The Stalin argument

[buritobr]

During debates "capitalism with big government vs. capitalism with small government", when the debates get longer, the supporters of the capitalism with small government usually start to behave as if they were in a debate "communism vs. capitalism". We can hear words like USSR, Cuba, North Korea, Stalin.

Why? Do the supporters of small government think that they don't have enough number of good arguments in order to beat the big government?

[Antonio the Sixth]

"Big government" and "small government" are utterly meaningless terms.

[Indy Texas]

Because people want to argue with a strawman.

I hate the term "small government" as though anyone knows what the hell that means. Is that the headcount of the government? The amount of revenue it takes in?

The idea that wanting strict environmental regulations is somehow akin to supporting communist totalitarianism is particularly comical, considering I can't think of any such regimes that remotely cared about protecting the environment. China, both pre- and post-Mao, was an environmental disaster, and the Soviet Union made a huge part of Ukraine uninhabitable, to say nothing of all the other areas it destroyed to engage in mining and oil drilling and nuclear weapons testing.

Same story with things like pensions and a social safety net. The Soviet Union basically had no such thing as "welfare" precisely because they wanted to de facto force everyone to work for the state in some capacity. China does little in the realm of universal social safety nets. The Chinese get their pensions through whatever company they worked for, and many people don't get one; that's part of the reason the Chinese personal savings rate is so high. "Capitalist" America uses government to do far more for our rural poor in terms of Medicaid and disability pensions than "communist" China does for theirs.

There's also the notion of taxes and the intrusiveness of government going hand-in-hand. "Less taxes = More Freedom" only to the extent that the government is unable to enforce laws and regulations because it doesn't have enough money to do so. You could theoretically have a government that taxed its citizens at punitively high rates but did very little to regulate commerce or private activity and did not provide a welfare state. (I'm not sure what they'd do with all the revenue, and it suffices to say that government wouldn't last long under democratic conditions.)

I don't feel "oppressed" because I pay FICA taxes so that I know I will be able to have health insurance after I'm too old to work and will at least have a small Social Security stipend if my retirement savings goes horribly wrong.

I don't see how getting rid of the EPA makes me "more free" in any meaningful way. All it does is let other people/companies dump toxic chemicals in water that I might be drinking and release pollution into the air that I'm ultimately going to breathe.

[buritobr]

Sure, small government is not small when we talk about repression.

During the Cold War, the political forces in western countries who supported "small government" were more aligned with the communist countries in social issues.
When Germany was divided, there was capital punishment in the East, but not in the West.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Because people want to argue with a strawman.

I hate the term "small government" as though anyone knows what the hell that means. Is that the headcount of the government? The amount of revenue it takes in?

The idea that wanting strict environmental regulations is somehow akin to supporting communist totalitarianism is particularly comical, considering I can't think of any such regimes that remotely cared about protecting the environment. China, both pre- and post-Mao, was an environmental disaster, and the Soviet Union made a huge part of Ukraine uninhabitable, to say nothing of all the other areas it destroyed to engage in mining and oil drilling and nuclear weapons testing.

Same story with things like pensions and a social safety net. The Soviet Union basically had no such thing as "welfare" precisely because they wanted to de facto force everyone to work for the state in some capacity. China does little in the realm of universal social safety nets. The Chinese get their pensions through whatever company they worked for, and many people don't get one; that's part of the reason the Chinese personal savings rate is so high. "Capitalist" America uses government to do far more for our rural poor in terms of Medicaid and disability pensions than "communist" China does for theirs.

There's also the notion of taxes and the intrusiveness of government going hand-in-hand. "Less taxes = More Freedom" only to the extent that the government is unable to enforce laws and regulations because it doesn't have enough money to do so. You could theoretically have a government that taxed its citizens at punitively high rates but did very little to regulate commerce or private activity and did not provide a welfare state. (I'm not sure what they'd do with all the revenue, and it suffices to say that government wouldn't last long under democratic conditions.)

I don't feel "oppressed" because I pay FICA taxes so that I know I will be able to have health insurance after I'm too old to work and will at least have a small Social Security stipend if my retirement savings goes horribly wrong.

I don't see how getting rid of the EPA makes me "more free" in any meaningful way. All it does is let other people/companies dump toxic chemicals in water that I might be drinking and release pollution into the air that I'm ultimately going to breathe.