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>I bet most people's token solution to this will be to expand the size of government [...] which will [...] only solidify these "elites" & special interest group's market positions...

and:

>No one ever wants to [...] limit government...

???

Um... but, um, won't limiting government "only solidify these 'elites' & special interest group's market positions"?

Right now they have to negotiate with the government to determine what they can take. Under your proposal, they would negotiate with no one to determine what they can take.

There is no outcome where the élites don't win. Only a spectrum along which we have varying degrees of control over them. Under the current regime, we have relatively little control over them. Under your proposal, we have even less.

One road leads to disease and despair, but the other leads to death and destruction.

You obviously have an agenda in your comment. Do you have any evidence that suggests the expansion of government correlates strongly to income inequality? Scandinavian countries are a great example of countries with large government and low inequality.

> I bet most people's token solution...

That wasn't an assertion tied to an agenda. It was an assumption about the typical US citizen, as a preamble.

I read the comment in whole, and it sets this up as a clear strawman. I bet on lots of things that end up being wrong. Why is the commenter so against big government when not a single soul proposed making the American government any bigger either in the comments or the article?

It's called a thought exercise, as HN is considered a good faith exchange. If you ask an American how to control a situation, the most common solution is an appeal to a government authority. That's not really a strawman, when it's demonstrably true. Relying on the economy, is typically the choice when there's propaganda money to convince them so (see most of the US West Coast states). I really don't understand why you would take this in bad faith, when there's a commercialization of mocking it (via youtube, merchandising) and the documented history of the USA litigiousness. shrug

I argue it's not demonstrably true, and as a matter of a fact, given how right leaning the entirety of the US is (even within the left leaning circles), and the prevalence of two dominant political parties that would be consider center of right and far right in any other country, it's clear Americans seem to favor less government. I'd be happy to find evidence presenting another view. The issue with the comment is it doesn't actually setup a thought exercise as it does a poor job of establishing the reality of that exercise and then negatively attacks a view point no one presented.

You could easily filter the media of your choice and find multiple stories similar to this:

>Americans Want To Regulate AI

>AT&T says it’ll stop selling your location data, amid calls for a federal investigation

Both right and left, in the USA, want regulation. Each one challenge that the other's regulation is unnecessary. That doesn't change the agenda over time.

> it's clear Americans seem to favor less government

And the sky is plaid? Some Americans pay lip service (it's easy to trust when you've never been a victim), but the media entertains with court room drama and mockery precisely because citizens, when harmed, expect regulation to prevail.

The history shows the exact opposite and the legal field is orchestrated to be layered (compare the housing code in any city from the 1800s to now, not to mention how land rights are judged). The federal government has dwarfed the local governments. It legally (and in practice) overrides it every day.

> It was an assumption about the typical US citizen, as a preamble.

Is it an assumption based in any way in reality, or based on the author's constructed strawman perception?

How are you measuring the size of governments?

relative to their tax base and populations

If you measure their tax base as percentage of their total GDP, you'll be surprised at how small government in those countries are. For instance, by that measure, France has the biggest government of the OECD: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm

Your link indicates that in 2016 (most recent year with full data, although seems fairly constant since 2000) the tax revenue of Denmark (45.51% of GDP), Sweden (42.57%), Finland (42.68%) and Norway (41.46%) were almost double that of the US (24.07%).

(Although I don't like including Norway in such comparisons, as it's tiny population and huge oil wealth makes it a big outlier.)

People always pretend the US government size is small and tiny countries in Scandinavia have giant ones. Yet few countries have the massive number of agencies and law the US does. The size of population certainly plays a role in this but ultimately it affects the average person operating in such a society.

I'm not talking about taxation. I'm talking about the size of the administrative state, ie. the amount of intervention the government engages in in the economy and socially.

The size of the administrative state may not be a relevant metric in evaluating the extent of actions taken to equalize voice in decision making/policy based on economic power, or to limit economic inequality more generally. (In fact, one view of the large administrative state is that it's a moat designed precisely to the advantage of established actors.)

The US is 30 times larger than the largest Scandinavian country. It stands to reason that the US would have a government proportionally as large unless they somehow found a way to be more efficient. I can guarantee you they have not.

Does it still have a "massive number of agencies" compared to the EU and all its member states? I don't think so.

I think it has much more to do with population. Sweden, Norway, Denmark all have populations less than 10M. Size of government, including tax rates, I would argue, factor more into a country's overall cultural profile which taken as a whole likely correlates with inequality.

Compared with Sweden's left to right political spectrum the US has two firmly right-wing parties to choose from. I think that matters a lot more than a population number.

Who is this “most people”?

