[cookiecaper]

I'm not sure what FB and Palantir have to do with the size of the state. They're private companies. Yes, it's true that in light of new technology, "the state" or a reasonable facsimile thereof can wield a frightening amount of knowledge about not only your personal life, but the personal lives of all of your associates as well.

However, that's just more reason to aggressively ensure that free markets are functioning well, that state dependence is low, and that the government's functions are kept trim. The Founders left us a great system, but it needs adaptation that keeps its true principles enshrined and safeguarded in light of the unparalleled technological revolution that's occurred over the last +/- 180 years.

[anigbrowl]

I'm sorry for not expressing what I meant more clearly the first time. I'm saying that given the extensive and unprecedented reach of private actors like FB and so, shrinking the state is not by itself going to make people freer. Most of the state's activities consist of providing services of various kinds, most of which people want, and it is this that employs the bulk of federal workers, and it is by cutting services that politicos aim to achieve the shrinkage.

The notion that shrinking the state will make it too small to surveil the people just seems naive to me, in the light of private firms' ability to surveil the population for commercial ends. If the state is so small as not to be an effective political actor (qua the 'deep state' permanent bureaucracy), then what is to stop those private entities leveraging their existing knowledge to wield power unchecked? The courts function as arbiters within the private sector only insofar as their judgments are backed up by the power of the state; absent a capable state actor that can be politically delegated to the security of public goods, what restraints exist upon private actors to conduct themselves peaceably?

I'm not really up for a philosophical debate on the broader role of government today, but in general I feel that the belief that less government will bring about increased self-reliance and we'll return tot he ways of our forefathers is a mistaken one, and really suffers from the same faulty utopianism as the idea of an all-encompassing state. If there were some optimal public:private sector ratio, or some magic formula for defining the appropriate scope of government, wouldn't you expect to see societies that stumbled across it racing ahead of their less nimble competitors?