ORIGINAL POST – Names changed to protect the guilty. As usual.
Charlie – One perspective.
Conservative or Liberal?
A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be very liberal, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth…
By: Madelyn Floch
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REPONSES
Barbara – A very biased perspective that over-generalizes and paints every liberal/conservative with the same brush. It holds no redeeming value other than as an outrage piece for those of like minds.
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Charlie – Interesting response, Barbara. 
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Christian – Oh, I don’t know Barbara, I’d say the essentials of liberty are pretty basic. As are the principles of economics. Being a Libertarian, I follow in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson — “The first job of the president is to ensure liberty,” as opposed to many claims his job is to provide security. At the root of conservative thought is property — do I get to own what I earn? Must I give what I have earned to those who have no earned? And if I do give it to those in need, shouldn’t that be my choice, since it’s my property? That extends into every element of life. Whether it’s grades in college, earnings from work, inheritance from family, or even rights about what I put into my own body, how can anyone claim they have any right to it? I’m not into Republicans or Democrats, I’m into freedom from both. Let each man (or woman) choose from himself and the society he chooses to live in. To demand a nationwide theft (high federal taxes) is to mandate a SINGLE morality over 400,000 people. Let each community choose for itself, free of such interference, to the best each community is WILLING to provide for itself.
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Daryll – Yes, it’s “one perspective,” but it’s not a very interesting one.
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Christian – Wait, there are three in this post. Which are you referring to? LOL
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Daryll – The one that Floch puts forward. In college, you have a level playing field. In the rest of society, that’s not the case.
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Barbara – ”Let each community choose for itself, free of such interference, to the best each community is WILLING to provide for itself.”
If that were the case, I’m afraid the worst dystopian fantasy would hold no candle to what this country would become in many areas. Those who truly care about helping others and have a community spirit would clump together as much as possible and those who don’t would do everything in their power to simply take what everyone else has.
The gap between the haves and the have-nots would widen exponentially. If this were to become a Libertarian country, I foresee a return to serfdom. A return to might/money make right and screw everyone else.
Greed and selfishness were hardwired into our DNA during the early years of humanity because that was the only way for family groups to survive. Unfortunately, those traits have not been bred out of us.
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Christian – @Daryll: The only level playing field a person has is themselves. We can’t flatten community because people are born unequal in the regard of qualities, size, demeanor, etc. There is no such thing as a level playing field, society or otherwise. The Soviets tried it, and millions died, whether by force of arm or by starvation. Humans need freedom.
@Barbara: How do you imagine our country became so great, attracted so many immigrants, became so wealthy, developed so high a standard of living, such a large middle class, stood as the world’s most powerful innovator … in barely 100 years since its inception? Because people are greedy? No, because people were allowed to keep what they earned and wanted to find new ways to do so. It sounds like you’re afraid of your own humanity, afraid you can’t control it yourself, or that of others, and thus need a powerful government. Greed and selfishness are hardwired into us, along with a slew of other, terrible qualities, and yet America still boasts the wealthiest, healthiest and most literate poor in the world. The world’s first Libertarian (Thomas Jefferson) was the architect of what became the USA. How can you say that freedom is so evil, when the entire world has yearned for it since the beginning of time?
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Dennis – ”The one that Floch puts forward. In college, you have a level playing field. In the rest of society, that’s not the case.”
Completely disagree Mr. Branum. It is not an equal playing field; examples:
Student A can afford a laptop, Student B cannot. Tools like a personal computer are proven to help in education.
2. Student A has college paid, Student B has to work two jobs to pay for his education. Time spent earning money is time not spent working towards the degree.
3. Student A has family support networks, Student B does not. Family support, be it physical or emotional is a proven source for success.
Now of course these are arugments for “if all things being equal,” you must also factor in learning disabilities, physical handicaps, social upbrining, environmental influences and a number of other variables. The arugment the OP presents is valid even if “over generalized” as stated above. But by virtue of using the words, conservative or liberal you are already over generalizing. The words themselves come with generalizations. Try this on. Hi my name is Dennis, for everything esle you will have to talk with me further as the only two words that tell you anything about how i actually believe, think or act are present in my name.
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Charlie – Dennis — methinks what Daryll was getting at is that’s the THEORY Floch put foward. Daryll wasn’t claiming the field is level — he was pointing out the flaw in the gpa metaphor in that once you’re IN college the field is relatively level, but college ain’t the real world, which is in fact a tad topsy turvy. In short: You two are agreeing. 
