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A wet dream for conservatives

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DreamOnDemOn said:
Well, are humans as a rule trying to kill one another? Are the subset of humans that are the government better people in general than the rest of us, or maybe worse, or maybe some better and some worse? If they are not any better than the rest of us in general, why does the US put 40% of the GDP under their control? Would it not be better to leave more of that in the hands of the people who will have to suffer if they make a mistake (and maybe learn how to do better next time)?
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Totallt false % of GDP:

GD $14.49T/Budget $3.36T=about 20%

Of that $3.36T over $683B was DOD

Another $523B was Medicare.
 
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RJKarl said:
Totallt false % of GDP:

GD $14.49T/Budget $3.36T=about 20%

Of that $3.36T over $683B was DOD

Another $523B was Medicare.
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Add state and local governments, please. They count, of course. Federal was 24% this year.
 
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WFF, what is circular about contending that people act nicely more often than not nicely, but that if bad persons get control of the government they can do much more damage if the government is large rather than small? This is how the mass murders like Srerenica occur.
 
Government is bad>individuals are good>people make up government>those people are bad>therefore government is bad
 
WFFaithful said:
Government is bad>individuals are good>people make up government>those people are bad>therefore government is bad
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That is not my argument.

most people are good but some people are bad>if most people are good we don't need too much government>if we do have a great big government, some of the fewer bad people could get hold of it and use government force to screw everything up, and it would be very hard to undo this.
 
Government is corrupt. You want to fix this by severely limiting the role of government. I want to fix this by prohibiting lobbying, big money, and corporate interests in government and allowing publicly funded elections.
 
You will never get corruption out of government. If you ever did, it would come back immediately. But at least if there were limitations on government there would be a limit on the damage that could be done by it. Limit government to its legitimate purposes.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
Do you think that most people want to perpetrate genocide? I thought the Serbian government leaders were being tried for war crimes or inciting war crimes. Did the collapse of the Bosnian government cause the Bosnians to comit genocide because they are inhereently worse than dogs?
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So you think most people don't want to commit genocide, but that people that are in government are just somehow inherently more violent than those that aren't? Do you think those ethnic Serbs didn't actually want to commit genocide? Did the Devil make them do it?

Your argument makes no sense. On the one hand, you are trying to argue that a world without government force could work because people are inherently good. But then you argue that there is only senseless violence in the world today because people in the government are bad. Are people in the government somehow different from ordinary people? If people are inherently good, then why do people in the government do all these horrible things? If you take away the apparatus, why do you think you will be able to count on everyone acting nice all of the sudden?

Are you trying to argue that it is only a few bad apples, and that somehow those bad apples get a disproportionate amount of power? The facts just don't bear that out. These rulers who commit acts like these are almost always a reflection of the mood of their constituents. People like Milosevic, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Imin, et al don't come to power without a lot of people wanting the same things they want.
 
I do not think that most Serbs would commit mass murder if left on their own. The Serbian government did some horrible things. If the government had been much more limited the damage would have been less.

After 9-11 GWB started a couple of wars without declarations. If government had been limited such that a declaration had been necesaary before starting a war, perhaps we would have avoided a lot of death and destruction. George Bush is not a bad person. If he had really thought about it, he might not have done it the same way but with no limitations a bad decision on his part (IMO) was more greatly magnified than it would have been with a limited government.
 
parlorgame-mental gymnastics- socialism-fascism-wet dream for conservatives-hope and change-blame game-apparatchiks-prosperity-i have a dream-bootstraps-energy policy-supplyside-Bzdelic-The Tunnels---------------------------------------------------------your mama
 
W&B: Do you want government to spend 40% of the GDP? Don't you see problems with that?
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
I do not think that most Serbs would commit mass murder if left on their own. The Serbian government did some horrible things. If the government had been much more limited the damage would have been less.

After 9-11 GWB started a couple of wars without declarations. If government had been limited such that a declaration had been necesaary before starting a war, perhaps we would have avoided a lot of death and destruction. George Bush is not a bad person. If he had really thought about it, he might not have done it the same way but with no limitations a bad decision on his part (IMO) was more greatly magnified than it would have been with a limited government.
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So now you're making two arguments; that government is bad because it gives bad people the power to make bad decisions, and that government is bad because it makes good people do bad things. Neither one substantiates your claim that people are inherently good, and neither one is really true.

At the end of the day, your idea just doesn't work because the sum total of the things everyone wants in this world is greater than the sum total of everything there is. As long as this is true, there will be "force and fraud", and the only way to mitigate this is an orderly way is a legal system backed by force.

The idea that if government stopped existing people would start coexisting and interchanging goods and services harmoniously is the zenith of naivete. For someone who has such a veneration for capitalism, you don't really seem to understand the forces that underpin it. Capitalism is a system of economic thought. Economics is the study of how humans allocate scarce resources. Your argument rests on an assumption that renders both economics and capitalism obsolete, that people will not use any means to get what they want. Unfortunately, it is a faulty assumption.

Government force is integral to capitalism because without an assurance from an overarching authority that people will not steal and take by force, the price mechanism of transaction is unprofitable. The fact that peaceful coexistence and economic interchange has become so ingrained in our society has blinded you to the need for the overarching authority. Because our system works so well, you have come to believe that it is just in our nature to not steal and take by force.

Unfortunately, that isn't true. What our nature tells us is to take the most we possibly can for ourselves at the lowest possible cost. What our legal system does is make it unprofitable to take by unscrupulous means. So, with these new incentives and disincentives in mind, we take the most for ourselves at the lowest possible cost by other means.

Government force is necessary to the equation. The second there are no consequences for stealing, our entire society will collapse.
 
DeacMan said:
All I know is the more power you centralize in one authority, the more corrupt your society will become. All you have to do is look at history to realize this is true. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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True, centralized power can be just as dangerous as decentralized power. In the end, you have to strike a careful balance to avoid both the tyranny of the few and tyranny of the masses. That's what the Founding Fathers did so successfully.
 
I certainly agree that we need a government to prevent people from using force and fraud on one another. You are certainly correct that people try to get things for themselves. I just think that people are smart enough as a rule to realize that going over to their neighbor's house and stealing their neighbor's property will cause more trouble to them in the long run than it is worth. We are all selfish. But most of us practice rational selfishness most of the time where we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our actions. Would you steal valuables from your neighbor if you thought you might not get caught? For the same reason you would not do that, most people would not do that. There would be consequences even if there were no police. I would of course never contend that police and courts were not necessary.
 
would you shit in his back yard at night if it was immeasurably cheaper than shitting in your own and was the difference between feeding your wife and kids or not?
 
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