Cato Unbound: “Is Limited Government Possible?” by Randy Barnett; Response to “Government, Bound or Unbound?” by Anthony de Jasay
Feb 20th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
The final of the three responses to de Jasay’s essay have been posted (my summaries here, here, and here), and the interlocutors have moved into the second and third rounds of response.
It is not necessary to have read de Jasay’s essay to read Barnett’s. It’s not really a response to the essay, but to the question which de Jasay et al. are asking.
Barnett’s thesis is that limited government exists, and is therefore possible. More to the point for him, however, is the question of why the US Government has exceeded its constitutional limitations, and whether it can be returned to functioning within those limitations.
Working for such a return, he says, is more feasible than achieving the best structural method for limiting government: a “polycentric constitutional order.” It would at least move the government in the right direction, he says.
I first encountered what he calls a “polycentric constitutional order” in a book by Ayn Rand, but in that essay she didn’t seem to be sure it would work. Barnett, evidently, has worked out the theory more fully.
The basic idea is that monopolies are almost always a problem, and the government monopoly on legislation and enforcement is no exception. If people could choose legal systems like they could phone plans, Barnett says, then the power of the government would truly be balanced with the power of the people.
