We live in an age of big government. Every day we hear calls for government to do more -- from regulating light-globes, to regulating baby-sitting, to subsidizing both business and unemployed, to adjusting the climate, and everything in between. There is nothing this wonderful invention can’t do!

The difference between the international socialism of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Stalin’s Russia, and the national socialism of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Hitler’s Germany, was in their ideas on how government should go about controlling all production activities. Both variants were agreed that private ownership of the means of production - capitalism - is terribly bad for society; and that government should dictate the conditions of production, and therefore any aspect of human freedom in general.

The Russian model involved the state taking over ownership of all productive property and running it directly. The German model left the legal ownership in the hands of the property owner, who was able to run it and to profit subject to any overriding directive on any matter by the state according to its plans for society. This model increasingly describes contemporary conditions in the western world, especially owing to the rise of environmentalism.

Many people think it is necessary for government to manage the environment which unchecked human resource use is liable to degrade.