Gnome-ageddon: Small Government Myths and Giant Systemic Failures (w/ David Dayen)

"Small government" sounds comforting — a tidy garden where everyone minds their own business and freedom magically flourishes.

But while we're admiring the gnomes, something much bigger is climbing over the fence.

This week on The Bigfoot Manifesto, host Dave Pederson is joined by David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and one of the sharpest reporters covering power, policy, and corporate capture in America today.

Together, they dismantle one of the most durable fairy tales in U.S. politics: the idea that shrinking government somehow shrinks greed.

From deregulation and austerity to Wall Street bailouts, healthcare profiteering, and the quiet consolidation of power, Dayen explains how "small government" rhetoric doesn't remove control — it transfers it. Markets don't become freer. They become dominated. Accountability doesn't disappear. It just moves out of public view.

The conversation digs into:

• Why "small government" remains politically seductive despite repeated failure

• How deregulation actually works in practice — not theory

• Why austerity is a policy choice, not an economic necessity

• How corporate power fills every vacuum government leaves behind

• Why crises are so often used to justify cutting the systems people rely on

Bigfoot may be fictional — but the damage caused by policy myths is very real.

About the Guest: David Dayen

David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect and an award-winning journalist who has spent decades investigating corporate power, financial corruption, and public policy failures. His reporting has helped expose foreclosure fraud, monopolization, and the quiet mechanisms that allow wealth and influence to concentrate at the top.

David Dayen Online

📰 The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/

📘 Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1620970393

📕 Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1620974550