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Less Government vs. Better Government

Less Government or Better Government?

  • Total voters
    57
US Conservative said:
Actually thats the tragic conclusion of your flawed logic. Im a conservative who believes a certain minimal amount of govt is appropriate. Im not an anarchist, and you need to do some reading-because you are simply spouting your pre-programmed "thoughts" right now, and nobody is buying it.
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I got it. You believe that government should begin and end where you want it to.
 
Amadeus said:
Which do you feel is more important: A government that is smaller, or a government that can solve important problems more effectively?
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I want a smaller federal government that doesn't feel the need to solve every damned problem.

We have local and state governments to handle the local issues. Let them do what they do best.

And every damned issue is NOT a federal issue.
 
First assumption: we are talking about some entirely legitimate, truly democratic (and yet firmly dedicated to the principles of individual freedom, somehow) government. Splendid.

Now: What exactly is this thing, "Government" supposed to do? How is it different from other parts of our society?

Oh, we know how it is different: It has the monopoly on the use of force, on coercion. Churches, AA meetings or birdwatcher clubs have no power to press you into anything they consider important; compare with IRS, EPA, FBI, etc.

Right from the beginning, obviously, this is not about "size" vs. "function". This is all about what that function ought to be.
 
Cyrylek said:
Oh, we know how it is different: It has the monopoly on the use of force, on coercion. Churches, AA meetings or birdwatcher clubs have no power to press you into anything they consider important; compare with IRS, EPA, FBI, etc.
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Your beef with the government appears to be with regulation and law. Who should determine these things, if not the government?
 
Amadeus said:
What if a government is too small to tackle a problem that society wants solved? Then it is not a better government, it is a smaller government for the sake of being small.
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Society does not require government to tackle every problem they want solved. Do you have an example of a problem only a large government could solve and why?
 
Amadeus said:
Which do you feel is more important: A government that is smaller, or a government that can solve important problems more effectively?
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What, specifically, are "important problems" that require a big gov't? For example, we now have over 70 means tested "safety net" programs intended to help the poor, yet still have a constant 12% to 15% of the population that is poor. Would it not be possible to come up with a single, means tested, program that actually reduced the percentage of the poor?

You falsely assume, by the design of your poll, that the opposite of smaller gov't is better gov't when even a fifth grader knows that the opposite of smaller gov't is bigger gov't. ;)
 
Amadeus said:
Not at all, it's a matter of where your ideological priorities are.
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There is no evidence that a smaller government will always be worse than a larger government. Or even most of the time. Especially since "better" is a subjective term. Your poll and question are inherently biased in that they imply such. Now such may not have been your intent, but it is what you ended up putting out.

Amadeus said:
I'm afraid you're mistaken. What I said was that if you focus on making government small, rather than effective, then your goal is not to solve society's problems. Which may or may not be in line with your ideology.
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That may have been your intent but it is not what you said which is what we are pointing out.

Bob Blaylock said:
False dichotomy.

It's not a choice between smaller government or better government.

Smaller government is better government.
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Again, subjective view, only in the opposite direction. While I will agree with the opinion, it is purely an opinion.
 
Amadeus said:
I'm afraid you're mistaken. What I said was that if you focus on making government small, rather than effective, then your goal is not to solve society's problems. Which may or may not be in line with your ideology.
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I don't want government to solve society's problems. In fact my initial response to your poll question was, "What makes you think government can effectively solve society's problems?" Government tends to be blunt, uncompromising, and intrusive. It rarely can effectively deal with all the permutations, scenarios, and exceptions to the problems of society. I personally believe letting individuals who are faced with those problems personally chart their own solutions is inherently more effective than letting distant elected officials or uncaring bureaucrats craft solutions.
 
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Amadeus said:
If smaller government is better, then no government must be best. That is the logical conclusion of your argument.
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Not at all. That's like saying if bigger government is better, than absolute tyranny is best. I think most of us would agree that there is an optimal size for government. For some folks that optimal point is an absolute, for others its an ever evolving, changing target, but you can favor smaller or larger government without necessarily going to the absolute extremes of the spectrum.

Libertarians are not anarchists, no matter what so many misinformed posters here claim. We believe government, which as a monopoly on force, is necessary. But because it has that monopoly on force, it should be heavily restricted and closely monitored. Now that basic belief has within it various degrees. I've been called a statist by more radical, stringent libertarians and I've called an anarchist by supporters of big government solutions.
 
Better government.
 
Lakryte said:
Society does not require government to tackle every problem they want solved. Do you have an example of a problem only a large government could solve and why?
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I never said anything about a large government.
 
Psychoclown said:
Not at all. That's like saying if bigger government is better, than absolute tyranny is best.
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I'm afraid not, because government is not synonymous with tyranny. A government could technically be global in size and still be non-tyrannical and serve the needs of the people. Not that I'm arguing for such a government.