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Christian – If you’re right, Charlie, then I could agree with that.
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Eric – Man, any moonshiner with more kids than teeth will tell you there is absolutely no difference. Anyone who believes differently has been hornswaggled, duped, fooled, jackrooted, lobotomized, sodomized, etc. Their brains are scrambled and their Lusts are few. God will smite them for their ignorance and no, they ain’t getting into My Heaven.
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Charlie – I have no idea what Eric is going on about.
But Daryll can correct me if I misinterpreted his comment. In general the responses here go a long way in showing how ludicrous the Left-Right/Con-Lib labels really are. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the small group who posted here includes people who, if forced to, would categorize themselves in one of the two available ways — yet the central theme of response is that we’re all trying to suss out how to level things as best we can in a universe (and society) that generally resists leveling.
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Daryll – Charlie, you got the gist of it. Because here’s the thing: I personally don’t like the idea of abortion. But I also recognize, as a guy, that I have no say in the matter: Because of an accident of biology, I will never have to worry about it.
There are a lot of men out there, however, who *don’t* get that and who try to outlaw abortion for everyone. Are *they* “liberals”? If not, then the entire premise of the original post falls flat.
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Charlie – So if the challenge at hand is how best to deal with an playing field that is by its very nature NOT level, I wonder how much we distract ourselves from the solution with debate over whether so-and-so is conservative or liberal? Seems to me it may not really matter except that we put so much value on the labels.
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Dennis – Yes we would be. However whether our thoughts line up any farther down the rabbit hole is doubtful. Then again the original draw to the is polarization.
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Barbara – Christian, please do not assign to me motivations which I do not have. I do not want a “powerful” government, I simply want one that will prevent the rich from trampling over the poor.
Yes, I’m all for people keeping what they earn, but what I’m NOT for and never will be for is people earning exorbitant amounts of money for very little work.
I’m NOT for corporations making millions/billions of dollars yet paying their workers barely enough to live on.
I’m NOT for corporations earning record profits yet laying off thousands of workers.
I’m NOT for corporations playing merry-hob with the economy and then getting rewarded for their misdeeds by being bailed out by the government.
I’m NOT for the idea that most Americans are simply one medical disaster away from bankruptcy, yet they can’t afford health insurance.
So, please, tell me, how will Libertarian ideas solve those problems?
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Dennis – *to the OP*
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Dennis – To Barbara’s comment about NOT wanting this or that from a company use your right to promote boycotts. Which is the strongest and most underused power of consumers. Vote with your money.
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Barbara – I do. I boycott companies and products all of the time. But I’m just one person. It would take a unified effort from hundreds of thousands of people to make a difference. I see calls for boycotts for this or that at least once a month, yet nothing ever results from it.
I have yet to see any major changes brought about through the use of boycotts.
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Dennis – Barbara, because a large portion of the consumer base obviously doesn’t care that much. And as I see it that’s the same as an election. You boycott a company you don’t like but enough people like them enough to give them their money, so they stay in business. And IMO no outside agency has the right to infringe on that mutually accepted relationship as the people have voted.
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Dennis – Apologies to the thread owner. I’ll stop trolling and save the rest for an economics argument.
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Christian – @Barbara
1) I shouldn’t pigeon hole you, which is suppose is a great deal of what this convo is about. I apologize for pigeon-holing you.
2) How people earn however much money, so long as it’s legal, is not a source issue, or even a real issue. If they’re doing it legally, then what might be wrong is the law, or the absence of competition, which is built by monopoly, which is promoted by government regulation.
3) Their workers can quit, buyers can go elsewhere. If there isn’t competition, look to the government that ensures the company’s continuance as the dominant power through corruption. Deregulate
4) The principle behind laying off workers is actually healthy to an economy, when the economy is laissez-faire. Right now our society is so decieved that it needs government involvement in the market, it doesn’t realize that the reason we have so little production, so few jobs, and so little freedom to move economically is because of a system that promotes spending over production, over savings, over entrepreneurship, over self-suffiency, and high taxation of producers.
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Christian – 5) Government has no right to spend anyone’s money to save companies who operate corruptly. No bailout should have occured, the companies should have failed, thousands of entrepreneurships and other small businesses would have grown to fill the vacuum and increased options for customers many thousand-fold.
