Statism and Ultra-Statism

Libertarians like to talk about “statists” and “statism”. Statism is the notion that we require an empowered government to make society function, and statists are the people who adhere to this ideology. This isn’t necessarily a binary. You can be statist in some contexts and libertarian in others. You can be narrowly statist in thinking that there is no way to privatize national defense or environmental regulation, but libertarian with respect to drug laws, immigration, the welfare state, and other important questions. It’s not a terribly precise term, and nobody uses it to describe themselves. It’s more of a slur or boo word used by libertarians against non-libertarians.

It may be a slur, but it does get to a fundamental truth about the lazy way that most political commentators think and speak about society. People slip into it so easily when a government program they like is threatened. (Not even threatened with extinction, just with a minor budget cut.) In this post I’m taking aim at a truly deranged version of this, which I’ll call ultra-statism. Bear in mind that we have many layers and levels of government. They overlap in their functions. There are local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. There are local, state, and federal welfare programs. What I’m calling ultra-statism is the anxiety that if a higher level of government stops doing something, it won’t be done at all. Not only do we need government to do almost everything, in this view. We need an ultra-state to make the smaller, subsidiary states do the right thing.

This idea has come to me a number of times over the last decade an a half. It occurs to me whenever there is hysteria in the news cycle. This hysteria happens almost any time the federal government divests itself of power. I think it first occurred some time in the early 2010s, when some faction in Texas was discussing secession from the union. There was a ridiculous NPR story about the ramifications of secession for Texans. (Possibly this one, but I heard a different version that played on the radio. I remember it being even more hysterical than the piece in the link.) Supposedly they would lose out on a lot of federally provided services, thus Texans wouldn’t receive these services at all. But this is all nonsense. If the services are worth providing, Texas can provide them. The federal government takes and redistributes resources, but it doesn’t fundamentally increase the resources available to the citizens of any given state. The federal government can collect revenues and stir the pot, but it cannot increase the total resources available to the American people. (Were they arguing that Texas is a net recipient of federal funds, and other states are subsidizing it? Or just that Texas would no longer be compelled to provide the services that the federal government thinks it should provide? Assuming the NPR folks were arguing that citizens of an independent Texas would suffer a net loss of funds, this is rather curious. Were they happy about Texans receiving net subsidies at the expense of other states?)

Another example from over a decade ago involves Obamacare coverage mandates. The federal government has regulations that require health insurance to cover some treatments. The mandates relevant to this discussion involved birth control. There were a few entirely symbolic attempts to remove the federal mandates, involving Republican-sponsored bills and a Supreme Court case involving Hobby Lobby. This was almost entirely irrelevant, because 1) most states have regulations that required coverage anyway and 2) most health insurers were already covering this, mandate or no mandate. Really this was an example of gender-baiting, but the implicit message was that without a big, powerful federal government dictating coverage terms, some people were going to be left out in the cold with uncovered medical expenses. It’s fine for the federal government to step away from the game of micromanaging the coverage details of insurance contracts. They can still have a hand in stopping fraud and abuse, as in sanctioning fly-by-night insurance companies that fail to meet their contractual obligations. But people should be able to freely choose health insurance that has a lot of coverage exclusions, including for birth control. State governments are still in the game of “protecting” their citizens with regulation, even if the federal government steps back. It is just peak hysteria to cry that the sky will fall if the feds divest themselves of power and leave some tasks to the states. (Frankly, it’s not a big deal to expect folks to pay out of pocket for routine medical expenses such as birth control. I have a recent post arguing that point. The gender-baiting commentary on mandatory birth control coverage is hysterical even before we get to the question of which level of government should mandate it.)

I’m going to hold this concept in mind whenever cuts are made to the federal government (its budget or its powers). Responding to these cuts with hysterics isn’t just statism, it’s ultra-statism.