(The following thoughts are pretty rough, and not really well-connected yet. I’m not absolutely sure what I think of them, but they came to mind as I was trying to go to sleep, so I thought I’d put fingers to keyboard so I could record them for posterity.)
Ultimately, at its core, government exists as an economic construct. It serves the needs of the people, at a price, and thus the people are its customers. Forms of government where the people are routinely allowed to vote are a positive construct, because they theoretically allow the people to review the performance of their servants, and replace them if necessary.
When government begins to intervene in the economy, it upsets this model. If the government acts to reward any special interest group, say by taxing and awarding the profits to the group in question, then the interest group naturally allies itself with the government in order to keep the status quo. They vote in favor of those in power, and those in power continue to act in their behalf. The interest group’s ability to judge if the government is acting in their interest (or not) in other ways is compromised as a result.
The more the government intervenes in the economy, the more difficult it becomes to separate the government from the economy, and the more difficult it is to adequately change the direction of government by voting.
Can a raw government-as-an-economic-service model adequately account for human nature? Personally, I believe in a model where mankind is at worst inherently selfish and evil, and at best has an ongoing conflict between the good and the evil (and I see any model that posits the inherent good in humanity to be unworkable, and at odds with reality). Yet other models of government (for example a monarchy, where someone reigns with no sort of implied contract with the people) seems to be no better, because there is less of a check on the power of the monarch save a coup or the like. So, the monarch is just as able to intervene in the economy as I outlined above, in order to ally certain groups with him/her, thereby (hopefully for him/her) assuring continued power.
Perhaps a model of the democratic persuasion is better, at least at the offset, because initially everyone has (in theory) equal power, and they can band together to oust a public servant who is not providing adequate customer service. Yet even then we have the beginnings of special interest groups.
I will have to think more along these lines …
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