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Throughout most of human history, governments have been able to extract between 25 and 50 per cent of the total economic production of their societies; so the scattered historical evidence suggests. This is partly because pre-modern economies were agricultural ones, in which whoever controlled or owned agricultural lands was by definition an economic czar; partly because it had not occurred to anyone to challenge these drastic economic exactions. About five hundred years ago, however, in parts of northern Europe, people began to question this state of affairs. Concepts of property and personal rights developed, as did the idea that government exists for the benefit of its citizens, instead of the reverse. The Industrial Revolution greatly accelerated the restraint of government, by creating large, dynamic population centers as counterweights to feudal power. In most industrialized countries, restraint of government was effectively achieved by the late nineteenth century.

This was certainly progress, but was it lasting progress? The history of the past one hundred years demonstrates conclusively that it was not. In fact, Edwin S. Mills suggests, in The Burden of Government (Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305-2323; $23.95), that this “century or two of government restraint was a mere historical aberration that existed while governments learned to control and to extract large surpluses from industrialized and monetized economies.” They have been greatly abetted, Mills argues, by the growth of democracy, with its vast expansion of the suffrage and its extension of education to the masses, as well as by technological advances in the production of commodities and services, and the dissemination and storage of information. In short: The cause of the enormous expansion of democratic governments over the past century is the increasing number of people with the money, the interest, the sophistication, and the power to make use of them for their own ends. Whereas, in the late 1800s, only a tiny minority of wealthy and powerful men could successfully lobby the U.S. Government, now everybody—cripples, blacks, Jews, and women, to echo the unfortunate James Watt—can do so. And has. And does.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Throughout most of human history, governments have been able to extract between 25 and 50 per cent of the total economic production of their societies; so the scattered historical evidence suggests. This is partly because pre-modern economies were agricultural ones, in which whoever controlled or owned agricultural lands was by definition an economic czar; partly because it had not occurred to anyone to challenge these drastic economic exactions. About five hundred years ago, however, in parts of northern Europe, people began to question this state of affairs. Concepts of property and personal rights developed, as did the idea that government exists for the benefit of its citizens, instead of the reverse. The Industrial Revolution greatly accelerated the restraint of government, by creating large, dynamic population centers as counterweights to feudal power. In most industrialized countries, restraint of government was effectively achieved by the late nineteenth century.

This was certainly progress, but was it lasting progress? The history of the past one hundred years demonstrates conclusively that it was not. In fact, Edwin S. Mills suggests, in The Burden of Government (Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305-2323; $23.95), that this “century or two of government restraint was a mere historical aberration that existed while governments learned to control and to extract large surpluses from industrialized and monetized economies.” They have been greatly abetted, Mills argues, by the growth of democracy, with its vast expansion of the suffrage and its extension of education to the masses, as well as by technological advances in the production of commodities and services, and the dissemination and storage of information. In short: The cause of the enormous expansion of democratic governments over the past century is the increasing number of people with the money, the interest, the sophistication, and the power to make use of them for their own ends. Whereas, in the late 1800s, only a tiny minority of wealthy and powerful men could successfully lobby the U.S. Government, now everybody—cripples, blacks, Jews, and women, to echo the unfortunate James Watt—can do so. And has. And does.