Yeah, you’re definitely onto something. On the surface, it often looks like the government is stepping back or shrinking. But from what I’ve seen, it’s not always that simple.

A lot of the time, when a service gets “privatized” or moved out of direct government control, it doesn’t actually become independent. It still runs on state funding, follows government-mandated rules, and relies on public contracts or guarantees. The state might not be running it day to day, but it’s still paying for it, backing it, and ultimately responsible if things go wrong. So it’s less like pulling back and more like shifting roles. It’s as if the government goes from being the operator to the sponsor.

From a socialist angle, this is tricky because it makes accountability weaker. You no longer have clear government oversight, but the financial risk still falls on ordinary people. It’s kind of a gray zone. Services aren’t exactly private in practice, even if they’re labeled that way. So calling it “small government” feels misleading. It’s more like hidden government. The state is still there, still involved, but harder to track or hold accountable.

That said, I do think small government is possible in theory, even under capitalism. If you can imagine it, it’s not impossible. But it would require consistency. You’d have to actually reduce involvement, cut spending, and walk away from guarantees, subsidies, and bailouts. Most so called small government pushes don’t go that far. They just rebrand state functions and keep the safety net underneath. So maybe the issue isn’t that small government can’t exist, but that it rarely does in practice, because the system ends up protecting certain interests anyway.

So I wouldn’t say everything just gets outsourced and downgraded. Sometimes it’s more subtle than that. The machinery keeps running, but now it’s behind a curtain.