Conservation of government

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Conservation of government refers to the principle that the amount of "whatever it is that government needs to do" is roughly constant for a given configuration of geography, demographics, and resources.

As a result, attempts to reduce the size of "big government" only outsource the targeted tasks to the private sector, increasing the size of private, for-profit government, and/or reducing the quantity and quality of government services, having a disproportionate effect on the poor and middle class. The public mind is not often enough drawn to the idea that a corporation is a government, reaching for power like any other. While a corporation is nominally accountable to any shareholders it may have, it is not accountable to the public interest. In their very charters, for-profit corporations are notably without any interest in furthering the public good.

Describing this outsourcing to the private sector as "Privateering" is a way to bring public attention to the offensive nature of unjust enrichment, which may otherwise be cloaked in Tea Party terms such as "opportunity" and "deregulation."

See also

• Privatization
• Small government

Further reading

• Lakoff, George: The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain, 2008, Viking, New York

References

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