How can we say something is or is not a proper function of government?
Consider the difference in the level of abstraction of two questions. "Who should provide garbage service?" "What is the proper relationship of government to citizens' activities?"
In the analysis of Metro OptIn survey of November, the distinction between the ideological frameworks of the pollsters and liberatarians leads to the latter framework asserting that even asking the question about who should provide various services suggests a certain framework in which such a question is appropriate and necessary. Why then would I as a libertarian assert asking the questions is inappropriate and already exhibits a certain bias?
The problem lies in the superficial level of the questions. By focusing on individual services at the concrete level, the abstract problem of the proper relationship of government to human activity remains hidden. We can answer the polling question but the real question concerns why such questions are generated. They are generated because from one ideological framework it is proper to use government to solve various problems depending on the general will of the people. Within that ideological framework, the appropriateness of decisions about government depends on viable processes of representative democracy, not on any theory of government, or at least none that are expressly used to justify the process.
We have two methods at work. In the first, specific democratic decisions are made without an analytic framework. After the implementation of those decisions, additional decisions are made regarding how to change the first decision to make it work better. Objective evaluation is limited to concerns of which implementation methods need refining, not the evaluation of methods of government versus free activity. This first method of making issue specific decisions about concrete services gives atomistic, pragmatic policies without theoretical coherence.
On the other hand, a more advanced framework begins with a theory of government that serves a priori in the analysis. As an a priori framework not bound to a specific concrete service by government, such an analytic framework integrates and subordinates the individual decisions about services to the whole of the framework. Analysis becomes abstract since it operates one level above concrete decisions about specific services. Thus, the concrete questions about individual services implies a framework in which concrete decisions must be made. On the contrary, for a framework based on a theory of the relationship between government and its empirical science of political economy, to ask the question about specific services and even the need to poll citizens in order to determine the general will implies the need for such a process that only comes out of a pro-government ideological framework. If a citizen takes part in such polling, just as with voting, that participation lends a legitimacy that the citizen may not feel is proper. Hence, the abstention from participation may itself be based on a quite profound analytic framework of political economy.
In short, it is a matter of two different levels of abstraction, not two alternative choices similar to complementary, disjunctive subclasses. Hence, to raise the question of the proper role of government asks for analysis at a higher level of abstraction, something the first framework by definition is unable to do. If it were otherwise, the polling format would reflect the problem regarding the proper functions of government. By seeming to ignore this deeper issue, the framework effectively limits itself to concrete analysis of who should perform functions or what priorities should government assign when from a more abstract framework, the need for polling already implies a framework of unlimited government based on democratic will.