6) Medicine would be much cheaper if the government stopped trying to regulate it, and if people stopped suing it for every mistake. Costs are up because people want millions when something goes wrong in an industry people expect perfection but aren’t realistically able to provide. Deregulate the medical industry, end government subsidy of healthcare.
I can’t speak for other libertarians, but this is how I’d address it. In short.
I APOLOGIZE IF THIS THING STARTS FREAKING OUT AND DOUBLE POSTING. IT KEPT GIVING ME ERRORS!
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Charlie – Dennis: No apology needed. This is exactly why I post this stuph. What I really appreciate about the gang who apparently bothers to click on things I post is that they consistently produce GREAT discussions. Thoughtful, respectful and diverse. You’re welcome here any time.
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Barbara – Workers can quit? And go where? Do what? Who is going to feed and clothe their families when they can’t find a new job? Not the government because Libertarians don’t want the government involved.
Charities? Where are charities going to get the money? From people donating? Ha! Charities are always short on resources whether it’s money, volunteers, or material goods. And that’s WITH government assisting with the poor.
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Christian – What about themselves? Why must people depend on someone else to take care of their families? This country was built by entrepreneurs — farmers, merchants, innovators. The fact that we even believe we must have someone else to employ us should be one of the most terrifying warning signs about what’s wrong. Government education trains us to become good employees, why not to be good employers? Or to work for ourselves?
And as for charitable giving, when Reagan made his huge tax cuts in the early 80′s, he also removed government benefits to those who gave charitably. When that occurred, charitable giving went up, because people had more of their own money and felt free to give. America has been the most charitable nation in history because it was our money first, and no one else’s. If you fear people won’t give their money willingly, by what moral right should we take it by force?
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Charlie – While I recognize our charities never have “enough”, it’s also true that a LOT of charity money goes out from the public to the people. So I find myself asking how much more we might be able to get if we put the job onto “The Government.” Historically, government (and bureaucracies in general) aren’t know for their innovation and creativity. They tend to create systems designed to preserve themelves rather than to adapt. Charitable programs are extremely robust in this country and — so far — some of the least regulated organizations around. I can’t help but think that’s significant in some way.
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Barbara – Look, I don’t claim to know as much as I probably should about economics or how government policies and regulations affect the economy, but what I do know is that it’s such a jumbled, incestuous mess that it’s not going to be a simple solution to just take government out of the equation.
At this point, the mega-corps have so much of a head start that smaller start-up companies have to go above and beyond their best simply to have a fighting chance. And the moment they get to be a contender, they get bought up by the mega-corps.
If somebody doesn’t have a job, where are they going to get the money to start their own business? What if the person isn’t business minded?
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Eric – Sorry about that. They said the same about Gomer Pyle. His first book was an international sensation but after that nothing. He did the sad dance into the gutter with the booze and his penchant for playing the skins flute 23 feet from the middle school where he won his first of seven awards for best cram-job in the pool of Despair. He was more than his image suggested; indeed he was a Pilgrim once, an occupied territory until they forced him chained, bound, blind, silent, proud into a stowaway compartment designed to hold 25 men only up to seventy would be crammed in there barely breathing, holding on to whatever semblance of life pushed them forward. See, wake up. This is about slavery. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean, can any of you read anymore and pick up themes and actually comprehend the text? It’s astonishing how often I hear the same dull refrain: “I have no idea what you are on about.” That isn’t my fault. I cannot help it if I’m lucky. Actually I ain’t a goddamn thing at all. Less than nothing. I just cannot stop writing and writhing and it just never stops. I am not criticizing any of you in actuality. You all seem to be intelligent and resourceful. It isn’t at all your fault that your education was so poor. You have nothing wrong and in fact I guarantee that all of you have oodles of personal wisdom to share but its difficult to find someone who is patient and will listen instead of merely waiting for their turn to talk. My sister Bonnie said something completely and utterly profound yesterday. I thought she wasn’t listening to me. Then she said, “I didn’t know you wanted me to talk. Now, her education was sorely limited and I don’t think she finished highschool and she’s going to be fifty later this month. So, one ask the question: what is more important? Scholarly fortitude or grassroots wisdom. I go for the latter every time. The simplest exchange often bears the best bouquet and life turns and turns and the trick is to relax, slow it down, read patiently and intensely, be in the moment, pursue your wants and not your dreams. Never be in a state of need and never owe anyone anything if you can help it. This is a pretty interesting rock we inhabit and I am finding more and more that every person regardless of economic status, education, race, sexual identity, mental illness, disease, has everything to say if only someone would take the time to actually listen to them for once. Sorry this is so long. It’s my habit now to unleash the sound and the fury on unsuspecting and captive audiences. Farewell and G_d bless.
