Why does it seem like there are so few people actually in favor of "big government"?

[LSLGuy]

@sitchensis

Everyone keeps talking about taxes as the main issue with big government but in my experience with blue collar semi-rural voters the main issue is with regulation and bureaucracy. People complain about taxes, when they are raised, but after that they become the new normal.

When the small town diesel mechanic starts looking at building a new shop and realizes he needs $500,000 in environmental and safety improvements, that’s the news that really flies around the coffee shop, and everyone has a similar story.

I know of a junk yard that has to have its front parking lot pressured washed twice a year because they found heavy metals in the parking lot. The junk cars have always been stored in the back and couldn’t be the problem. The front parking lot buts up to a high traffic road, and nobody ever tests the road. On top of that, they don’t require that the pressure washing water be captured so it’s just going down the drain.
So the junk yard owner is partially paying through taxes for someone to test his parking lot and fully paying for pressure washing road dust off his parking lot. As near as we can tell the only reason he has to do this is that it’s a junk yard and the regs were probably meant to cover the actual scrap yard but that doesn’t matter.

That’s the kind of stuff people get cranky about.

You’re on to something here. Folks always love a good “dumb government enforcer” story. And love to post it, share it, etc.

But the larger issue is questioning the value of communal regulations at all. Which can be a problem as I recently wrote about in another thread here:

@LSLGuy

…
One of the interesting things about the slippery slope and local vs. non-local (or personal versus collective) consequences is how it’s a proxy for how interconnected we are as a society.

Example 1: In a country with totally private self-pay medical care reckless behavior hurts no one but the doer. Ride your motorcycle drunk without a helmet, smoke for 60 years, live on Big Macs, whatever. The adverse consequences, both bodily and financial, are 100% on you.

Example 2: In a country with totally taxpayer paid national health care that same reckless behavior costs the reckless person nothing beyond the direct bodily consequences. The reckless doer hands the rest of society the entire bill. A bill they pay while getting zero benefit from the reckless behavior.

Many of the “freedom lovers” will argue they prefer example #1. Not that they’re indifferent to risk or the value of insurance. But that they fear the potential creeping tyranny of “everything anyone does affects everyone some, so therefore everyone has a veto over anyone.”

I’m not arguing those folks are making the correct value judgment. I’m just pointing out the value judgment exists to be made.

There are a tremendous range of public policy issues that amount to “limit freedom of action because of the micro-impacts one person doing X has on lots of other unwilling bystanders.” Many folks would argue the micro impacts should be ignored as de minimis. Which they might be if only one person wanted to do X. But when many people do X the consequences get bigger.
Part of the so-called urban/rural divide is really a population density divide. Where I live absolutely anything anyone does directly impinges on a lot of people. Blow your car horn and 300 people wince at the racket. Folks who live in high density environments quickly learn to either be polite and considerate of others or to consciously actively not give a damn about anyone else and work to actively piss them off for the lulz. Because absolutely everything you do, good or bad, directly, immediately, and visibly impacts a bunch of other people.

By contrast, a person living low density may never even conceive of the idea that anything they do has the slightest effect on anyone else. The Earth is huge and empty; my campfire in the woods isn’t air pollution. They don’t see it as a small effect; they see it as a zero effect. Zero times many campfires is still zero. A small effect times many campfires is a large effect. That difference is a threshold issue that goes right past many people.

This loops back to the freedom argument. I, you, or all of us can get away with an infinite number of zero-impact actions without harm to each other. But we can’t all get away with lots of small-impact actions. So we should try as a society to actively prevent as many connections as possible so more actions remain zero impact and hence free for all. Or so say the freedom-firsters

The hard thing about environmental action is that the Earth is getting to be a real high density environment. Vastly more so than 100 or even 50 years ago. But it doesn’t look that way to lots of people who look and think only locally not globally.