I’ve met Colorado Politics columnist Hal Bidlack, and he’s a nice and thoughtful guy. So I can only assume that he woke up on the wrong side of the bed on the day he wrote, “Conservatives may want to think twice before rolling back government” (Dec. 13).

The “TL;DR” version of this response would be simple to write. I could just point out that all of the supposedly essential government functions that Bidlack identifies — police and fire departments; occupational licensing boards; food, drug and building inspectors; the FAA — comprise about, what, 10% of the government’s activities? Maybe 15% at an outside? Since total government spending in the USA — federal, state and local — is estimated to be above $8 trillion, that would seem to leave wide scope for reductions even if we accept Bidlack’s characterization. In fact, one might even be tempted to say that his entire argument is a straw man.

But even this would be too kind — since some of the things Bidlack mentions are actually good examples of why less government, and more free market, would be beneficial. 

Let’s take his comment about occupational licensing. Bidlack rightly ridicules the Colorado Office of Barber and Cosmetology Licensure, but then he states that surely everyone would want doctors to be licensed. Right?

I am fine with requiring doctors to be licensed, but it might interest Bidlack to know that, technically, a dermatologist has all the government licenses required to perform brain surgery. Why is it then that none of us worries about having a brain tumor operated on by a doctor who spent years studying zits? For the simple reason that no hospital would give a zit doctor admitting privileges to its brain surgery theater. No insurance company would insure such a doctor. And nobody who can read a Google search result would hire him or her for this task. Which means that the real protection against this type of medical risk comes from the private sector and not from Bidlack’s supposedly essential bureaucrats.

The last time I checked, there are over 1,000 occupations which require some kind of license in one of the 50 states, but only about 60 occupations which require a license in all 50 states. Which means that the public safety arguments for those other 940 occupations might be somewhat dubious, right? This illustrates one of the central fallacies of Bidlack’s argument. He assumes that we can always get the good things of a big government (such as the medical licensing) without any of the bad things (such as the cosmetology licensing). But both theory and experience say that this is nonsense.

The theory that we can’t just get the good stuff without the bad stuff is called “public choice theory.” But this theory goes even further. It claims that we are actually far more likely to get mostly the bad. The reason for this is that a bad regulation — such as a cosmetology license that serves only to limit competition to the detriment of the consuming public and all the (often marginalized) people who would like to braid hair but who can’t afford the time and money to get a license — typically hurts each of us only a little bit, whereas it helps each licensee a great deal.

So, guess who spends money lobbying for these regulations? Guess who writes letters to their representatives? Guess who shows up in public hearings on the regulation? And guess who donates to, and pounds the pavement for, the candidates who promise to get the regulation passed?

Hint: It ain’t you and me.

Which is why the percentage of jobs covered by occupational licensing has skyrocketed in the last 30-40 years even though, with the advent of Yelp, Google reviews, Angie’s List, etc., the need for government validation has clearly plummeted.  

But there is another problem and it is illustrated by Bidlack’s invoking of the FDA’s mandate to determine the safety of medicines. The problem here is that, if the FDA allows a medication that “kills or maims kids,” then the entire world can see the carnage. But if the FDA blocks, delays or makes uneconomical (though excessive testing requirements, for example) a medication that could have stopped a bunch of kids from dying or being maimed, no one sees them. 

So, guess what the FDA does when it has to balance the risks of approving a potentially very beneficial drug versus the risks of possibly letting a bad one through? A private version of the FDA — which exists and which performs better than the FDA — is required to balance risk and return, just like Underwriters Laboratory is required to do when it reviews electrical equipment. If it is too cautious, then no one would use its service. If it’s too reckless, then it destroys its reputation. The FDA has no such pressure and is guaranteed to be too cautious.

And, of course, Bidlack brings up the “who’ll pay for the roads?” trope. No sane person wants local roads to be privately provided, but as someone who regularly travels the beautifully functioning and privately built and operated E-470 toll road, I will take the private sector over the government for these types of large infrastructure projects all day long. Ditto for the predominately privately owned airports in Europe over the running sore that the DIA redevelopment has become.

Responding to all the examples cited by Bidlock, and showing how the private sector can do (or already does) a better job in many cases, would make this already-too-long response even longer. Nor am I suggesting that he is always wrong and that there is no valid role for government; I am not an anarchist. But the public is not served by these types of simplistic, reductio ad absurdum arguments. Particularly when they are used to justify the maintenance or expansion of a government which is, by my lights, already manifestly too large.

Roger Barris, an investor and entrepreneur from Evergreen, was the Libertarian Party candidate for Congress in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District in 2018.