On the other hand, people here (mostly libertarians) are saying that less government is automatically better.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
Perhaps, but a government being bigger does unalterably guarantee that it will be worse.
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In the mind of a conservative, I have no doubt. That is pure opinion. Just because govt is big does not make it bad. It is all in the way it is run. I understand you may have pre-conceived notions of what gov't does and how it functions but it is possible to be run properly.
 
Amadeus said:
I'm afraid not, because government is not synonymous with tyranny. A government could technically be global in size and still be non-tyrannical and serve the needs of the people.
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Perhaps under some theory, but certainly never in real life, or anything close thereto.

I think there is enough obvious empirical evidence that can be observed, that makes it clear that larger government unalterably becomes more overbearing, burdensome, and tyrannical. It is the natural tendency of any organization that has power and control over others to seek even more power and control. The more power and control it has, the easier it is to seize more.

And of course, as much a factor as size itself is, is also the distance of government from the governed. We certainly see this here in the U.S., that our federal government, being more distant from the governed than more localized state, county, and city/town governments, is, as an obvious result, less accountable and responsive to the governed.

Government on a global scale would be a nightmare for anyone living under it; more so than the worst governments that this world has yet seen.
 
OnWisconsin said:
In the mind of a conservative, I have no doubt. That is pure opinion. Just because govt is big does not make it bad. It is all in the way it is run. I understand you may have pre-conceived notions of what gov't does and how it functions but it is possible to be run properly.
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I suppose it depends on your point of view.

If you believe that government should be a servant to the people, responsive to the will of the people, and accountable to the people, then you have no choice but to agree with me. For this to be the case, government needs to be relatively small, and as much as possible of the power that it wields needs to be concentrated as locally as possible among city/town-level governments, state governments, with the national government having only a very bare minimum of power and authority—exactly as our Nation's Constitution was written to establish.

If you believe that government should be the master, and that the people exist to serve the will of government, then you would be right, a big government, concentrated at the national level would certainly be “better” than a small government.
 
CalGun said:
Look at billy jeff who engages in a sexual twist with an intern - if a corporate CEO had done that he'd have been canned but we glorify it, excuse it, and don't think much of even lying about it under oath.
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Except the CEO would leave with stock options. ;)
 
Amadeus said:
Which do you feel is more important: A government that is smaller, or a government that can solve important problems more effectively?
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We can't go back to a culture of self-reliance and minimal government as long as we want to project power on a global scale; those goals contradict each other.
 
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Amadeus said:
I'm afraid not, because government is not synonymous with tyranny. A government could technically be global in size and still be non-tyrannical and serve the needs of the people. Not that I'm arguing for such a government.

On the other hand, people here (mostly libertarians) are saying that less government is automatically better.
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A global government is only big in the sense of who is under its authority. It could theoretically be a very small, limited government or a wide, expansive government. After all if a nation's population grows the government doesn't automatically get bigger in the sense that we are using the word in this debate.

Government is intrusive. It limits choices. Sometimes that's good. It takes away the right to choose to murder, steal, or commit fraud. I'm all for that. Other times its bad. But bigger government is going to be more intrusive than smaller government and the most intrusive government possible is an absolute tyranny. In terms of the size of government scale, anarchy is at one end, and absolute tyranny is at the other. Most people believe the optimal or most desirable size of government falls somewhere between those two extremes.

Even libertarians don't always think less government is always better. Libertarians generally support at a minimum a government capable of providing self defense, establishing laws to protect us from harm others might do unto us, and courts to enforce those laws and to enforce contracts that are freely entered. That's a lot smaller than the scope and reach of our current government, so most libertarians do think that when it comes to our current government, smaller is almost always better because we see the current situation as being far larger than the optimal point. But if that optimal point was ever reached, libertarians would not support calls for even smaller government. That's when you start to enter anarchist territory rather than libertarian territory and yes the two are distinct.
 
Morality Games said:
We can't go back to a culture of self-reliance and minimal government as long as we want to project power on a global scale; those goals contradict each other.
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That's BS.

Self-reliance and minimal government IN the US has nothing to do with how we deal with other countries. In other words, we don't need to curtail individual freedom or subject our own citizens to massive amounts of government control and power in order to deal effectively with the world at large.
 
Amadeus said:
I never said anything about a large government.
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You said a small government would not be good enough. You heavily implied that therefore a larger government would be needed to solve certain problems. Let me remind everyone of your original comment:

vWhat if a government is too small to tackle a problem that society wants solved? Then it is not a better government, it is a smaller government for the sake of being small.
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If a government is too small, that suggests you believe the solution is a larger government. Now please respond to my question.
 
Lakryte said:
You said a small government would not be good enough. You heavily implied that therefore a larger government would be needed to solve certain problems. Let me remind everyone of your original comment:
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Small government in comparison to what? Large government in comparison to what? Please don't put words in my mouth. If you don't understand my posts, I'm more than happy to clarify.

If a government is too small, that suggests you believe the solution is a larger government.
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No, it means that government should be large enough to meet whatever problem society deems it should solve. As I clearly stated in my original post.

Now please respond to my question.
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What was your question? I'm not going back and looking for it.
 
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