The Voice of the People
... or at least my own
|
|
|
... or at least my own | | ||||
August 22, 2003
|
1.) Government's purpose is to do for society what society cannot do for itself 2.) Man's thirst for power, and greed for money will always create a short-term profit motive that undermines the marketplace unless society creates a government to perform this task that individuals cannot do alone. Government has always created the rules and oversees the laws that enable the market to work efficiently. A society without a government of the people will have a government of an aristocracy because society has to have some order to function. (This is by the way, not rocket science) 3.) Some types of economic activity are unable to operate efficiently without a minimal amount of government regulation. This is not socialistic. We are not talking about commissars determining what and how much to produce. We are not taking away the profit motif either. 4.) You can't compare the grocery store or a hair salon to an oil conglomerate or an electric company. The capital costs of large conglomerates will not create the competitive environment. 5.) Left alone, after perhaps an initial period of ruinous competition, some economic sectors like oil, gas, electricity, and (yes) telecommunicatins will form cartels that will create monopolistic pricing arrangements. This is what happened historical in between the Civil War and World War One. 6.) Left alone, the cartels evolve society into a stratified social order of aristocracy that creates legal barriers to entrepreneurs. Price structures become prohibitive and the nation becomes economically and socially backwards. Witness the history of France and Spain. 7.) A government needs revenue in order to function. How the government raises and obtains revenue is open to debate, but the choice is not that government is bad or good. The choice is what type of government we have, and who that government serves. Government spending is not bad so long as governments functions remains doing for society what society cannot do for itself. 8.) If governments are corrupted, it is because private forces (business cronies) corrupt government. The commissars do not go out and hinder business; business corrupts government and then pays for the propaganda organs to direct the frustrations of the people to phantoms and innoculous victims of the society that corruption short-term profit seeking thugs have created. 9.) Some people are self-motivated; some people are lazy; some people are ruthless and selfish. These individuals would be the same in whatever society existed. To say that government is socialistic means that someone is being denied their short-term fixation when society as a whole is benefiting from the actions of government. Repressive government or a rigid social order does distort human motivation, but not by making them lazy and worthless, but by putting up numerously onerous barriers to protect the power gained by the privaleged few who control the bottlenecks of the economic structure or who have the authority to make demands or deny needs. 10.) Government aid and regulation is not necessarily a "free" hand-out or an economic hindrances when government is doing for society what society would not do if left alone. Society needs clean air and water, inexpensive energy, inexpensive access to education and medical care, safe communities, well-paved roads and streets, non-predatory and fair business practices, sources of truthful information, a fair system of law. To whittle the argument down to too much or too little taxes is to assume that society will evolve these benefits without government or non-profit based social organizations. The history of social and economic improvement however was not one of selfish economic interests creating good for society. In almost every single case, short-term profit motives were either against or incapable of creating these social and economic benefits. If these benefits are now being compromised it is not because "big government" gets in the way, but because short-term profit motives and thinking get in the way. ---- Now how hard is that to understand.
|