The staring solutions are (1) get some of the money out of politics by ending SuperPACs and imposing real campaign finance reform with transparency down to the local level and possibly additional public funding for campaigns, (2) curtail the revolving door between industry and government and provide competitive salaries for civil service careers, (3) end partisan gerrymandering and ensure that voting rights are respected in every state and consider even more dramatic changes such as multi-member districts with proportional representation and STV voting, (4) increase taxes on capital gains and inheritances, add additional income tax brackets with higher top marginal rates, and consider wealth taxes or more dramatic tax changes like local land-value taxes instead of property taxes, work to eliminate tax loopholes such as the use of political campaigns or charities for tax evasion, (5) put more personal financial/criminal liability on corporate officers (e.g. at financial services firms) when their companies are involved in frauds, (6) provide the IRS and federal law enforcement agencies sufficient resources for more widespread enforcement of existing laws against fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, bribery, ...

Maybe first start with laws to make lobbying illegal (corporate donations/favors), and axe corporate person-hood.

Lobbying happens everywhere. Having it legalized makes it more transparent and helps you voting next elections. In my country it's illegal yet they do it behind the curtains

Same with campaign funding laws. I'd rather there be almost no laws but full transparency. How do you measure the funding impact of constant press coverage?

Things are transparent now, and it's not working well enough. People don't have time to care or worry about who is funding whom.

I think it would make more difference if we got rid of political action committees (PACs), it is this pattern that allows corporations and the rich to donate oversize amounts of money to their chosen corporate candidates. Without PACs each citizen can only donate a couple thousand dollars.

I had written this in response to a child comment but I guess I'll reply to this parent and collectively offer my supportive stance.

I'm not the parent poster, but I would wager his view is that governments should exist to enforce free competition. That is the source of disruption to the elites. The current regime does not ensure free competition. It's crony capitalism, and the entrenched "elite" (NB: this is a ridiculously outdated term) has the government at their disposal to ensure that they remain in power. Exhibit A: Ajit Pai.

Reducing government is a reasonable proposal because it reduces the "attack surface" for corruption and crony capitalism. Surely that's got to be an analogy that resonates well with this audience...

EDIT: and let's leave the discussion over whether Healthcare and Education should be universal and free (as in fully subsidized), otherwise we'll never get anywhere. I'm personally in favor of both, but you need not agree / disagree on that to discuss the broader point.

Ajit Pai's is not an example that institutions exist to further the interests of a small few, but rather that it is possible to ignore the duties of one's public office* to the benefit of a few.

*to be more precise, it is ignoring one's office. The office is not the position, it is the authority AND duties and responsibilities that come with a position. This brings into question if authority is legitimate in the event that it is granted with responsibilities which are ignored, but that's a separate question than whether or not the office itself exists to ignore it's own duties or whether the duties themselves are designed to favor the few.

Less Government -> Wealthy have more power.

Reagan/Thatcher reduced the government. How did that turn out?

You could argue the opposite:

Since WWII, western countries have seen an incredible growth of wealth. This growth of wealth translated to a huge improvement of leaving condition for the masses, which means that said wealth was reasonably well distributed and government knowingly or unknowingly made this happen.

By contrast, the XIXth century, despite growth, the average life conditions worsened significantly for worker leading, This lead to ideologies like Anarchism and Communism.

Why did this wealth was somewhat correctly distributed? Basically the two World Wars and the Great Depression, In Europe, the cost of the 2 wars and the inflation after them basically destroyed a huge chunk of the wealthier classes living of their accumulated money (rentier). In the US, the Great Depression and WWII lead to decisions like a tax rate of more than 90% for the wealthier, which lead to keep in check inequalities during the 40ies, 50ies and 60ies.

All this happen because of strong government basically stating: the interest of the whole is not the sum of individual interests.

It also happened because at the same time, an incredible amount of "new wealth" was being created in such a short span, this kind of growth rate was unprecedented in human history, it was easy and even somewhat natural to distribute more in this situation. These two factors combined to reduce inequality and improve living condition significantly.

The issue is that inequalities in revenue were still occurring. Slowly capital was becoming concentrated again. Which lead to the slow reconstitution of a strong wealthy class concentrating capital. This strengthening happened progressively by buying media channels, donating to politicians or even becoming one and lobbying strongly for favorable laws. This lead to policies/laws in the interest of this smaller group reinforcing this concentration. Basically, it's stating the obvious: there is a correlation between wealth and political power.

Also, since the 70ies, there was a strong slowdown in radical technical improvements and deployments, leading to less "new" wealth being available.

Now we are basically returning to a repartition of wealth as seen the XIXth century (albeit with far more wealth available).

It's a slow process, almost organic, the wealthier classes are not an homogeneous core, they have different and conflicting interests, but as a whole it's able to push in a given direction. The general population is far bigger, and also have conflicting interests, is even less homogeneous and doesn't have wealth, so it's not able to push as efficiently for the common interest.

It has nothing to do directly with governments. Strong governments actually helped a lot in reducing inequalities. But there is a limit to their action.

Maybe, now, what we need is a more radical way to redistribute wealth by for example an exceptional and significant tax on capital, and do it from time to time to re-balance our societies. Otherwise, long term, it will happen in this form or another: Revolution (a common occurrence in revolutions is the burning of debt files and archives), but I'm not convinced it's the good way forward given all the Chaos it will entail.