Giant central bureaucracies have strangled the states in the US, Australia, and EU. By Gigi Foster, Paul Frijters, and Michael Baker.
The US, Australia, and the EU each started out as federalist ideas with extremely independent constituent states, and with constitutions that made the rise of a large central government illegal and impossible.
Yet, in all three places, the federalist project has failed, and a giant central bureaucracy has arisen that is strangling the life out of both states and country …
US:
The percent of GDP spent by the federal government grew from 2% around 1900 to 25% today, with peaks during wars, bailouts, and lockdowns. …
How did this runaway bloat come about? In short, mission creep and corruption.
Big companies wanted more regulation to help make life harder for entrants to their industries. The legal and prison-stewardship professions wanted and found more customers (prisoners). The health industry wanted and found more customers (sick people). The defence industry wanted and found more foreign enemies. Hence each of these groups in various ways goaded and nudged the federal government to aid the expansion of their private interests.
Along the way, as government became more centralised and powerful, it also created new agencies to regulate organisations, like financial institutions, polluters, and telecommunications firms. The big firms in those industries, like those in the defence and health industries before them, eventually captured their regulators, turning them against competitors by regulating smaller firms out of existence and against consumers by reducing competition overall.
The increased power of the centre to appropriate and control resources was used to create a Leviathan of bureaucracy that proved to be fertile ground for training a parasitical globalist Western elite that talks down to those it preys on, as we see with the ESG and DEI crazes.
Did individual states resist? Most certainly, and judging from the recent actions of some Florida government officials, they still are resisting. Yet on the long march of central expansion, the states were overpowered because the federal government was able to access far greater resources by increasing existing national taxes and creating new ones.
A steady stream of excuses for expansion were available because companies and individuals exploited loopholes in existing regulations, and because there were real and imagined emergencies that could be readily harnessed to the expansionary wagon.
The US, once the pinnacle of federalism, now has an outright fascist political centre: a unification of judicial, commercial, legislative, executive, and religious power.
Australia:
Six self-governing colonies preceded federation, and only in the latter part of the 19th century did support grow for a unified nation. Even then, the idea was that the central authority would handle a very limited number of activities where inefficiency had become manifest (mainly defence, trade, and immigration). The centre, known formally as the ‘Commonwealth,’ was given no powers outside of emergencies. States were supposed to organise everything, including education and health. …
So how did that all work out? … The Commonwealth has insinuated itself via regulation into welfare, health, and education, and now dominates tax collection. It spends around 27% of GDP all told, up from practically zero before the first World War and around 10% in 1960. …
EU:
Initially, the structure of the EC was almost the pinnacle of federalism: there was no actual central government (since after all, independent states were sovereign nations!) and EC leadership rotated around countries every six months. …
Yet right as rain, the number of institutions, agencies, and bureaucrats blossomed over time as mission creep set in. At first, most of the growing cadre of bureaucrats passed their days pleasantly working on things like standards for the thickness of water mains and train gauges. Over time, the Community organised things such that it would take on increasingly authoritative roles in affairs that extended beyond its original remit, such as foreign policy and monetary policy, the latter formalised with the establishment of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt in 1998.
Today, the EU has become a fire-breathing monster. Via health regulations, nonsensical industry standards such as making ESG reporting compulsory for major companies, a central currency it has used to gain control of taxation and debt, educational standards, and so on, the EU is an executive and legislative body wielding powers it was never supposed to have. Its formal budget is not so large, but the budget it directs is huge.
Under a multi-year agreement between the member states, it has a budget of 1.8 trillion Euros to spend in the period 2021-27 (1% to 2% of GDP). This is for central EU administration and programs, so somewhat equivalent to what Washington spends on itself. It does not include its hold over individual member countries’ government spending, which amounts to about 50% of EU GDP. The EU bureaucracy controls much of that spending via mandated health expenses (including hidden contracts with Pfizer), mandated propaganda, mandated reporting rules, and so on.
Instructively, the EU attained many of its current powers not via democratic vote, but rather via reorganisation: it accumulated power by lifting burdens from individual leaders of member countries who couldn’t be bothered with cumbersome democratic routes. …
Member states’ governments let it happen.
The EU propaganda machinery similarly started small as a set of directives for media and Big Tech to follow, but has morphed into a full-fledged and blatant ministry of propaganda that outlaws dissent from officialdom. Yet again fascism by stealth, once more cheered on by the large international corporations and globalist elites.
Individual European countries still have a lot of power — more so than do the states in the US and Australia, because at least Europe’s armies are still national — but the descent towards centralised and tyrannical bloat in Europe has been staggering.
How to Fix Federalism?
The last few decades have demonstrated that in disparate regions, with disparate starting points, small central bureaucracies found alliances with large corporations and wealthy individuals, usurped more and more power, and sucked the life out of the federations they were supposed to serve.
All kinds of institutional checks and balances failed, from audit offices to veto powers to rotating leaderships. The beast just kept growing regardless, through arrogance, cunning, stealth and corruption.
Federalism is under attack, but there is life in the old nag yet. In all three of the examples above, the constituent states still have a somewhat functioning democracy, a blossoming independent media, and a growing awareness on the part of the citizenry that they are dealing with something that is actively working against their interests. Except within those at the centre itself, there is a desire for more decision-making to occur non-centrally.
Populations are voting with their feet for places that get it right (like Florida, Switzerland, Madrid, and Poland (pre-2024)) and running away from places that get it wrong (like London, California, and Melbourne). …
We need a reasonably sized bureaucracy to run a large army because every modern Western state has enemies with large armies. We also need one to provide a countervailing force to big international corporations that will run roughshod over all of us if there is no organised resistance. As dreamy as it seems, 18th century liberalism is just too individualistic and naïve, in our view, about the modern realities of the dog-eat-dog world of power.
Yep. Much more at the link.