Yet, as Adam Smith recognized, the invisible hand theory -- that society as a whole does best when everyone pursues his or her own interests in the marketplace -- works only when each person's choices cause no harm to others. Many of our choices, of course, cause harm to others.

For example, if you buy a car with unsafe tires, you put not only your own life at risk, but also the lives of others. Yet the anti-government oratory of recent decades has denied a legitimate role for government action to promote safety in such cases.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration once maintained an extensive network of automobile repair shops through which it gathered data that provided early warning of potentially serious safety defects. This network would have sounded an alarm about the unusually high failure rates of one model of Firestone tires -- tires whose defects, we are now told, have resulted in scores of deaths.

But the agency was forced to abandon its early warning network in the 1980s when the Reagan administration cut its budget by half, citing excessive regulatory zeal. Now, having stripped the agency of an important means of gathering safety data, look for members of Congress in the anti-regulation crowd to denounce its incompetence during hearings on the Firestone scandal next month.

Some politicians insist that many safety regulations were unnecessary in the first place, since no company wants a reputation for products that kill; businesses simply need an incentive to regulate themselves. In Texas, for example, Gov. George W. Bush has backed legislation that leaves industrial polluters substantially free to regulate themselves in a state with the most polluted air and water of any state. But typical of other politicians who oppose a strong government hand, he has also advocated so-called tort reform legislation that makes it almost impossible for injured parties to pursue their claims in court, should the unshackled businesses fail to police themselves.

Promises to cut waste resonate because they summon images of roads to nowhere in West Virginia and other vivid examples of pork-barrel waste. These examples have a certain face validity, because competition is less intense in government than in the private sector. Yet waste is hardly the exclusive province of the public sector. In many parts of America, private residences with more than 20,000 square feet of living space are currently under construction. These houses typically have 10 or more bedrooms, each with a large bath; at least two kitchens; two living rooms, a ballroom, a media room and a six-car garage.

Would Bush's proposed $1.3 trillion tax cut, which mainly benefits wealthiest families, reduce waste in our economy? Although depriving the government of this revenue would undoubtedly eliminate at least some wasteful government spending, it would also stimulate the construction of even bigger mansions.

More troubling, it would make it harder for us to obtain public services we value. The SAT scores of entering public school teachers have fallen sharply since the 1960s, in part because teachers' salaries have fallen more than 20 percent relative to the average college graduate's. Government inspections of meat-processing plants have declined by almost 75 percent since the 1980s, despite the growing threat posed by E. coli bacteria and other lethal food contaminants. In other spheres as well, budget cutbacks of recent decades have created ripe opportunities for public investment.

Such investments would inevitably entail a measure of waste, just as the anti-government movement claims. But the additional private spending stimulated by the Bush tax cuts would also entail some waste. In the end, we must decide whether we want safer tires or bigger sport utility vehicles.

Robert H. Frank, a professor of economics at Cornell University, is the author of "Luxury Fever."

Copyright 2000 The New York Times

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