Problems with the state

I colleague of mine sent me a link to a Washing Post article regarding a rather heavy handed approach of the Trump administration to control the flow of information out of the CDC, with lists of forbidden words to be purged from websites and documents. It is appalling. However, I would argue it is both no more appalling that multiple other heavy handed practices that have received much less attention from the mainstream press, and to be completely anticipated based upon the expansion of state power.

For those of you who have been readers of my blog over the past six years, you are likely very aware of the influence of the legal scholar Richard Epstein on my thinking and world view. In his conceptual framework, human actions can be simply viewed as happening in three different domains; acting as individuals, acting as parts of groups of individuals who join together voluntarily, and acting as groups within the context of legal entities where they are bound legally to belong - state actors. The existence of state actors requires that individuals give up some liberty in order to gain something more, presumably gaining more than they give up.

Individuals clearly gain hugely from working with others to fulfill their needs. Each of us operating on our own are very limited in terms of what we can accomplish and the ability to collaborate has resulted in transformational gains, over a very long period of time. The history of enhancements in human collaboration goes back tens if hundreds of thousands of years and the vector of progress has been far from linear. Collaborative groups started small but evolved into larger and larger cadres using ever evolving rules and conventions. The current world at its best involves massive networks of people who generally never meet who make each others lives better.

An integral part of these networks involves rules which we embrace which foster trust and cooperation. Some but not all of the rules are codified into law. We could codify everything but we have not and I would argue that would be a very bad idea. We can and should have a different relationship with state entities than we do will other groups where our participation is voluntary.

State entities have powers over us that non-state actors do not. State actors hold the power of law, the power to coerce and force individuals. These are powers not to be trifled with. Our government was created to provide for needs which could not be met for private actors with specific limited powers enumerated with an explicit understanding that state power was dangerous. We have somehow lost sight of these dangers, until recent misbehaviors of the current administration.

Todays announcement of Trump administration should not come as a surprise, not because of any specific aspect of this administration,  but because of the gradual loss of skepticism of what state actors are capable of and motivated of doing. Concentration of power and cultivation of power monopolies tends to attract people who like to exercise power. Furthermore, governments are political entities and power to influence policy within state actors will tend to be move toward those who control political power. Winning elections means you control governments. The more power which is placed in the hands of political actors, they more those actors will want to use that power.

Technical experts who work for state entities can find themselves placed in very precarious positions. When working in the private sector, your relationship with employer is set by contract. You are free to criticize the government and protected by the Bill of Rights. However, you are not necessarily protected by the Bill of Rights if you publicly criticize your private sector employer. However, working for a state actor can get complicated in a hurry. If you work for a Federal or State agency, just what can you say regarding your employer?  What protected rights do you have? If you work for a particular agency and have a policy disagreement with your boss, what exactly can (or should) you say in a public forum? How much control does your political boss have over what you can say without getting fired?

When state functions were limited and the size of the "state" was small, this really was not much of an issue. However, as the size of the state grows and the influence of state funding permeates to a larger and larger segment of the economy, these issues loom larger and larger. With the previous administration, they did not overtly tell Federal employees to not use specific words. However, they tried to play games with dear colleague letters which had similar chilling effects on those of us who were indirectly supported by Federal $'s.

All of these trends point to a growing ability of state actors to coerce a wider and wider swath of the population of the US. We need to understand that empowering state actors, even for what seems like laudable goals, has real dangers. We can not take it as a given that good and wise people will be at the helm of entities that can hold a gun to your head.