At 22:43 5/01/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
On Wed, Apr 30, 1997 at 08:24:27PM -0800, Jim Bell wrote:
I feel confident that a statistical analysis of various countries' governments would reveal a wide scatter in the relationship between population and government size. One of the main factors in this scatter is simply the amount that government has decided to butt into activities that could (and should) be privatized. Another is the amount that the government steals from one group in order to reliably receive the votes of some other group.
Population size would end up being a very poor determinant of government size.
Yes, there would be scatter, but it is not important.
The only reason "it is not important" is that this scatter is what demolishes your view of the world.
Population size is *obviously* a strong determinant of government size.
But probably not even close to the largest determinant.
So, having clearly established that larger countries will on balance have larger governments, we can then just look at organizational dynamics. *Any* large organization requires more infrastructure to function. *Any* large organization will develop bureaucracy. This is true for governments, this is true for businesses, this is true for schools, this is true for militias. A big city police department will have many different precints, with multiple layers of management, a small town will have a chief of police and a few deputies.
But NONE of this is truly needed. I have a solution to that problem. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com