The Cycle Of Big Government

William Eggers and John O'Leary outline five reasons why libertarians should care about government:

1. Bad government leads to bigger, badder government. Today, only 23 percent of Americans trust government to do the right thing. At first blush, this would seem to be an encouraging statistic for those opposed to “big government.” After all, the less citizens trust government, the less willing they should be to give it big new responsibilities, right? Wrong. An important recent academic study called “Regulation and Distrust” shows that, paradoxically, the worse government performs, the more citizens demand greater government intervention.

The authors’ explanation for this curious finding is that in societies where people distrust large institutionswhether government or big businessthe demand for more regulation and for more government is higher, even when government is incompetent or downright corrupt.

They also list five historical examples of good governance and five examples of bad governance.

(Hat tip: Will Wilkinson)