Warrl wrote:ShneekeyTheLost wrote:
I think we have a fundamental difference of the value of what the government provides, if that is your opinion.
Not necessarily. What I'm objecting to is that government seizes the privilege of deciding for me how much I am supposed to value what it provides.
And yes, I recognize the pragmatic necessity of government doing that. It's a necessary evil. And only tolerable to the extent that it IS necessary (to such precision as that can be determined).
You seem to assume that if I think it's possible for government, in the absence of corruption, to be evil, I must not want any government at all. I have never said any such thing; I have repeatedly said that government is necessary among humans. Which doesn't mean that anything government wants to do should be tolerated unless we can lay it at the feet of corrupt politicians or government bureaucrats - because totally honest ones can faithfully adhere to evil ideologies, or allow government to become more evil in a series of steps each of which is "too small to matter".
Per James Madison:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Madison's compatriot Thomas Jefferson was less optimistic about the latter part, and figured there would have to be bloodshed every so often to force government back into line. Unfortunately, so far it seems that he also was overly optimistic: the bloodshed since then has almost never been about restraining government, but often over whether it would become more expansive and abusive in
this direction or
that direction.
Then we have a fundamental difference of opinion on what constitutes evil and what a government is.
Evil is something that is self-serving, that is purely egocentric and malicious for the sake of getting ahead. A government doesn't do that, mostly because it doesn't HAVE a self to serve. Now, the people running the government may be manipulating the system to serve themselves, which would be evil, but the government isn't capable of independent thought or action. It's just a tool, like any other.
I would also fundamentally disagree with James Madison. Government IS necessary, you've said it yourself. Government is, at its core, a social contract, everyone getting together and deciding on a set of rules to play by and get together with so they can all benefit from the rewards of the system. Every single negative example you have cited is a case of someone manipulating that system for their own benefit, but the system itself holds merit. You complain about being 'forced' to pay for services not rendered, but then you agree that it does provide services. You're force to pay for any good or service, either by a system of laws or by the vendor pulling his weapon of choice and forcing you to fork over payment, because HE isn't going to be able to survive if you rob him.
The problem is that, all too often, the people running the government care less about the people to whom they are responsible, that's the rest of us by the way, and start gaming the system. Ideally, we'd want a system in which gaming the system would work to everyone else's benefit as well. I'm not sure how that would work, but it would be something interesting to try and come up with.
The concepts of government haven't really changed a whole lot over the centuries. As mankind has discovered their world, and the properties it has and operates by, their method of government has remained static. The US Government is based largely on the Roman Republican system, with ideas from the Five Nations thrown in. You're talking systems of governance centuries old, over two thousand in the case of Rome. We do need to work on developing a better government system, there's no doubt about it.
It's not that the concept of government is inherently flawed, it is that it is simply out of date. We've gone from horse drawn carts to putting a man on the moon in under a century, we need to start making similar advances in our social and political sciences.