Comment Re:What's your point? (Score 1) 29
"By bulk are you referring to the number of people in the political system, or something else? "
The number of people whose livelihoods depend on taxation, if that is what you mean by 'in the political system,' would be one good proxy for bulk. Another would be the percentage of GDP spent by government, either directly or indirectly (through mandates for example.)
"If instead the argument is that government is trying to help too many people (ie the country is so large that government from a federal level is impossible and should be abandoned), I don't necessarily disagree."
That's a whole different barrel of worms, and not what I was saying at all. Power is the problem, power itself. It's essentially the same creature whether it is the local strongman and busybody or the national ones, except that the national level can obviously arrange for larger disasters. Devolving power from the national to the local level may be worthwhile, but it's not an end-all. Local tyrannies are still tyrannies.
A subsidiary problem is government trying to follow heart-wrenching but utterly inchoate missions like 'help people' btw. Government programs are easy to institute but damn near impossible to shut down, so if you have any interest at all in stopping it somewhere short of complete totalitarianism you really must come up with much more specific, well-defined, and suitable missions. Like 'provide a court and law enforcement system of last resort' or 'prevent Mexico from reclaiming her northwestern states' for example.
"I do think it is likely time to split our country up into 2 (or more) independent nations. Frankly I don't expect that our country will survive more than another 10-20 years without that happening anyways"
You know, when other countries have problems with different groups not seeing eye to eye on everything, one common remedy suggested by Merikans has been something called federalism. It allows the country to keep the benefits of union, while avoiding much of the squabbling, by keeping the central government relatively weak and small so that it doesnt matter so much which region controls it. Perhaps we should investigate that before splitting up?
I seem to recall some old white dudes named Jefferson and Madison and that whole generation even talked about it a bit. Nah, couldnt be. If they had, we would have a federal system here already, and we wouldnt be talking about breakup, right?
"Is regressive taxation not state action? "
Taxation *is* state action. It is the primordial state action, because it is the see of all other state actions which require funds.
"How about restrictions on health care for certain parts of the population?"
Restrictions on health care, like all restrictions on peaceful honest business, should be repealed.
The number of people whose livelihoods depend on taxation, if that is what you mean by 'in the political system,' would be one good proxy for bulk. Another would be the percentage of GDP spent by government, either directly or indirectly (through mandates for example.)
"If instead the argument is that government is trying to help too many people (ie the country is so large that government from a federal level is impossible and should be abandoned), I don't necessarily disagree."
That's a whole different barrel of worms, and not what I was saying at all. Power is the problem, power itself. It's essentially the same creature whether it is the local strongman and busybody or the national ones, except that the national level can obviously arrange for larger disasters. Devolving power from the national to the local level may be worthwhile, but it's not an end-all. Local tyrannies are still tyrannies.
A subsidiary problem is government trying to follow heart-wrenching but utterly inchoate missions like 'help people' btw. Government programs are easy to institute but damn near impossible to shut down, so if you have any interest at all in stopping it somewhere short of complete totalitarianism you really must come up with much more specific, well-defined, and suitable missions. Like 'provide a court and law enforcement system of last resort' or 'prevent Mexico from reclaiming her northwestern states' for example.
"I do think it is likely time to split our country up into 2 (or more) independent nations. Frankly I don't expect that our country will survive more than another 10-20 years without that happening anyways"
You know, when other countries have problems with different groups not seeing eye to eye on everything, one common remedy suggested by Merikans has been something called federalism. It allows the country to keep the benefits of union, while avoiding much of the squabbling, by keeping the central government relatively weak and small so that it doesnt matter so much which region controls it. Perhaps we should investigate that before splitting up?
I seem to recall some old white dudes named Jefferson and Madison and that whole generation even talked about it a bit. Nah, couldnt be. If they had, we would have a federal system here already, and we wouldnt be talking about breakup, right?
"Is regressive taxation not state action? "
Taxation *is* state action. It is the primordial state action, because it is the see of all other state actions which require funds.
"How about restrictions on health care for certain parts of the population?"
Restrictions on health care, like all restrictions on peaceful honest business, should be repealed.