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Barbara – You know, every time I get into a discussion with a Libertarian, the only thing I ever really come away with is “If you can’t take care of yourself, you don’t deserve to live.” I think I’m going to bow out of this discussion now because it just makes me sad.
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Ted – ”Humanity almost never forgives true greatness.”
+5 points for anyone who knows where that comes from.
In the end, I think that humanity, in general, is still trapped it’s hierarchical behavior patterns. We seem incapable of looking upwards and outwards. Of being able to expand from our families, to our neighborhoods, to our cities, then states, countries, and the entire world. When we do manage it we stop only part way (identifying ourselves with an organization for example) and then stop. Re-enforcing the old patterns just writ larger.
One day we’ll dream big enough. We’ll be less worried that someone has a nicer car, and less concerned that someone might have _as nice_ a car.
Pitchforks are on the left, torches are on the right.
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Christian – You can think I’m unloving or uncaring or any number of qualities, but you can’t force the evil of mankind out at the point of a gun, which is what government amounts to. There are a million other pressures out there pushing people to do the right thing — faith, society, family. These promote giving to the poor, taking care of each other, living in harmony. They are all positive forces, mostly because you are always free within them. Free to leave, free to join.
Government is an unfeeling bureaucracy that always becomes consumed with consolidating more power and oppressing people. (See History of Government, n.) Helping the poor is the right thing to do, but you can’t think that stealing from Peter to pay Paul is in any way more moral than trusting individuals to do it themselves. In this case, the ends do not justify the means. Government promotes poverty! Why would I expect it to help it?
“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”
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Christian – Thank you, Milton Friedman.
Responsibility to the Poor
Milton Friedman 1978. From a lecture given at Stanford University. Read about the racist minimum wage here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams6…
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Cynthia – Playing the pot-stirrer again, eh, Charlie?
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Christi – Geez.. hardly know what to do with all your interesting thoughts and opinions, but am sure happy to see this kind of dialogue. It would be helpful if all, including myself, step back from ego to listen to the many truths, seemingly incompatible, and find the common thread. Clearly, there are things that individual communities do better than big government and vice versa. It does not need to be all one way or the other. Let’s define leadership not as some person elected who can be lobbied, etc., but think of leadership as seeing a way to inspire the spirit of love and kindness and generosity of spirit. If our businesses, governments and communities and even our families could begin from this point, we might actually be able to see some of the changes we all wish to see in our world become real. With the communication technology available today, one by one we can make a difference. Sometimes (often) beginning “simple” gets more accomplished more quickly than all the intricate debates that are so compelling and intriguing. That said, here I sit loving these intricate thoughts! LOL!
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Sarah – Another perspective: We all benefit from this society – in many ways. It’s impossible not to. As such, I think everyone is morally obligated to give back through taxes. Otherwise, you are what you hate most – a freeloader.
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Christian – Why must taxes be the conduit of our contribution to society? While I don’t direct this to you, but the general concept that I need someone else to spend the money I earn in order to improve society insults my intelligence and yours. I am perfectly capable of helping the needy, improving my community, and promoting general welfare by myself. I am more efficient, more effective and, most importantly, personally engaged in the good I commit. No bureaucracy is efficient, or nearly so effective, as the inspired value of one man. The reason it takes only one person to change a lightbulb is because that man is willing to do it himself, is willing to solve it quickly, and asks the charity of no one else to complete the task. When you take the individual out of the equation, you diffuse the value of his contribution, and destroy the inherent power every single human being is capable of achieving if they simply get involved.
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Sarah – Charity isn’t efficient, either. Our country is too large geographically, and too diverse with respect to needs, for charity alone to be sufficient. Poverty is multi-dimensional and cannot be solved through fundraisers. It requires overarching direction to tackle it on multiple fronts. You can build the best school and staff it with the best teachers. But if the students show up hungry or sick, they aren’t going to learn very well. Government is far from perfect, but it can handle the macro much better than myriad charities with often-competing interests. Just imagine a pro-life pregnancy center trying to work with an abortion clinic. They are not going to help solve the problems of women at risk. They might even make it worse.
