The antiauthoritarian left

[Percivale]

Anyone hear from the libertarian left or antiauthoritarian left? Maybe Distributists would fit this category, anyone who wants small government but is concerned with economic equality and protection for poor and working-class people rather than businesses? What sort of policies would come from that stance and what groups represent it?

 

[LoAmmi]

I think we'd need to have an understanding of terms with what big vs small government is exactly. In my opinion, it would require laws and regulations to address things like economic equality and protection for the poor, which by most descriptions is big government. I would prefer a government not to have excessive laws or regulations that are not necessary and I would always be in favor of reviewing existing regulations, but I'm not for shrinking government down until we can drown it in a bathtub.

 

[Thedictator]

Anyone hear from the libertarian left or antiauthoritarian left? Maybe Distributists would fit this category, anyone who wants small government but is concerned with economic equality and protection for poor and working-class people rather than businesses? What sort of policies would come from that stance and what groups represent it?

Sorry, You can't have both. You can have intrusive big government with high taxes and an attempt to regulate the economy to bring about some form of economic equality and the need to regulate life choices so that cost will not rocket out of control and a very large bureaucracy to do all this regulating. The more social government programs you have the higher the taxes you have to have to pay for it, the more taxes the government have the more bureaucracy there is to make sure the money is being spent right.

Or Smaller government and less government programs and less taxes and regulation on peoples lives.

 

[Percivale]

It does seem that you can't have a totally minimal government and still fight income inequality but you don't have to have a really big one either. There are some ways in which reducing government actually would reduce inequality, for instance eliminating permits and licensing requirements make it easier for individuals to start small businesses without a lot of capital. And what share of the taxes the wealthiest pay compared to middle or lower income does not affect the size of government.