Conservatives argue for small government. Some have said that “government should
be small enough to drown in a bathtub” Let us explore that idea.
Under what assumptions would you need to make that allows a small government.
You would need everyone, everyone, to do the right thing at all times. Self policing
as it were, so their activity doesn’t interfere with your activity. You would need
people to be less social and stay away from each other because that interaction is what
causes problems. You cannot have a large industrial state because any large industrial
state needs a large government because of conflicts between two industries or companies
that need resolving plus industry requires an well maintained infrastructure and educated work force.
that requires the state to maintain the roads and the other aspects of infrastructure while you need
the state for educating people. Even if you accept the idea of a state only for national security,
you still need soldiers that have been educated because of the technological aspect of modern
warfare and that requires an educational system.
Upon reflection, the idea of a small government fails because it cannot work in today’s
modern industrial world. the type of small government that can be drowned in a bathtub
would collapse quickly under the pressure of the many needs of its people.
You have to have an large enough government to facilitate the needs of its people and
given we have a population of over 300 million people, we need a large government.
You cannot have a government that only focuses on business because that government wouldn’t
be able to last because you must have the allegiance of the people of that country and a government
that focuses on the needs of big business over the needs of the people won’t have the allegiance of
the people. For the vast majority of people, small government doesn’t work for them. It is only for
a small group of wealthy, isolated group of individuals that have no large industrial interest that
a small drownable government works. If you believe you could survive a small government that could
be drowned in a bathtub, review your life and understand even the computer you are writing on and
the internet you need to deliver your message was either created by or nurtured by the government.
It didn’t happened without the government. You are no different than the tea party fanatic who
decries the government size and involvement in our lives while waiting for their social security checks.
Ideally, a government would consist of half the population of a society. That way, half the people do productive work and the other half are making sure that the workers are not doing anything wrong. There is always one person making sure that each individual is not failing.
“When the intellectuals come to power they develop a profound mistrust of mankind. They do not trust each other, but their deepest mistrust is of the common people. Tell a Russian, Chinese or Cuban commissar that the masses, if left to their themselves, would perform well, and he will laugh to your face. He knows that the masses are incurably lazy, stupid and dishonest. You have to watch them all the time, breathe down their necks, push them, and crack the whip if you want to get anything done. The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.” Eric Hoffer “The Temper of our Time”
Why would a small government collapse under the many needs of its people? For better or for worse, a small government simply wouldn’t address some of those needs.
If the argument is that a small government can’t work because it can’t do all the tons of things a government is supposed to do, then that’s true as far as it goes… but obviously small government people don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to do many of those things, and don’t judge the success of a government according to whether or not it does them.
Uccisore: Why would a small government collapse under the many needs of its people? For better or for worse, a small government simply wouldn’t address some of those needs.
If the argument is that a small government can’t work because it can’t do all the tons of things a government is supposed to do, then that’s true as far as it goes… but obviously small government people don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to do many of those things, and don’t judge the success of a government according to whether or not it does them."
After my post on another op, I am liking this idea of private and public domain.
I think you could understand the value of a small government vs a large government
based on the idea of private and public domain. My examples of private sex in the
bedroom doesn’t constitute a public response, a law or a social response. The same sex
on the steps of the courthouse does need a public, a social, a legal response because it
is in the public domain. The understanding of private and public changes how one looks
at the law and the need for government. If you decide that the idea of private and public
must be at the hand of individual discretion, I.E the individual decides if something is
public or private, then you have true anarchy. The state we are in now if private individuals
can at their own discretion decide on which laws they shall obey or not obey based on whether
it is an private act or an public act. This is an conservative approach, values decide individually
in an individual context. But this approach ignores or avoids the basic fact we live socially,
within a social context. The public idea is that we decide together because we are affected
together by actions done by individuals within a public context. I am not affected by individuals
having sex within their bedroom, so I am not concerned or need to address that, but having sex
on a courtroom steps does affect me, so I respond within a social context. The government must
be answerable to public actions taken within a public context. The laws, the rules we live under
must be able to engage this idea of public actions which affect me. We need laws (regulations)
that address public actions taken by individuals or groups. You of course have conflict within
this premise because you also have this idea of free speech. So you have an individual who
proclaims that the hitler was right and all jews must be killed and he puts it on a sign around
his neck. This violates the basic idea of a private idea that is harmful to the public and which
cannot be take into the public is taken into the public. So this conflict of individual expression
versus public welfare creates conflict and must be resolved. A small government doesn’t
have the resources needed to resolve this conflict. You need a larger government to resolve
this conflict between individual expression and public needs. This is taken care of by
a judicial system which resolves conflict of this type. If you follow through this idea
of public needs versus private needs, you begin to understand the necessity of a larger government.
