Recently, the news cycle has been dominated by executive actions by Donald Trump. He has unilaterally tried to overturn many policies and restructure executive agencies. Depending on which side of the political aisle you are on, this could be seen as an attempt to weed out endemic government corruption and inefficiency. In contrast, if you fall on the other side of the aisle, they represent a clear overreach of executive authority as outlined in the Constitution. What is undeniable is the fact that the power of the executive branch in America has steadily been increasing over the years due to well-intentioned but misguided policies. At the present date, policies have led us to the point where unelected billionaires can run amuck in quasi-governmental agencies where they can enforce their personal beliefs and punish people with whom they disagree ideologically or personally while not being responsible to the public like an elected official would be.
Democracy is freedom, but the legislature is notorious for being slow to act. There is a reason that “taking an act of congress” is not synonymous with quick and easy in the popular lexicon. At the same time, there is an undeniable push to nationalize or at least increasingly regulate many important markets and industries, including healthcare, student loans, the energy sector, and much more. The idea behind this is that a single regulatory body could enable overall efficiency in the markets while ideally lowering prices for the everyday consumer. The unfortunate result of increased socialization is increased governmental control over virtually every aspect of everyday life. Great examples of this include the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the Social Security Act of 1935. In every instance, power was given to the executive branch that did not exist previously to enforce a minimum wage, entrench the third-party insurance system into federal law, or dispense trillions of taxpayer dollars to the general populace. Money is power, and creating a large body of the American people that are reliant on governmental funding means the government can potentially exert even more power over them. Unfortunately, with so much centralized power it creates a system rife for exploitation by the rich and powerful, contributing to the overall trend in American politics toward an oligarchy.
In many ways, Donald Trump represents the populist candidate that Friedrich Hayek wrote about in his paper, The Road to Serfdom. Despite all the rosy promises made by the federal government, the overall plight of the working man has continued to worsen. In many cases, this has been blamed on excessive bureaucracy within the federal government combined with “woke" policies and less on the broader underlying issue: that some governmental agencies should not exist to begin with. Take the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This agency was created by Congress in the year 1965 with the laudable goal of providing affordable housing to low-income Americans. Over time, congress has realized that they cannot act as fast as necessary to run these programs and has ceded vast amounts of power over to the executive branch in the hopes that the president can act with the best interests of the people in mind. Unfortunately, excessive bureaucracy and unelected policy makers with ulterior motives have greatly neutered the effectiveness of this program. Furthermore, in many instances ,it actively hinders state and local governments from implementing programs that are more suited to their specific needs. So, in summary, the president now has direct control over the housing situation of 2.3 million low-income families in America- that’s quite a bit of power. This power grows even stronger when looking at larger programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Trump has been able to rally a very motivated group of people, often from a lower educational and socioeconomic background. With this base of supporters, Trump portrays himself as a champion of those who feel left behind by the federal agencies that were supposed to help them in the first place. This taps into the frustration felt by many Americans that federal agencies are actively helping other demographics but not their own or failing to deliver on their promises entirely. This frustration is compounded by the fact that life-altering decisions are made in these agencies by unelected officials. Politicians on both sides have wielded social welfare programs as political tools, either promising expansions or threatening cuts depending on what voter base they want to appeal to. This ignores the fundamental issue: Should these agencies exist at all?
By railing against the “deep state” and promising to “drain the swamp”, Trump agrees with Hayek insomuch that centralizing control over Americans’ daily lives has had detrimental effects. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek points out that the brewing resentment that grows with government overreach can lead to political instability and extremism. In this sense, Trump is both a product and a consequence of the very system that he critiques – a political outsider who has ridden this wave of resentment to the white house by promising to dismantle bureaucratic overreach. Ironically, in doing so, he has exemplified just how much power has been granted to the executive branch in the name of social advancement while turning this power over to the wealthy elite. This just goes to prove the dangers of concentrating governmental authority that Hayek warned about.
If the federal agencies that were meant to serve citizens have become tools of political maneuvering and control, is the road to serfdom already upon us?
