law that was passed in 1920 and requires any cargo that is shipped between two U.S. ports to be carried by U.S.-made ships and crewed by Americans. The original intent was to protect the American shipbuilding industry from competition. While the Jones Act certainly protects a small-interest group of American shipbuilders, it does significant harm to many other Americans.

This was put on display recently when Puerto Rico was suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona. There was a desperate need for fuel on the island, but a fuel-filled ship could not dock because it was not Jones Act acceptable. The ship eventually docked and unloaded the fuel a couple of days later, but only after the Federal Government gave it an exemption from the Jones Act. In the meantime, many people on the island of Puerto Rico were left to suffer.

Not to mention, the Jones Act makes the prices of goods more expensive, particularly in places that rely more on shipping. Puerto Rico is one such example. Hawaii is another example. Jones Act-compliant ships are more expensive to build and to man which means that goods shipped on these ships are more expensive for consumers than they need to be.

Views of Government

I mention these two examples because they both demonstrate a fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives: their view on the government. Generally speaking, progressives and conservatives alike would say that they want Americans to live happy, healthy, prosperous lives. The best way to achieve that end is where the disagreement lies.

Yuval Levin has talked about how progressives have a social vision that consists of directional language with the government pulling individuals together towards a better world. Included in this vision is the idea that the government exists to provide direction, which the government can do because it is inherently good. On the other hand, conservatives tend to talk about the government in terms of the space that it provides people to operate within. Instead of the government, social institutions, such as the Church and family, provide direction and unity.

As a result, conservatives are focused on creating and maintaining limits on the government so that it doesn’t encroach too much into the “space” where human flourishing takes place. This is why libertarians and conservatives can find a lot of room for agreement because they are both concerned with limiting the reach of government. They are both skeptical of the government.

Progressives do not have the same level of skepticism towards the government which makes them more willing to trust bureaucrats and other experts to organize society in a particular way. Economically, this manifests itself in policies such as occupational licensing and the Jones Act. As a result, progressives believe the government can be and should be trusted to authorize who is and is not qualified to work in a particular field instead of individual consumers. Similarly, they believe government can be and should be trusted to do economic planning through protectionist measures like the Jones Act.

The different views of the government were also evident during the COVID pandemic. Progressives were much more willing to trust a centralized body of experts like the CDC to know what was the best way to respond to the virus. Conservatives were more willing to allow each individual, community, and/or state to make their own risk/reward calculations.

The Reinforcing Cycle of Progressivism

A few years ago, there was a news story that epitomized one of my main issues with the progressive view of the government: it becomes a reinforcing cycle of government reliance. The news story involved the state of Oregon and pumping gas. Oregon and New Jersey are the only two states where it is illegal to pump gas into one’s own car. Instead, licensed gas attendants are the only people who are allowed to pump gas.

In 2018, the state of Oregon passed a law that allowed people in rural counties of Oregon to pump their own gas. The response from many Oregonians was outrage and a feeling of being “unqualified” to pump their own gas. Residents of the 48 other states seem to have no problem pumping their own gas, so what made Oregonians feel like they were unqualified? Well, Oregonians had basically been told by the government that they were unqualified for decades.

While this is a ridiculous example, that sense of learned helplessness is almost inevitable when people defer to the government. In fact, I would argue this sense of learned helplessness has gripped people in ways that they don’t even realize. For example, many parents do not feel equipped to educate their own children because they are not certified or trained teachers. Yet, humans have been educating their own children for centuries without a government-mandated training program.

As people feel more unqualified, they become more reliant on the government to be qualified for them. Instead of viewing the government as a necessary evil to protect us from others who seek to infringe on our rights, the government becomes a nanny state that seeks to protect us from ourselves.

God Bless,

Hunter Burnett