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Christian – But government is persisting the very poverty we keep asking it to solve. It insulates the poor, enabling their flawed culture to perpetuate the idea they need someone else to help them, when they are equally as capable as the rest of us to do for themselves, if only they would fight for it. We can pretend the government has our best interest at heart, but doesn’t, and never has. It has its own interest at heart. We don’t need them to mediate between a pro-life and abortion clinic. They can do it themselves. They’re intelligent people. If they can’t, they can hire a mediator themselves, at lower cost, greater investment and a more personalized outcome for everyone involved. Government can only issue blanket solutions to individual problems. Personally, I’d rather handle issues myself than ask someone else to do it for me.
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Charlie – Christian: It’s possible you’re confusing the ideas of causal and contributory. Govt does contribute to certain negative factors, but in part as balanced against benefits. Consistancy for example. As inefficient as bureaucracies can be, they do set a reliable baseline for many things such as, for example, the ability to budget and plan long range construction and maintenance based on taxes. I’m vibing you think taxes in and of themselves are immoral and I counter that though they can be implemented in immoral ways the concept of taxation itself is merely a mechanism through which funds can be combined and put to work. You characterize taxation as forcing people to pay what they should be allowed to pay freely. I suggest that (1) If we relied on donations to maintain our freeways we’d look like Afganistan within a decade; (2) the privelage of citizenship comes with a responsibility to contribute to things for the common good which we could not provide individually; (3) an organization the size and scale of a nation state requires individuals to to trust others to do certain things (e.g. plan, build, and maintain roads) so each of us has free time to do other things and; (4) if we didn’t have a government we’d create one.
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Christian – Well, let me clarify. Taxes aren’t evil. The idea that taxes should be spent on things that people should take care of, themselves, is what I find abhorrent. For example, the only thing uniform across the nation that people share is the need for national security, regulation of national currency, maintenance of the national road systems, and sustainment of the simplest of judicial agencies that bust monopolies and enforce cross-state laws. All other taxes, programs and municipal maintenance must remain at as low a level as possible, so that people have the most power to hold accountable those they give their money to. Tenth Amendment – “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
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Charlie – We don’t have a uniform need for a minimal level of food, clothing and shelter? Don’t misunderstand and take this as a question about who should provide these things. It’s your statement regarding “…the only thing uniform across the nation that people share is the need for…” is X, Y and Z that I’m challenging. The assertion that the things you listed are the “only” things uniformly needed is simply not accurate, which is the risk you run when using the rhetoric of absolutes such as all, every, only, never, none and always. If you want to build an argument for a limited list of reasons to levy taxes I’m willing to hear it. But if you base that list on inaccurate claims you’re undermining your own position from the outset. Aristotle would eat your Wheaties.
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Christian – They are the only uniform needs that we must assert to a federal government. If we were to take the stance that all human needs were to be provided for, I’ll wait for the fed to send me toilet paper. The federal government can provide only these things where the individual and state cannot. Otherwise, people can provide their own food, own clothing and own shelter. And where they cannot, the communities or states can. Does that clarify? (I hope I don’t sound personally antagonistic.)
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Sarah – Not all states and communities can take care of their own. If we required that, with zero federal spending on programs designed to provide a safety net, we might as well say F*#* You to states like Mississippi.
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Charlie – Christian Michael I don’t feel antagonized. More fascinated as your logic unfolds. In this recent post you did a better job clarifying that you are making an argument about the role of federal government. And you did better in your rhetorical construct. As with my point about causal vs contributory (we take the good with the bad, but there will always — yes, I’m using an absolute qualifier here — be some degree of poverty), I’ll point out the frequent confusion about the government we have vs governance as a function. “The Government” has it’s flaws, but ours method of governance, a complex blend of formal bureaucracy and free enterprise, is by the numbers (with the poosible exception of time), the must successful in human history. Even our defined poverty level is higher than the average standard of living in numerous countries. So, that said: What would be so wrong with deciding as a nation that every citizen will be assurred at least a subsistance level of food, clothing and shelter? Keeping in mind of course that even you don’t actually provide your own food and would likely starve if a governance system didn’t exist to make it available to you…
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Christian – @Sarah – If a particular community or state can’t take care of their own, it has no inherent right to exist. It should fail, and its citizens either cope or move. Our Constitution was never intended to be a safety net, or to secure anything but liberty for the individual to secure his own future. If MS citizens allow their own state to fail, no one should rescue or bail them out. It’s like that one family member who keeps asking money from family, but never learns because he never faces the consequences of his decisions. States, companies, individuals must be free to fail if they will ever truly embrace the freedom to succeed. It is kinder, because it ceases to prolong the self-induced suffering of immaturity.
