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Minimal or Maximum Government--Which would you prefer?

Minimal or Maximum Government--Which would you choose?

  • Total voters
    19
ronpaulvoter

ronpaulvoter

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Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
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That would appear to depend largely on whether you prefer to earn an "excessive" income or prefer to receive an "excessive" share of government goods/services. ;)
 
What a ridiculous poll. Its like saying do you prefer the Haiti or North Korean model of governance. The world is not simply two massive extremes with nothing in between.
 
I would rather a democratic government be interfering in my life than unaccountable rich people.
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

I'd prefer minimal. Such a government would minimize government's initiation of aggression against the people.
 
Paschendale said:
I would rather a democratic government be interfering in my life than unaccountable rich people.
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Well congratulations, you are currently under the thumb of a democratically elected government made up of unaccountable rich people.
 
Paschendale said:
I would rather a democratic government be interfering in my life than unaccountable rich people.
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PoS said:
Well congratulations, you are currently under the thumb of a democratically elected government made up of unaccountable rich people.
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I guess he's enjoying the best of both worlds, then, isn't he?
 
Minimal or Maximum Government--Which would you prefer?
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neither of those work, so something in between.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
What a ridiculous poll. Its like saying do you prefer the Haiti or North Korean model of governance. The world is not simply two massive extremes with nothing in between.
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You win the Smartest Student in class special Christmas award. Well said.

This is the typical libertarian nonsense that we see over and over and over again with their intentional false premises and false choices.
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

A Distributist government. Regarding the minimum, is it not possible that people might need to be protected from the lifestyle, business, family, etc. decisions of others? Should the state not intervene to protect workers from employers who would pay them next to nothing? Should the state not intervene to protect a wife from a husband who would abandon her to destitution in order to run off with someone else? Should the state not protect society from being morally corrupted by proponents of contraceptives or of homosexuality? Etc.
 
PoS said:
Well congratulations, you are currently under the thumb of a democratically elected government made up of unaccountable rich people.
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So why do conservatives keep supporting them and attacking every populist movement to do something about that? Seems strange that you'd complain about a situation than you constantly fight to protect.
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...



First explain to me WHY it HAS to be one or the other, rather than something in between the two extremes?
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

This question seems about as meaningful as asking someone if they prefer a shower in nothing but hot water or a shower in nothing but cold water. The reality is that it takes hot and cold water at just the right mix (personal preference) to have a comfortable, and therefore effective, showers.

Most things in life are not either/or's, but gradients. Its intelligent to ask where you are on spectrum of possibilities and less intelligent to ask it as an either/or proposition.
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

Both options are horrendously unappealing. The minimal one lacks of all kinds of things a government should be responsible for (like civil rights, human rights) and the other one goes way too far in government interfering. No government should be able to regulate all aspects of people's lives, so that government too lacks all kind of things governments should be responsible for (like freedom, like civil rights).
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

I would pick neither and instead explain to any one offering two opposite extremes as the only choice the concept of middle ground and sensibly picking real best choices.

Oddly, your minimal government choice is not actually minimal government, but instead picking government YOU like and calling it minimal. In fact, minimal government would be, you know, minimal. So even you fail at picking from the options...
 
I picked maximum only because I know it must make the OP buttmad that he couldn't even win an internet forum poll for his ideas.
 
ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...

Extremist options are never reality based. Therefore, neither.
 
This thread is...

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ronpaulvoter said:
Suppose you had to choose ONE of these two options:

MINIMAL government--Government would provide good roads and protect you from the wrongdoings of other people. Everything else you have to provide for yourself and your family--education, health care, housing, food, transportation, etc. Government is obligated to leave you strictly alone and not interfere with your lifestyle, business, family matters, home, or anything else. Taxes are minimal.

MAXIMUM government--Government provides everything--food, housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. It also regulates all aspects of your life, including "protecting" you from yourself and consuming a huge portion of your income as taxes.

Which would you choose?
Click to expand...


I want a mixture of the two leaning towards less government control.There should be some safety nets to give the poor a helping hand.There should be public education.There should be regulations to ensure companies do not **** up the air,water or land or try to pay people next to nothing to do all the work for them. There shouldn't be foreign aid.Nor should there be corporate welfare. We should be staying the **** out of the business of other countries.There should be safety regulations on products and that businesses can't scam consumers. There should be laws against monopolies and enforced.There should be regulations that limit the size of a corporation so that if it is financially ruined it doesn't harm the economy.Who and how many people we allow into our country should be enforced.There are plenty of other things that fall onto what the government should be doing.
 
Don't like either answer but I would go with minimal if forced to decide. I believe that the role of government is to provide the greatest good for the greatest numbers for the longest period of time which means that government should invest in people and infrastructure as long as there is a return on the investment. So good infrastructure, good education for those who want an education and have the intelligence to contribute with an education. Very limited social net and only for people who normally would be contributors. No reason to spend money on people who are unable or unwilling to pay it back with interest. Take out the religious morality behind social services and progressive taxation. Don't want a Christian government concerned about such things.
 
How come there's no option for "this is the dumbest poll in DP history?"
 
Goshin said:
First explain to me WHY it HAS to be one or the other, rather than something in between the two extremes?
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Because for Ron Paul voters and many Libertarians, a government can either be like Somalia's or North Korea's. It can't be like Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, etc.
 
Maximum.

I've worked in a small town before where everybody hated government and were all GOP. Guess what the only two industries were in that small town? Police and teachers. Both government jobs.
 
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