Forum Post: What is "small government"? Who should determine the size of the government?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 9, 2011, 11:11 a.m. EST by leftistperson
(95)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Ron Paul, the Tea Party and the "libertarians" call for "small government", and decry "big government".
What is "small government"? Who should determine the "size" of the government? Who should determine the functions and tasks of the government?
There are several "levels" of government: the federal government, the state government and the local government. What levels should be "small"? All of them?
Why the government should provide free protection for the private property of individuals, in the form of police patrols and investigation of thefts, and should not provide free healthcare for people?
Shouldn't the Tea Pary, the "libertarians", and Ron Paul, call for the abolition of police, and shouldn't them pay for private security guards to protect their property and their lifes?
It's very easy talk about "small government" when you have free police protection on your neighborhood, free firefighters to extinguish flames on your house, and free elementary schools to educate your kids.
Who should determine the "size" of the government? The corporations? The wealthy individuals? Or the people?
Small government is usually defined as a government whose laws are the minimum necessary to protect the rights of the citizenry while offering as few restriction on those rights as possible.
Small government also looks at the amount of influence the individual has on the government and suggests the strongest government should be the one where the individual has the most influence - ie local. Thus most laws that affect an individual will be made at the local level, less at the state, and very very few at the Federal - all corresponding to the individual's ability to impact the laws that directly affect them.
And what are the rights of the citizenry?
The natural rights that pre-exist government (life, liberty, property, privacy etc) and the civil rights created by the structure of government ( due process, voting, etc).
When each level of government begins to create more alphabet agencies to control, make regulations, and get in the way. That is what they are referring to. Do some research about Reagan's handling of the air traffic controllers in the 80's. Then you will see how government is a growth that keeps growing.
Lao Tsu should decide "govern as you would cook a fish...lightly" (and he wrote that 2500 years ago!)
2500 years ago... When 90% of people couldn't live more than 40 years... That was the life expectancy...
like a lot of statistics, life expectancy is misunderstood. If in pre-modern times you take out deaths at birth, and childhood deaths then the life expectancy was in the 60's - if you lived to 10, then the chances were good you'd live into your 60's.
But that aside, life expectancy doesn't change the wisdom of Lau Tsu
Nice. That's like saying if you don't count all the people that drive not very many people die in traffic accidents. Your basically saying if you take away all the causes of death except old age, everyone dies old.
There is a difference between life expectancy and maximum age. Today, the vast majority of people make it to 60 (in the industrialized countries U.S. at least). 2500 years ago, this was not the case.
yes - statistics, lies and statistics. My point is most people think society of 2500 years ago had few people over 40. This was not the case. If you walked the streets 2500 years ago you would see many people in their 60's. The modern huge gains in life expectancy are primarily due to our huge reductions in deaths at birth and childhood deaths.
Maybe your driving metaphor can be stated this way - if we absolutely banned alcohol, like it didn't exist, we'd see a huge drop in motor vehicle deaths. Would your conclusion be that driving skills must have risen remarkably to account for this reduction? Or was it the elimination of alcohol in the equation?
2500 years ago, if you lived to 10 then your "skills" at living to an old age were not much different than they are today.
In a democracy, the government is elected by the people. So, the people has the right to determine what should be the "size" of the government.
This isnt a democracy.
But it is supposed to be one. And democracies can't have "small government". People who want "small government" don't want real democracy. They want "the law of the jungle", "every man for himself", "social darwinism"...
no not social darwinism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho_capitalism
It's not suppose to be a democracy... save it.