Comment Re:So you're saying there's a chance? (Score 1) 212
I get the basic idea from right-leaning political theory that the more things you make primarily the responsibility of government, the more power government will have to potentially abuse; and the more power government has that could be potentially abused, the fewer defenses there are against that government becoming tyrannical. Sounds sensible on the surface. I'm certainly not interested in nationalizing Silicon Valley, as state ownership of all tech companies would indeed offer the government far too much abuse potential for no clear benefit. And to make an actual representative country comparison here, China has shown us how such a thing can be (and is being) abused to authoritarian ends.
But it seems quite bizarre to say that any expansion whatsoever of the responsibilities of government deepens that abuse potential in some similar way. It's reasonable to be wary of nationalizing the tech sector, but it seems totally silly to worry about giving people free healthcare or housing vouchers. There are any number of complex cultural, social, and historical factors unique to each country that independently influence whether a country is going to go down the road of authoritarianism, so it seems like quite a leap of logic to put "generous welfare state" high on the list of causes without--as I've said--extraordinary evidence of that being a major causal link. So many other factors seem so obviously more significant. And for what it's worth, as far as I know from the political science I've read, it's not considered a mainstream opinion that "generous welfare state" ranks high on the list of risk factors for a country to descend into authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, it's quite odd how those who fear tyranny resulting from expansions of the role of government never seem to worry too much about the tyranny of concentrated wealth we have today. The fact that the rich are able to extract exploitative amounts of labor from the poor en masse is real, existing authoritarianism that exists today in otherwise "free" societies, but rather than worry about that, the right prefers instead to worry about hypothetical authoritarianism they fantasize would result from giving the poor free healthcare. If anything, the opposite is true. If everyone had free healthcare, free college, or even a universal basic income provided by the state, then people would be free to work for whomever they want rather than being locked into the workplace tyranny they presently endure. In this respect, an expansion of government would reduce the authoritarianism of society. It would expand people's freedoms, not curtail them.