Federal spending should always have been limited to the programs I listed above, as the only Constitutionally mandated programs. It was NEVER supposed to be higher than state taxes, which just goes to show how flipped we are.
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Christian – @Charlie – I recognize that communities desire certain securities. But, like any communal enterprise, it operates best when all members of a given community volunteer for it, which requires direct, personal involvement and that the size of a particular security be kept small. In other words, if my small community of “Dallas, GA” operates a small, citizen-run security fund (be it taxes or some other voluntary social security), then the community benefits most where involvement and responsibility remains highest. This highly reflects the Founding Fathers’ vision of a power diffused across the whole of the people, where we have the most power to hold accountable those we choose to manage our taxes and services.
I contest the concept that we need a government to provide anything but the protection of liberties, for the simple fact that anytime an individual can lay his own passions for the pursuit of profit (i.e. someone who creates a powerful invention to transport goods and services such as a car), will indelibly do a better job than a government ever could. When you keep people free, they will do what must be done without a higher power directing them. Consider that almost every complaint we have against society, such as poverty, corporate abuse, child labor, etc, were all on a steady decline in this country since the signing of our beloved Constitution, all of this without the need of direct government intervention. It was because people were free to move as a society, to demand better for themselves, to expect more of companies, etc.
The federal government has so moved in to deceive this people that its role should be BEYOND its most simplest of responsibilities, and that it can provide our needs better than we can ourselves, is a pacification of us as a self-sufficient people, and an abrogation of the true power of our individual members. Poverty will never leave us, but if you read history, you’ll find that poverty was always a place people were free to enter and free to leave (barring the very few cases where abuse occurred, and it did occur). Free market capitalism has done more to raise the standard of living and the freedom of ascension of the poor man than any previous system in the history of man. That’s because man was free to try and free to fail. Why do you think this country so flourished during the 1900′s? We had minimal govt involvement and heavy individualism ever making a higher goal on our cultural rise.
Freedom ALWAYS produces more good than anything else. (inhale LOL)
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Christian – Sorry, flourished during the 1800′s/19th Century.
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Charlie – What? The U.S. wasn’t the leading power to come out of the 20th century and isn’t ahead in almost all categories still? What did I miss? Did I Rip Van Winkle?
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Sarah – Freedom and free markets also produce a lot of bad things as well. And government needs to step in to help avoid that. Or after the fact to fix it. Huge dumps of toxic waste from big industry and the resulting health and ecological damage is just one example.
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Charlie – Christian Michael: You may call yourself a Libertarian but the philosophy you’re describing is more akin to a sort of dealstic anarchy. And again you’re falling prey to the shortfalls of your own absolute qualifiers. Not “all” members of a community must volunteer to make it work. There have been plenty of successful groups over the years that excelled upon the labor of non-volunteers. Ancient Egypt comes to mind. And a key point you are missing n context of the U.S. is that taxation through representation IS the communally accepted method through which we volunteer to contribute.
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Charlie – That was “…idealistic anarchy…”
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Christian – @Charlie – The US was the leading power, but our growth was strongest between 1776 and the 1920′s, most of which was in the 1800′s. And until the institution of the income tax in the early 1900′s, government didn’t help people nearly as much as it stayed out of the way. That same government struck off the bloodiest war in American history, slaughtered entire nations of Native Americans, and committed atrocities of its own. While I’m glad the black peoples were freed, the entire country was already on the road toward slow abolition. I’m glad the south lost, even though I love the south.
Not all members of a community must volunteer, true, but I would rather live in a community of a few thousand, where my voice had the biggest say, than the “community” of 400M, where my voice is lost in the faintest of breezes. States are the largest versions of those communities, and I’m not for anarchy, I’m just for flipping the pyramid of power back to where it belongs — Individual, Community, City, County, State and Nation.
And sure, non-voluntary labor works, but it’s neither powerful nor efficient. Here’s an interesting fact, after Stalin forced all Russian farmers onto collective farms, also having slaughtered 12 million of them in the process, the agrarian output was almost exactly that of pre-collective levels. Free people always produce more than slaves, when they benefit most from their own labor. (Think Thermopylae)
Taxation through representation is a form of community, but while our founding fathers recognized the need for it, they also warned heavily against using it for personal gain. Benjamin Franklin once said: “When the people discover they can vote themselves money, it will herald the end of the republic.” In other words, government serves best when seen the least. The moment you give it power over one area in your life, it will begin to take more. The very innate nature of government is growth in power and reduction in the value of the individual.
