Scandal at the Welfare State

by Tibor R. Machan

These days scandals abound throughout government. They usually involve special benefits obtained by organizations from local, state, or federal governments. Politicians play favorites as they carry out their duties. They accept gifts or contributions for special treatment.

Yet are not all these improprieties merely routine behavior carried out somewhat ineptly? Politics, it would seem, has come to involve little more than playing favorites and serving special interests. What could be reasonably construed as the public interest is completely obscured.

Still, the distinction between the public and the private interest is quite meaningful. But the welfare state obscures it. The system favors majority rule regarding any concern that some member of the public happens to have (if it can be brought to public attention). It treats everyone's project as a candidate for public support. Since most everyone or group that has different objectives, if they can be advanced by political means, they become "the public interest."

This may be the result of what Professor Benjamin Barber of Rutgers University calls a strong democracy -- subjecting all issues of concern to members of the public to a referendum. Yet it was just this prospect that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared. This is one reason they insisted on a Bill of Rights -- which denies to government the kind of powers that strong democracy entails. Everything shouldn't be up for a vote.

Consider just a few current topics of "public concern" -- for example, the Ralph Nader type-crusades for absolutely safe automobiles, risk-free medical research, and the banning of genetic experiments. Isn't Ralph the paragon of the public minded citizen, without an ounce of self-interest? Yet, his concerns quite legitimately are not shared by many citizens -- e.g., those who would prefer more powerful, maneuverable automobiles that can quickly get out of tight spots.

Jeremy Rifkin, who would ban all genetic experiments, is another of those who bill themselves as public interest advocates. But such persons in fact serve quite particular interests. These and similar-minded individuals clearly do not favor the general public. They favor, instead, some members of it. The rest can fend for themselves when Rifkin and others gain the political upper hand.

The point is that when government does so much -- in behalf of virtually anyone who can gain political power or savvy -- it is difficult to tell when it is serving the true public interest. Everyone is pushing an agenda on the government in support of this or that special interest group.

There is under such a system hardly any bona fide public service at all. In this case, laws often serve a private or special purpose -- e.g., smoking bans in restaurants, prohibition of gambling, mandatory school attendance, business regulations that serve the goals of some but not of others. Such a bloated conception of the "public" realm even undermines the integrity of our judicial system. Courts adjudicating infractions of such special interest laws become arms of a private crusade, not servants of the public.

One consequence of this is that confidence in the integrity of government officials at every level, even those engaged in the essential functions of government, is becoming seriously eroded. The police, defense, and judicial functions all are suffering because government has become over-extended.

As government grows beyond its legitimate functions, scandals become the norm. They certainly should not be surprising. They merely represent the more obviously inept ways of trying to get the government to do your own private, special bidding.

Once we expand the scope of the public -- in effect make the concept "public" quite meaningless -- the powers of government get involved in tasks that serve only some of the people, and often at the expense of other people. And that simply breeds bad government -- whether hidden, by phony legislation and regulation, or by means of out-and-out corruption and subsequent scandal.

It is therefore not surprising that the welfare state is so susceptible to misconduct. The lesson we ought to take away from all this is that the scope of government should be reduced to proper proportions -- the defense of individual rights.