[sreque]

I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying. Often it feels like it doesn't matter who we vote for: no president ever actually does anything about the ever-expanding big government. I wish we had someone like Senator Rand Paul, but more charismatic, who had a chance of winning the presidency. Say what you will, but that man definitely seems to want to shrink the government.

[godelski]

My problem with the right is that they do shrink the government, but also extend it in other ways. Personally I want an efficient government. I don't think that means slashing programs entirely, like getting rid of the IRS, but rather ensuring that programs don't bloat. They will tend towards that through bureaucracy. As the world becomes more complicated we will need more departments than we needed 100 years ago but we should always be ensuring that these departments don't get bogged down by too much bureaucracy. I feel that the conversation often lacks this notion and focuses on too simplistic of an approach. That's why I don't like people like Rand Paul. He's using a first order approximation which we can tell is not going to be a good enough approximation because he's using the wrong causal variables.