Essay 92: The Trade Of Seeking Official Positions In Certain Democratic Nations (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 20)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 604 (start at chapter 20 heading) – 606 (stop at chapter 21 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

If the government is small, ambitious people, seeking economic opportunity, will tend to go where the action is: to the private sector. They will, in a phrase, follow the money. However, if the government is big, ambitious people are more likely to seek out careers in the public sector.

This point is made in the second volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work, Democracy in America. As with so many of De Tocqueville’s insights, it’s common sense, informed by first-hand observation—he spent nearly a year traveling through the U.S. in 1831-32—and armored further in erudition. As he wrote, “In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer.” The author notes a distinctly American characteristic: “All that he asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings.” In other words, Don’t tread on me.

However, Europe was different. As De Tocqueville wrote of the ambitious European, “The first thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment.” In Europe, public employment didn’t just mean an income, it also meant power and privilege, the ability to lord it over others while perhaps wheedling a special favor out of some crowned head.

De Tocqueville, himself a classical liberal, clearly preferred the American approach of small government, too poor to do favors for the connected. He contrasted “public employments [that] are few in number, ill-paid and precarious,” to “different lines of business [that] are numerous and lucrative.” That, the Frenchman said, was a key difference between small-government America and big-government Europe.

To De Tocqueville, the freedom to get into business for oneself was the key to equality as he defined it. That is, equality of opportunity, as opposed to equality of result (sometimes today called “equity”).

Back in the 1830s, American government was small. The federal government’s share of economic output, what we now call GDP, was perhaps three percent. And the state’s regulatory footprint was small as well, to the point of non-existent. In most places, if you wanted to start farming, well, you just started farming. No permit needed.

By contrast, European governments were much larger, not just as a share of the economy, but as a share of the national mindset. Europe was, after all, the land of feudalism and centralized empire; by contrast, the U.S. was about republicanism and expansion on the western frontier—it was always even freer over the next hill.

De Tocqueville was ever loyal to France, and yet he wrote Democracy in America with an eye toward encouraging a new spirit of liberty in his homeland.

Meanwhile, today, the U.S. has a much larger government; the federal government’s share of the economy is more than seven times what it was in De Tocqueville’s era, around 23 percent of GDP (and state and local governments are much larger, too). Moreover, what’s called the “administrative state” has grown huge, too, in its ability to affect the economy, the workplace, the schools—even school bathrooms.

Has life for Americans improved amidst this government expansion? Is our Constitution stronger? These are matters for debate. But it does appear that America has become more like Europe. So now, plenty of Americans are able to make good careers for themselves as “activists” and “public-sector entrepreneurs.” That’s what Big Government buys you. (And of course, we must pause to distinguish the ambitious from those motivated by a spirit of public service; De Tocqueville wrote elsewhere about good patriots, and we all know plenty of good civic hearts today.)

To be sure, many Americans still flock to the private sector, even knowing that they must brave ever-increasing tax and regulatory burdens. Happily, our free economy is so strong that the rewards of private-sector entrepreneurship can be fantastic.

So we’re in a different place than we were in De Tocqueville’s time: We have a big public sector and a big private sector. What does this mean for today? What does it portend for the future? For answers, we might benefit from the visit of another sage foreigner to help give us insight and perspective.

Or, of course, we can look to our own traditions and history—starting with the U.S. Constitution.

James P. Pinkerton served as a domestic policy aide in the White Houses of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He also worked in the 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2008 presidential campaigns. From 1996 to 2016, he was a contributor to the Fox News Channel.

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