Some (such as myself) also believe it legitimate for the government to provide public goods: goods which are nonrivalrous and nonexcludible.
Protection from contagious disease falls into this category, for instance.
Protection from contagious disease falls into this category, for instance.
An efficient government is a laudable thing that everyone should want, and so cutting away the fat is a natural thing to do in any sort of political light.
I don't know why libertarians at large seem to claim ownership of this notion.
In the past, if economists discovered an inefficiency in the market, they would say "and the government should correct this inefficiency with policy X". Public choice economists don't ask if governments should do X, but rather will they do X.
It turns out the incentives facing government actors aren't very good. They have much fewer incentives to act efficiently than market actors. It is possible to have competent officials at the head of a small bureaucracy produce good results. However, I doubt this is possible for the United States, which owns the largest bureaucracy in the world.
So, there are real reasons for limiting the scope of government.
There are plenty of good people working in the civic media area, so there's a good talent pool to draw from.
Done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_Sta...
The subsidy programs give farmers extra money for their crops, as well as guarantee a price floor. For instance in the 2002 Farm Bill, for every bushel of wheat sold farmers were paid an extra 52 cents and guaranteed a price of 3.86 from 2002–03 and 3.92 from 2004–2007.[2] That is, if the price of wheat in 2002 was 3.80 farmers would get an extra 58 cents per bushel (52 cents plus the $0.06 price difference).
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Also, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIC_Program
//not that there's anything wrong with that.
Roads, defense, control, vaccines... all have significant effects outside of the markets, and thus their price does not reflect the benefit to society.
Where do you stop? Surely you'd have to include financial companies? A financial company that makes up 10% of the financial market will calculate a phony 90% discount on any systemic risk it creates: after all, if the system fails, only 10% of that failure will be realized as a loss.