Both the organic and mechanistic views of government are outlined in Chapter 1. Pick which view you think is the best and defend your position.
min 250 words
Book: Public finance
Author: Harvey S. Rosen, Ted Gayer.—Tenth edition.
pages cm ISBN-13: 978-0-07-802168-8 (alk. paper”
“public finance and ideology Public finance economists analyze not only the effects of actual government taxing and spending activities but also what these activities ought to be. Opinions on how government should function in the economic sphere are influenced by ideological views concerning the relationship between the individual and the state. Political philosophers have distinguished two major approaches. Organic View of Government This view conceives of society as a natural organism. Each individual is a part of this organism, and the government can be thought of as its heart. Yang Chang-chi, Mao Tse-tung’s ethics teacher in Beijing, held that “a country is an organic whole, just as the human body is an organic whole. It is not like a machine which can be taken apart and put together again” (quoted in Johnson [1983, p. 197]). The indi-vidual has significance only as part of the community, and the good of the individual is defined with respect to the good of the whole. Thus, the community is stressed above the individual. For example, in the Republic of Plato, an activity of a citizen is desirable only if it leads to a just society. Perhaps the most infamous instance of an organic conception of government is provided by Nazism: “National Socialism does not recognize a separate individual sphere which, apart from the community, is to be painstakingly protected from any interference by the State. . . . Every activity of daily life has meaning and value only as a service to the whole.” 1 The goals of the society are set by the state, which attempts to lead society toward their realization. Of course, the choice of goals differs considerably. Plato conceived of a state whose goal was the achievement of a golden age in which human activities would be guided by perfect rationality. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler [1971/1925, p. 393] viewed the state’s purpose as the achievement of racial purity: “The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogeneous creatures.” More recently, the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini argued that “only a good society can create good believers.” He wrote that “Man is half-angel, half-devil,” and the goal of government should be to “combat [the devil part] through laws and suitable punishments” (quoted in Taheri [2003])”
“4PART IGetting Started A crucial question is how societal goals are to be selected. Proponents of the organic view usually argue that certain goals are natural for the societal organism. Pursuit of sovereignty over some geographical area is an example of such a natural goal. (Think of the Nazi drive for domination over Europe.) However, although philosophers have struggled for centuries to explain what natural means, the answer is far from clear. Mechanistic View of Government In this view, government is not an organic part of society. Rather, it is a contriv-ance created by individuals to better achieve their individual goals. As the American statesman Henry Clay said in 1829, “Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.” The individual rather than the group is at center stage. Accepting that government exists for the good of the people, we are still left with the problem of defining just what good is and how the government should promote it. Virtually everyone agrees that it is good for individuals when government pro-tects them from violence. To do so government must have a monopoly on coercive power. Otherwise, anarchy develops, and as the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes [1963/1651, p. 143] noted, “The life of man [becomes] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Hobbes’s observation was confirmed in Tunisia in early 2011, when revolution forced the president and other political leaders to flee the country. In the absence of government and police, chaos ensued. Similarly, in The Wealth of Nations , Adam Smith argued that government should protect “the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies,” and protect “as far as possible every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it” [1977/1776, Book V, pp. 182, 198]. The most limited government, then, has but one function—to protect its members from physical coercion. Beyond that, Smith argued that government should have respon-sibility for “creating and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain” [1977/1776, Book V, pp. 210–211]. Here one thinks of items like roads, bridges, and sewers—the infrastructure required for society to function. 2 At this point, opinions within the mechanistic tradition diverge. Libertarians, who believe in a very limited government, argue against any further economic role for the government. In Smith’s words, “Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way” [1977/1776, Book V, p. 180]. Libertarians are extremely skeptical about the ability of governments to improve social welfare. As Thomas Jefferson pungently put it in his first inaugural address, Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. In contrast, those whom we might call social democrats believe that substantial government intervention is required for the good of individuals. These interventions can take such diverse forms as safety regulations for the workplace, laws banning racial and sexual discrimination in housing, or public provision of health care. Social democrats tend to believe that individual freedom is more than the absence of physical”
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