Crisis and Liberty: Lecture 1

The growth of government power in American history has been by creating emergencies that then necessitate a ratcheting up of centralized power and war. Crisis & Leviathan by Higgs is a prime resource for this topic.

What do we mean by the size of government? There’s no one way to measure it. Economists make the strange and wrong assumption that government must grow when the economy grows. Government is too multidimensional to measure. In the US government is also on different levels, making rules and imposing taxes. Eighty thousand such entities have this power to tax.

The more complex social life becomes, the less possible it is that government officials could have the knowledge required to coordinate human action. That is hubris. It is the fatal conceit. Government growth is not taking place because of market externalities or inefficiencies. The dominant ideology does prop up whatever the government does, but it’s not the whole story. The connection of government growth to crisis is realistic and observable.

Bibliography (PDF): Mises.org/CLBib

Lecture 1 of 10 from Robert Higgs’ Crisis and Liberty: The Expansion of Government Power in American History.