Sure, but he said that because he is an uncorrigable neocon.
He would be totally OK with giving the same "money and power" to big corporations.
Secondly, as I'm sure you well know, the small-government party line of the Republicans hasn't really meant anything since at least the time of Goldwater. Reagan and Bush Jr. presided over massive expansions of government power and expense, only pulling out "small government" talk in very strategic ways (attacks on PBS, etc).
A rough 95% of our leaders are completely compromised, whether from within or due to outside pressures, in favor of more power both for the state, and the corporations who it really represents. All else is theater.
There is one real issue that we should be putting all our energy into, and that is electoral reform.
I see three possible solutions, any of which would help, but all of which I'd like to see:
- Campaign Finance Reform: there are many potential ways to do this, the most straight-forward being publicly financed elections. This seems expensive, except when you compare it to the "media-electoral complex" we have now. Congress should not have to spend as much time as it does on fundraising, and should not be so motivated to accept kickbacks to PACs.
- Instant Runoff Voting: This would give third parties a chance to actually win by removing the "spoiler effect". It's a richer way to measure what the voters actually want, instead of continually forcing a choice of lesser evils. Anyone who still wants to cast their vote for a single party still can. Meanwhile, the mainstream parties would take third parties as a more serious threat, and focus more on the desires of their base, rather than taking them for granted and spending all their energy on a handful of politically inactive undecideds.
- None of the Above: Allow voters to choose none of the candidates as an option, forcing a new election. This would bring the protest non-voters back to the polls, the people who are so jaded that they believe (with cause) that voting is pointless, and whose opinions are going uncounted.
There are also other ideas like Proportional Representation, but that would represent a massive shift in our political structure, and so is probably not realistic. The above three options could be bolted on to our existing framework on a state-by-state level, or (theoretically) by Constitutional Amendment.
The problem is, both major parties and their donors benefit massively from the current system, and so it would take a huge upswell of public support to force a change. (Media companies would also fight tooth and nail; political advertising is a major source of revenue.) On the other hand, those members of Congress who are not blatantly corrupt don't like having to spend so much time fundraising, so it's not a completely uphill battle once critical mass is reached.
There is a necessity for someone to have the men, guns and dogs -- even if they only figurative. But men with guns and dogs are dangerous and so whoever has them needs to be strictly controlled and supervised. The ability to acquire more such men, guns and dogs needs to be resisted as much as possible, because it is very hard to claw back.
No, they can just buy media to influence public opinion or buy politicians and influence policy, and have them send the men with guns.
But I think we mostly agree with that.
Only I don't think the solution is less government (a smaller government is even easier for big corporations to have power on), but more vigilant citizens participating in politics.
Peter Turchin has developed an interesting family of theories about the rise and fall of great powers. He wrote a popular account, War and Peace and War, which I reviewed here:
http://chester.id.au/2012/05/14/review-war-and-peace-and-war...
As a footnote, I found why he used the term 'Asabiya'. It comes from an earlier historian, Ibn al-Khaldun.
What makes you think so? Smaller government has smaller "attack surface", as hackers say.
The irony is that everyone who goes on about a marginal tax increase, social security or some land-use regulations being tyranny, all of those same exact people are the biggest cheerleaders for a less restrained military.
Compare it with having a dozen of committees with everyone in it being mediocre and fearing change, fearing initiative, fearing that something will happen after the downsize.
Committees are good at reacting (one loud incident -> wham you've got new regulations) and bad at acting (runaway project will run forever with nobody having balls to shut it down).
Committees are what happens when you have a legislature.
You don't need committees to make decisions, you may use them to approve people who then make decisions. That's how presidents work.
The smaller the government, the more value you could get per bribe (more power located in individuals) and the easier it would be to do it (smaller governments presumably lack layers of security measures against bribery). In case of extremely small government a big corporation could buy it out entirely.
In larger government there are a lot of competing bodies with vague job descriptions. You can honey them all with varying results. You can oil "layers of security" as well so those rarely help.
Don't confuse big/small government with big/small country. Surely there are banana republics, but I can't imagine you can buy out government of Iceland that easily.
Citation please. I don't believe this to be true based on first hand accounts of people who have been to both of those places.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/06/29/256726/afghanis...
Well, sure, because we have a government to stop them.