Some pro-government types obviously believe some kinds of central planning or delivery by government is OK and even necessary. How would they respond to those historical attempts at massive central planning and their disastrous effects?
For example from the New York Times by Frank Dikötter, professor at the University of Hong Kong:
"The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere, was the Great Famine of 1958 to 1962, and to this day the ruling Communist Party has not fully acknowledged the degree to which it was a direct result of the forcible herding of villagers into communes under the “Great Leap Forward” that Mao Zedong launched in 1958."The often reported result was at least 20 to 30 million deaths due to starvation but there were likely far more deaths, at least 45 million total, as reported in his piece, "Mao's Great Leap to Famine."
What is of interest is that to this day, the Chinese party attempts to cover up the disaster, usually by blaming the weather. It is as if belief in central planning continues to exist and so dare not admit failure. So I wonder, how exactly would pro-government types explain the disastrous consequences of centralized government planning throughout history—not just the disastrous Great Leap Forward but North Korea compared to South Korea or the Soviet Union compared to the US or East Germany compared to West Germany or Chile compared before and after economic reforms or the US and other free nations of the world compared to the unfree nations? Would all these be denied as facts? Can pro-government thinking admit to some failure in the ideology or not?
Or perhaps they would assert that the above examples are different from lessor forms of centralized government. Perhaps somehow the various efforts to have government take over things vary in a way that makes some instances of centralized government planning good—probably health care, minimum wage, education, drug regulation—while others are bad. If so what kinds are bad? Are there any instances in America today of bad uses of government?
If a pro-government person does admit to certain instances of government failure but believes others work and are necessary, perhaps rather than two categories of thinking, there is a scale reflecting a matter of degree. So is the pro-government ideology simply one of two qualitative types of belief regarding political economy, the other being limited government. Or do beliefs actually lie along a scale ranging from high levels of belief in pro-government policies to low levels of belief in any kind of government efficacy?
