What is a good government?

[thinkdr]

I suggested that if someone is having a hard time, then offer to teach them a skill you have, or to inform them of a possible money-making opportunity of which you are aware, but only if they are ready and willing to learn it.

If someone is mentally handicapped perhaps they are not ready to learn of it, nor to perform the skill. Then look for someone else to help; or get them the help that they specificallly need …if you yourself are aware of it.

I described a good government as one ready to encourage its citizens in their efforts to help one another. If someone is ethical, and knows why they are ethical, they more-than-likely would want to give a helping hand to the less-fortunate. They would devise creative ways to do so, if they possibly could. A good government would, somehow, be inclined to reinforce such efforts.

We all ought to thoroughly agree with the critic’s support for democracy! His reasoning is good when he endorses the value of democracy.

[Magnus_Anderson]

@thinkdr

This discussion belongs at the forum labeled Philosophy more than it does here at a forum concerned with Government and Economics.

Therefore I will write a post there on the breakthrough that R. S. Hartman achieved, and which he wrote about in some detail in his magnum opus, THE STRUCTURE OF VALUE.(1967, Southern Illinois University Press.) He finally defined “value” and “good.” What he actually defined was the meaning of “good” in “x is a good C” where x is a case, example, member or instance of the class C. There are three requirements for this to be so.

I won’t go into this any further here as I don’t want to distract from the theme of this thread. {Maybe some here would want to do so…)

Alright, I’ll drop it. I’ll just say that I am not sure how we can talk about what constitutes a good government if we don’t agree on the meaning of the word “good”.

[thinkdr]

Since a specific actual govt. is good as a govt. iff it is indeed a govt; and you suppose a govt. has certain features; and this govt. has all those properties, then you are justified in referring to it as “a good govt.” Its properties are to match the attributes you, the judge of its value, has in mind. If this particular example does, you will likely look at it and say “Good!” or “This govt. is a good one!”

In the original post in this thread I described the attributes of what I suppose a ‘good govt.’ would be, and how it would promote democracy, and aim to upgrade and improve the quality of life of its citizens.

I leave it up to you, the Reader, to decide which of the major U.S. political parties currently complies more with the description offered; and which one is against things while it offers no positive proposals to make life berrer for its citizens. It does not seem to advocate policies that will uplift the quality of the life of the majority of the population it purports to serve.

[Gloominary]

I’m gonna rip a page from Ecman’s book and say the best form of government is one that doesn’t violate anyone’s consent…at least best in theory, we have no idea if it’d work in practice because it’s never really been tried on a large scale, so either no government, anarchism, or contractualism, a government where only those who consent to it are governed by it, altho you would have to make up some protocols for what to do with all the people who don’t consent to it, which can get tricky.