On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Craig Haynie <[email protected]>wrote:
> > When we make an exception for government and say, well we know that > violence, threats of violence, and aggression are wrong, and while we would > never practice these things in our personal relationships, but then we > allow government to have an exception and use aggression, then we open the > door for every type of aggression that people in power can dream up. It's > this very idea that we 'should' use aggression in certain cases, which lead > to all the wars, debt, inflation, taxation, and the blossoming police state > today. It all comes from the idea that government is exempt from moral law, > and when people on this list start presenting their political opinions, > I'll then point out that they are making a moral exception for their > special programs. There's the libertarian view (1), which is represented above, as well as a common conservative view which has been discussed which opposes the "picking of winners" (2), and a common liberal view embodied in the excellent points that Jed has been making (3). To (1), the complaint about the government using the threat force to extract taxes is fanciful. As has been suggested, you can move to Somalia or Afghanistan if you prefer. There you will learn that when the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, ordinary people are likely to resort to what is called "self-help," or vigilante justice, and where that doesn't exist there's simply violence imposed by the strong upon the weak. I would take government enforcement of laws over self-help any day. Most people would. When enough people feel that way they band together and create constitutional democracies. Then they vote for representatives to form a government, and the government starts doing things on their behalf that they are unable to do individually. Since some people are knuckleheads, you need some form of coercion to keep things from reverting to a state of nature. To (2), I think there's something to this, but unfortunately it's mixed up with a bunch of charged energy that feeds into the (US) election cycle. What was simply a bad call, and a legitimate even then, has been puffed up into a worldview. The extreme version of this argument is hypocritical, because conservative administrations are just as likely to pick winners as liberal ones are -- Haliburton is one example. This hypocrisy is unfortunate, because it blunts the force of a complaint that has some legitimacy -- I really do think there's scope to dial back government involvement in certain wasteful investments. And I'm very interested to see where the various x-prizes that are starting to become more common go. To (3), concerning the essential role of government investment in scientific and technological development, I would add that there needs to be regulation (light, simple regulation, along with rolling back of much unnecessary regulation) to give prices to externalities that private enterprises will assuredly ignore without some kind of price signal. We could possibly benefit from a carbon market or something like it, for example, to translate the problems that greenhouse gases are likely to give rise to in the medium term into something that profit-seeking corporations can understand and optimize during the next quarter. Providing small but effective price signals is a very important role of government. Eric
