What should a community/nation/state (government) provide for citizens?

[Walker]

Thoughts?

“All corporations owe it to their shareholders to fully analyze and disclose the risks they face, including climate risk. Those who fail to do so should be held accountable. Democrats also respectfully request the Department of Justice to investigate allegations of corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies accused of misleading shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change.”

- 2016, https://democrats.org/wp-content/upload ... atform.pdf

[Impenitent]

democrats have hated private business since 1963...

-Imp

[Walker]

Because of this?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cul ... e-2058483/

[Walker]

Or, because of this?

1963 #1 hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcMkFvXW2v4

[Greta]

You people are insane. The Democrats are almost as much in major companies' pockets as the Republicans, at least until recent madness.

What a government should do for its people depends on:

- culture and history
- population size and distribution
- the economy
- geography and climate
- the projected future.

An ideologically based one-size-fits-all view on this issue is doomed to failure, and one reason why the US is rapidly going backwards in terms of world influence and future earnings (due to the US's recent sacrifice of its trust and soft power on the global stage).

[henry quirk]

What should a community/nation/state (government) provide for citizens?

nada - everyone should be entitled to a big pile of this

police, courts, military - serve the same end, private property rights

-Imp

[Greta]

What should a community/nation/state (government) provide for citizens?

nada - everyone should be entitled to a big pile of this

police, courts, military - serve the same end, private property rights

Who collects the taxes to pay for these three major expenses? Who distributes and allocates the funds? You need a whole phalanx of admin workers both internal and external. In terms of supply and purchasing, the advantages of economies of scale will be hugely reduced.

What if private companies keeping these skeletal governments propped up simply decide the pull the plug on services provided because they got a better offer? What's to stop them from sharing their information to other governments or other rivals? If they are 100X larger, more wealthy and powerful than the government then they call the shots. The government would be captive to cartels that would charge them exorbitant prices.

Meanwhile, the uneducated underclass would go feral, requiring ever more taxes to fund more police, courts and military. Important ecosystems and river channels would be interrupted or destroyed, leaving those downstream to go broke and be forced to move with no recourse.

These are just a few examples of the problems faced by quasi libertarians who don't know anything about government, how it works or how the various departments interrelate and interface with the private sector and the community.

Do such "small government" people have answers to these questions? How would you prevent an angry underclass from growing at a rate that makes the rate of today's degenerations seem slow? How would you deal with them? Tiananmen Square style or would you aim for the largest prison population in world history?

[henry quirk]

I must confess: I have no answers, Greta.

I imagine as the 13 colonies struggled and fought and sidestepped and regressed and occasionally crept forward, most folks (who gave a flip) honestly had no clue how to make a nation.

They figured it out by doin' it, through trial and error, through mistakes, through desperation.

I imagine that's how most nations get goin'.

So: should the Night Watchman model ever get traction, should Americans ever seriously take up the idea of minimal government (proxies, not 'governors'), we'll figure it out as we go. A good place for us to start (where we shoulda stopped in the first place): The Articles of Confederation.

Yeah, piss poor answer, I know, but it's all I got.

[Greta]

I must confess: I have no answers, Greta.

I imagine as the 13 colonies struggled and fought and sidestepped and regressed and occasionally crept forward, most folks (who gave a flip) honestly had no clue how to make a nation.

They figured it out by doin' it, through trial and error, through mistakes, through desperation.

I imagine that's how most nations get goin'.

So: should the Night Watchman model ever get traction, should Americans ever seriously take up the idea of minimal government (proxies, not 'governors'), we'll figure it out as we go. A good place for us to start (where we shoulda stopped in the first place): The Articles of Confederation.

Yeah, piss poor answer, I know, but it's all I got.

It's an honest answer so it's a good answer. I don't think anyone today has much idea how to build and sustain a nation.

I think you will find that every attempt to reduce government ends up increasing its expense. This is the standard process:

1. Gosh, there's too many public servants. A drain on the public purse.
2. Sack x% of them. The sackings are never targetted because that would take time and expense, and it could be used for favouritism or vendettas.
3. Complaints from the public - x services are gone.
4. Hire private contractors to do the work at three times the coin.
5. Gosh, we're spending a lot of contractors! These positions need to be made permanent to save money!
6. Back to #1.

There's another game that's regularly played with the public sector:

1. Hey buddy, your department is competing with my business
2. We'd better private it
3. Damn, the department is going well and hugely profitable. We don't have a case to shut it down. Yet.
4. Severe funding cuts
5. More funding cuts
6. And next budget.
7. Gee, the department has gone downhill! Government is too inflexible to handle the modern business environment. We'd better privatise.
8. Hey buddy, why haven't you privatised yet?
9. The people are worried that prices will go up
10. Huge information campaign (plus extra party donations) telling people that their electricity/phone/water bills will be much cheaper due to competition after privatisation.
11. Maybe a modest drop in some prices
12. Government revenues drop due to lost income stream. Regain losses from other sectors
12. Massive increase in price of privatised function
13. And again and again and again
14. Government and Murdoch blames the Greens and start talking about regulating prices ...

[henry quirk]

"I think you will find that every attempt to reduce government ends up increasing its expense."

Oh, I'm not suggesting merely reducing government.

I'm suggesting a wholesale revision of it.

The cost would be monumental in resources and lives and -- most importantly -- in givin' up dependence.

What I suggest is terminating 'governance' and replacing it with 'proxy-hood' and individual self-direction/-responsibility.

Trust me: I ain't holdin' my breathe that such a thing will ever happen, not peaceably anyway. Most folks don't know how to self-direct and don't wanna know, and our 'governors' won't take kindly to a demotion.

[Greta]

It's the kind of model that might work if human beings weren't so human.

[henry quirk]

I'm thinkin' it's the perfect model for solitaries and the like.

Unforunately, we're in the minority.