An Ideal World for Conservatives

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I have been thinking about the wild and crazy rants of people such as Rish Lumbaugh, on the one hand, and your typical Tea-Partyers on the other hand, and, on the third hand, my conservative buddies, with whom I have to be careful not to get into arguments.

They love to complain about everything: the deficit, the Federal Government, Taxes, Regulations, … the list is never-ending.  I would like to explore whether their complaints make sense.

The Federal Government

Well, this is the major complaint all conservatives have, be they fiscal conservatives, or social conservatives:  The Federal Government is too big and cumbersome, too expensive, and too intrusive.
OK.  Suppose we cut down the Federal Government to its bare minimum.
We want a strong defense, so we would keep the Armed Forces pretty much the way it is now, except that we would probably have to negotiate just how much money we want to spend on Veterans.  Conservatives are divided on this issue: some of them agree with the liberals that Veterans deserve the best possible care, though they would prefer that it should be funded by private donations and charity, but, failing that …  Others would throw them to the wolves, and insist that the government should have no responsibility for them.  They should get jobs like everybody else.
I think most conservatives would be all in favor of reducing Congressional salaries and benefits to their absolute minimum, since there isn’t a fair way of paying conservative congressmen a higher wage than liberal congressmen.  Ideally, congressional salaries should be paid by their constituents, without being a national burden.
We could get rid of the Department of Education, giving more control to local school districts.  (Low-income conservatives will be all for this, not realizing the implications of giving complete control to school boards.)  Pretty soon, private schools will be the only game in town, with church-funded school available in those districts where the churches are well-supported.  One would expect that the curriculum would favor faith over science, but churches can surprise us.
Here is where conservatives usually miscalculate:  Federal Controls on Goods and Services.  The Department of Agriculture requires that food and drug items be labeled with certain mandatory consumer information.  Suppose * cars were not labeled with their gas mileage, gasoline was not labeled with the octane, refrigerators were not labeled with the annual cost to operate them.  Die-hard conservatives claim that some businesses will label their products, others will not.  Those that are consumer friendly, they claim, will prosper, others will not.  And, they say, consumers have recourse to litigation if labeling is inaccurate.  Enormous tons of money saved by eliminating some of the most annoying offices of the Federal Government.
Good luck.  Consumer information not required to be accurate by law?  The consumer information will be just as useful as the warnings on cigarettes.  (In retrospect, perhaps they have a point.)

State and Local Regulations

Let’s look at a single instance: mufflers and catalytic converters on cars, and safety standards.  Again, my friend is fond of saying that manufacturers will voluntarily make their cars safe.  But considering Ford Mustangs, we know (because the information was leaked) that Ford Mustangs have mufflers that are barely within the noise parameters.  There are no regulations against motorcycle noise.  So, once regulations are no longer enforced, the din and the pollution will be intolerable.  The wealthy can move into quieter neighborhoods.  They will destroy virgin wilderness to find quiet, and build highways to their quiet homes, and pretty soon, of course, noisy cars will roar up past their quiet retreats.
What about zoning?  Is zoning a restriction that conservatives will hang onto, or will they do away with it, giving everyone greater freedom?  Interesting point.  Again, I suppose, voluntary zoning will miraculously happen.

Our own local government is presently controlled by Republicans.  But there is a noticeable lack of loosening of regulations.  Most conservatives who stand for election claim to be “moderates”, and invoke the ire of Tea-Party-ers and the like towards liberals only when annoying liberals need to be kept in their place.  In other words, the conservatives in power only pay lip-service to anti-Government rhetoric; they definitely believe in big government.

If not for the eight years of Bill Clinton, the Government of The United States of America would be in much greater debt.  The surpluses of the Clinton Era enabled George W. Bush to indulge in the spend and spend and no tax behavior that we saw.  And present-day fiscal conservatives will ultimately allow President Obama to raise revenue, while they wash their hands of all responsibility, thus enabling their own man the liberty to lower taxes and spend, if they get their person elected in 2016.  If there are sixteen years of uninterrupted Republican rule, they will either adopt broadly liberal values, or they will lose the vast majority of their less affluent voters.  Either way, the country will look very different from its present moderately reasonable state.  And the infrastructure flavor the government will put in place will make it impossible to get back to this heaven, even if both liberals and conservatives want it, and the rich will emigrate to flee the hell they create.

The disaster scene that we can anticipate if extreme conservatives and libertarians have their way gets funnier and funnier.  Colleges and Universities will have to raise tuition, which brings the dream of the upper-class to reality: no competition from poor, smart kids.  College will be the privilege of the wealthy few, as they believe it well should be.

Social Security, Medicare, and similar services will be privatized.  Aging middle-class Baby Boom-ers will hurt, but those of that generation who advocate privatization will have it made; it is the less affluent who will suffer.  If dividing the country --even conceptually-- into rich and poor, and channeling each part towards different resources of different quality is class warfare, this is class warfare.


What about roads, bridges, airports, regulation of land, sea and air traffic?  Well, only certain important places will be developed, based on local resources.  So certain wealthy suburbs will boast small, private airports, with their flight paths over the poorer residential areas, while large, public-access air terminals will have to fend for themselves.  There will probably be a lot more private, long-distance flights in small planes, to accommodate the very wealthy, and the middle-class will probably have to use land transport, just as many of them do now.

Gasoline will probably be cheaply available, though the higher grades will only be available at selected locations in wealthy suburbs.  Without government regulation of any sort, and without very much taxing, oil companies could set prices as high as they like.  On the assumption --by the general population-- that oil reserves are infinite, oil companies will sell the gasoline at a price that will maximize profits for the short term, since they know that it is a short boom, before the bust that is sure to come.  There will be a few private stockpiles, out of which gas will be sold at exorbitant prices once the flow of new oil is exhausted.

Most of all, food will be suspect.  Without regulation, cautious wealthy Americans will have to get their food from trusted, small, expensive providers, while the rest of us will have to take our chances with unregulated supermarket food.  Some supermarkets will certainly enforce internal standards, but they're more likely to simply take out insurance against customers who take ill and sue them, rather than really watch the reliability of their suppliers.  Or, we can grow our own.

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