More Hypocrisy from Advocates of Smaller Government

In the May 25, 2010 Florida Times-Union blog entry, "Small-government Rubio said it may be time for federal takeover of cleanup ops", David Hunt highlights the hypocrisy inherent in many advocates of free markets, smaller government and lower taxes. When insufficiently regulated markets create socially undesirable outcomes, such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, those harmed by the market failure scream that the government should do more. You cannot have it both ways. It is easy to support free markets and smaller government when one fails to consider the negative consequences. Rational economists argue those consequences always should be considered.

According to David Hunt's blog:

During a campaign stop in Jacksonville, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio said he's been disturbed by the lack of technology to harness the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Although Rubio presents himself as a small-government candidate for U.S. Senate, he said it may be time for a government takeover of operations.

Here's what he had to say:

There's an increasing loss of patience with British Petroleum and, quite frankly, with the federal government. I think one of the things we've learned, sadly, is that cleanup technologies have not advanced at all over the last 30 years. They're basically making it up as they go along. The fact that they were drilling at such a deep level, and there wasn't the technology to deal with a spill if it happened, is in and of itself frightening. Those questions have to be answered.

Priority number one has got to be focus on preventing this from getting worse. If that means the federal government has to step in and take over than that's what needs to happen.

The second thing, we need to figure out why this happened so that it never happens again. You know how when there's an airline accident, how the FAA treats that very seriously? They investigate it down to the thread as to what caused that accident so that airline travel in America is exceedingly safe. The same needs to happen here.