I’ve been noodling through a government reform thought experiment, but can’t seem to reach a conclusion. See what you think…
The reform would address that most nefarious dynamic: When the benefits of government spending are concentrated and the costs are dispersed, government will grow and spending will increase.
Mancur Olson described this dynamic more than 40 years ago in The Logic of Collective Action. Steve Slivinski, in his new book Buck Wild, summarizes Olson’s idea as follows:
Olson pointed out that the disparity in incentives between taxpayers and what we now call “special interests” results from an inherent disadvantage of the larger group (i.e., taxpayers) compared to the smaller group (i.e., recipients of public dollars) in its ability to organize to defend its interests. It is this inherent bias in favor of the small special interest groups that provides a very robust explanation of why we still have Big Government, even though many taxpayers would prefer smaller government. “It would be in the best interest of those groups who are organizing to increase their own gains by whatever means possible,” writes Olson. “This would include choosing policies that, though inefficient for the society as a whole, were advantageous for the organized groups because the costs of the policies fell disproportionately on the unorganized.”
To borrow an example from Steve’s book, the National Endowment for the Arts had a 2004 grant budget of $47.4 million — equal to about 0.01% of income taxes. The NEA awarded 1,970 grants that year, so the average grant amount was $24,000. Grant recipients would thus have considerably more financial incentive to lobby for continuing the NEA than individual taxpayers, who on average contribute less than a buck per year to the program, would have to lobby for discontinuing it.