We have over 300 million Americans, who every single day, pushes the boundary of public and private
expression. If you think about it, there is no real defense of a small government given the
very size of America. Small government advocates are simply in denial of the facts that
small government is simply not feasible in this day and age given the conflict between
the public and private domain. That doesn’t even address the international aspect of government.
In truth, we cannot even pretend we can survive with a small government. At best, we can
try to limit it in some fashion, but even that fails because who decides the limits?
Given the reality of our lives, the only possible answer is large government.
Anyone care to dispute this? Please give us your arguments.
A small Government should look like whatever the people vote for it to look like, within the bounds of the Constitution. Taxation is a necessary evil, and as such, what is truly necessary should be continually scrutinized so as to reduce the evil as much as possible. People who are properly educated of their rights and properly taught their duties will typically prefer to keep more of their own money, take care of themselves, and watch out for each other without the State, but that could take a wide variety of forms.
K: of course, I shall explain. the first part is about the theory of how conservatives want to
force people to fit the law which is quite true. To attempt to make homosexuality illegal for example
when they are clearly homosexuals or to ban homosexuals from marrying would be another example.
Now the second is not the theory but the reality whereas conservatives who realized they don’t stand
for anything anymore, have abandoned the theory and have gone toward the reality and they have
basically advocated anarchism. Examples of this are easy enough to find, Clive bundy in Nevada,
Gov. Rich Perry who has publically supported succession from the union, the chief justice of Alabama,
Moore, who has stated publically that the state of Alabama’s courts should ignore the United State supreme
court in any case involving Gay marriage. These are just three recent examples of conservatives calling
for anarchism in America. The remarkable evolution of conservatism from being about the law to being
anarchism has been very, very rapid in its change. Almost daily, conservatives go from one extreme to
another often during the same event, the battle about immigration for example. It is rather hard these
days to keep up with conservatism near daily wild changes from one extreme to another. By this time
next week, my entire post will be outdated due to massive changes in the conservatives position.
So when the liberal does it, it is because he is an altruist who loves the people.
When a conservative does it, it is because he is selfishly advocating anarchy.
Wow …
Conservative: Governments should be small enough that people have an actual say in their lives. Liberal: There should only be one actual life: the government.
I don’t even have a political ideology, I have theorems for how to make the species better… but with respect to this, modeling good governance is a part of modeling part of our psychology in a good way, because we are also self-governing. For example, everyone in the world knows socialized healthcare works better, but certain countries refuse to do it out of liberty cough profits. This is all Obamacare is. When you follow the money… all the political parties look alike. While I think Dennis Kucinich is a bit nuts on some issues, at least he read the whole patriot act before he voted on it. These politicians are so over their heads, really just winging it, even the people who write their shit and plan their game theory are just winging it.
They’re more about special interests than what works best. They’re more about ameliorating the public rather than sitting down and saying the truth.
Although not exactly precise, that is very largely true, yet misleading. The SAM type of government ensures that governing is both small (as in very local) and also very “overseeing by many eyes” in such a way that prevents inter-local confrontations, “wars”. So it is both a large, in a sense, and a small, in a different sense, type of government.
What is it that you think left/progressivism is such that you don’t think “I have theorems for how to make the species better” is the absolute crux of it?
So you are a leftist, you just don’t like labels and so declare that you aren’t one…which is another part of the stereotype. That’s fine, I was just making sure.
All I care about is what works. There’s no political label for that. Even if you had a party called the “It just works party”, it could be corrupted. When you write down theorems and use science and logic, it transcends political parties.
No, the political label is for the things that you happen to think work, along with obsessive need to deny that political labels apply to you. Believing that the point of the State is to repair and improve human society based on some theorems you have about what would fix everything is progressivism. "Everybody knows socialized medicine works best" is characteristic of the Western modern left, and saying all of this while saying "and further more political labels don't apply to me" pins you as a 21st century far-left American. You don't cease to be a rightist or a leftist just by declaring you don't want to be called one, you know.
No, the political label is for the things that you happen to think work, along with obsessive need to deny that political labels apply to you. Believing that the point of the State is to repair and improve human society based on some theorems you have about what would fix everything is progressivism. "Everybody knows socialized medicine works best" is characteristic of the Western modern left, and saying all of this while saying "and further more political labels don't apply to me" pins you as a 21st century far-left American. You don't cease to be a rightist or a leftist just by declaring you don't want to be called one, you know.
No, it’s simply just been proven that socialized healthcare works better. The only argument against is that free competition allows for more innovation, but history has not shown this to be the case. People all over the world want to cure AIDS, even though it was likely a genetically modified disease from the evidence that it has the same shell as the smallest form of bacteria, which is too coicidental to not be human engineering… nature doesn’t do shit like that. A progressive could state, 'I want to kill all the retards, I"m progressive" Progressive can mean anything, theorems that have no other option, like mathematical theorems trump all political ideologies, and these are discovered painstakingly. Cosmic laws etc…
