Board Moderates and Liberals,

[landpoke]

Originally Posted by Archaea

a question as to policy.

I'm more interested in the political philosophies underlying your choices.

As for me, there is no question I have an immensely deep distrust of government, which when boiled down to the basics is the threat of the majority at the point of the gun to enforce its will against the minority. In non-democratic societies and in reality in democratic societies it's actually the threat of the minority to enforce its will against the majority under the point of a gun.

So given that government at its deepest core is one of force and violence, I find it easy to distrust, and must be kept in check no matter what. Chaos is almost better than the controlled, but latent violence of government. Only the concept of enabling constraints makes the latent violent intent of government makes it worth the risk.

And perhaps many or most moderates or liberals inherently trust government, believing it to be benign not malevolent. We could refer to the Founding Fathers and the Federalist Papers but that's old hat by now, and much of it may no longer be true.

The question is, why do you trust government to do a better job of controlling situations, relationships and conditions better than other forces?

In terms of helping the poor, the solution never seems to be market driven, but rather the violent forceful method of taxation, creating some phony social system which never works and is usually every expensive to administer.

Why would you trust government to be able to administer the delivery of health care?

I admit government has a role to play in regulation of systems, but it should be a minimalist role.

Is anybody bothered that the largest employer is the federal government?

The federal government produces nothing, not one iota of food, not one piece of hardware, no production facilities, and really is destructive to the overall market system except insofar as it enables the system to propel forward. Trade schooling and road systems, regulating air traffic and those items make sense.

Why so much trust in such a violent entity?

How has it earned your trust?

It almost seems you have made this nebulous concept of government, bureaucracy, taxation and power as a God which can no wrong and can solve everything.

Whereas my first instinct is that, "how can something that does not produce be useful as a primary resort?"

As a sort of moderate it's not so much that I trust the government but, rather, that I distrust the individual. People are stupid, they need an equally stupid check to keep chaos at bay.