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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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 Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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Libertarianism in Two More Lessons
1. People like to keep their money
2. No matter how much tax we pay, it never seems to be enough
In small government philosophy, nothing is more important than homeland security. In the UK, the government is so overwhelmingly enormous that it finds itself having to prioritize between its citizens' safety and some other public work. On what? I don't know - paying uneducated, unemployable layabouts to sit at home idle, perhaps? Or locking people up for taking totally harmless drugs in the privacy of their own homes? Or how about hospitals that are so appalling inefficient that they might actually give you a disease you didn't originally have?
All this and much more besides is all yours for 51% of GDP |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| Just because I don't seek to abolish welfare - impossible - doesn't mean I I'm not entitled to find fault with it. |
I support anyone attempting to constructively criticize governmental programs based on real-world data and impliciations. It's only the ideological material that I find dangerous. I also just don't happen to consider said criticism Libertarian in nature. A constructive thinker will suggest ways to improve or increase the efficiency of a social program. A Libertarian's first response is to abolish it. This is an important difference. |
I would argue that there are certain government agencies that must be shut down with all relevant programs discontinued. The first one that comes to mind is the DEA. There is absolutely no reason tax payer dollars should be going to people whose job it is too harass those who engage in what some call naughty substances. The NSA? What is the point? We've got the CIA and the FBI. Also, I don't think we should abandon the DHS, although I would prefer if it were shrunk and compartmentalized into the DoJ. What would a modern liberal do with the DEA? The NSA? Shouldn't at least some laws be discontinued? Also, lets not forget the Pentagon. There are certainly some programs within the DoD that need to be shut down. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| Just because I don't seek to abolish welfare - impossible - doesn't mean I I'm not entitled to find fault with it. |
I support anyone attempting to constructively criticize governmental programs based on real-world data and impliciations. It's only the ideological material that I find dangerous. I also just don't happen to consider said criticism Libertarian in nature. A constructive thinker will suggest ways to improve or increase the efficiency of a social program. A Libertarian's first response is to abolish it. This is an important difference. |
I would argue that there are certain government agencies that must be shut down with all relevant programs discontinued. The first one that comes to mind is the DEA. There is absolutely no reason tax payer dollars should be going to people whose job it is too harass those who engage in what some call naughty substances. The NSA? What is the point? We've got the CIA and the FBI. Also, I don't think we should abandon the DHS, although I would prefer if it were shrunk and compartmentalized into the DoJ. What would a modern liberal do with the DEA? The NSA? Shouldn't at least some laws be discontinued? Also, lets not forget the Pentagon. There are certainly some programs within the DoD that need to be shut down. |
I should have been more clear: I don't think the constructive thinker will never, ever propose the abolition of a given program, just that it's not his first resort, and is always based purely on real-world consequences rather that presuppositions about how big or small the government should be. Obviously there are cases -- both hypothetical and actual -- where the only real recourse is to simply end an unreasonable law or dissolve and unreasonable department. This should be done not because of concerns about, "The government is too big," but because the laws or programs are simply redundant, ineffective, or outright damaging to society. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify that, it was poorly written.
Let's look at your examples:
1) NSA: as you pointed out, we all ready have two organizations at least hypothetically capable of providing us with any service the NSA can provide, the CIA and the FBI. Abolishing the NSA and assigning all relevent tasks to the CIA and FBI (mostly to the CIA given the nature of the organization) is in my eyes simply a streamlining. Assuming we get equal or better results with fewer organizations, less bureucratic complexity, and less monetary expenditure, this is a good change. If we were to get worse results, on the other hand, perhaps the change would not be justified. I'm not familiar enough with the net output of the NSA to be able to properly assess whether collapsing it into the CIA would be beneficial to our society, but with all the data at one's hand, one could evaluate and decide. In either case, my proposed pattern for deciding is results-reliant, rather than principle reliant. What matters is either improving the results or reducing costs while maintaining the same results.
2) The DEA: even if drugs were legalized (and I feel they generally should be), smuggling is still unacceptable practice. Ending the "war on drugs" should be accompanied by a substantial reduction in the DEA, and the remaining manpower and the anti-smuggling mandate should simply be absorbed into US Customs.
3) The Controlled Substances Act: there are substances that need to be controlled, but they are very rare, and there is legitimate reason for it. A good example is antibiotics; at least a few strains of antibiotics need to be limited to hospital use due to the tendency of bacteria to develope resistance to antibiotics over time. Usint antibiotics willy-nilly can have negative consequences not just for yourself, but for others in society (due to the antibiotic bacteria you're essentially breeding in your body and then spreading), so keeping a few strains restricted for hospital usage to ensure they have strong effect makes sense to me. However, I don't think antibiotics are actually regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. This is probably an example of a law that simply needs to go, since it simply can't be improved, and the rare substances that are justifiably controlled are handled under other laws all ready I believe.
So yes, these are some examples of things that should quite possibly either be absorbed into other agencies (NSA), be substantially reduced and then absorbed into other agencies (DEA), or probably be outright eliminated (CSA). What matters with regards to my original point, though, is that the reasons for this have nothing to do with some abstract concern about governmental size, or what government "should or shouldn't be doing", or so forth. Reduction, absorbtion, and elimination are tools to be used to improve results, not ends in their own right. |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| Okay. I was just seeing if you saw the need to limit government in at least some aspects. I wouldn't think we would need the DEA with the removal of the CSA. The FDA exist to test drugs before they are sent to market. The INS and the Coast Guard are perfectly capable of guarding and securing our nation's waters and ports. It would seem if you went beyond that and started adding other bureaucracies, it would just be redundant. Why not just make existing bureaucracies better instead of adding more? |
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