Case in point, the EU Constitution is all about the power of the state to care for the individual, and sums to a whopping 78,000-some words. Our Constitution, focused on the most basic foundations of a free society — protection of individual liberties — is barely over 7,000. Government is far more limited in what it can do or should do for us, when we should rightfully do for ourselves and our neighbors.
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Sarah – @Christian: 1) I strongly disagree with your interpretation of the Constitution. 2) I value human life too much to allow people to suffer and die. Not “efficient” in terms of economics, I know, but in my value system people do and must come first.
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Christian - @ Sarah – You’re absolutely right. Freedom and free markets produce some terrible things. But so does a powerful government. The difference is, when the abuser is free to abuse me, I am equally free to fight back, whether by arms, litigation or the incitement of public pressure. When the government gets involved, it must blanket solution, which severely limits me, and makes me even more vulnerable to the abuser, who doesn’t care about government intervention. It’s the principle behind: “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” That applies across the spectrum.
Before government intervention, if someone walked onto my property, I was free to shoot them. I was FREE to protect myself, my family and my hard-earned property. When the government gets involved, that same abuser as the right to come onto my property, steal anything outside of my house, or even inside my house and so long as he’s out my doorway, I can’t attack him. This same principle applies to healthcare, by the government’s limitation of who can offer insurance over state lines, thus limiting healthy competition! This extends so far it’s not even funny.
We’re all convinced the government is the “arm of the people,” and while that’s true more so than elsewhere, people overseas are screaming at us to stop following in their footsteps! They see us asking the government to do more and more when they are running out of money and freedom. Please, take a moment and watch this: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyDKJBaCZOqQ&h=GAQGgsV8PAQG50ZD9SCHc1es_raCTRD1nyAZBUzJUq4dxXQ . This is a member of the EU Parliament warning us against using government as a security, because they have done exactly that, and now everyone other there is failing together.
The New Road to Serfdom
http://www.youtube.com
Daniel Hannan’s new book, The New Road to Serftdom: A Letter of Warning to America, urges Americans not to take such things as federalism, the rule of law an…
@ Sarah’s second post – Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m ALL about helping people in need. Helping the poor is a HUGE responsibility of all people. But that’s of the people themselves. I don’t trust the government to do it, namely because they created our current state of poverty in the first place. The government created classes, wherebefore there were none, and have served through welfare to keep them poor. That screams at me a reason to distrust people who don’t need efficiency and don’t actually love the poor, they love power, and they will use the poor to keep it.
My family was once what most would consider poor. We had nothing — no job, no income, no house, just the graces of other people. But we weren’t “poor,” because poverty is not the absence of capital, but a culture that feeds on itself. During the 80′s, after Reagan’s tax cuts, he also removed tax incentives for charitable giving of any kind. Charitable giving actually went UP. What you’re looking at is proof that people do the right thing when they are free to do it.
The welfare state has increased and kept people poor. If we ended national welfare and just made it a free place to live (FairTax.org, see consumption tax and prebate), then the poor wouldn’t need government assistance, they could do it themselves. The very system the government created to “help” them has only served to lock them into poverty.
Please, help people, but don’t believe for a moment that an unloving, unfeeling bureaucracy can, in any way, help people more than involved citizens can. In EVERY case of communities that change across the country, it is ALWAYS because citizens, not the government, decides to get involved.
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Charlie – ”Before government intervention, if someone walked onto my property, I was free to shoot them.”? Seriously? Until this point, Christian Michael, I thought you were just waxing wide in terms of philosophy. But, uh, when you advocate shooting someone who walks onto your property as a “right” and a judicial system designed to let a jury of peers judge such actions as “government intervention”, then, yah: Whether you like it or not, you are describing anarchy. Note I’m not labeling YOU, just what you described.
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Christian – @ Charlie – I’m pushing for the right of the individual, but I’m advocating the diffusement of power to the lowest level. I believe in laws, such as those against murder and theft. The example was the freedom of protecting myself that has been lost. I’m not as free today as I was then. If nothing else, the states should hold the majority of power (10th Amendment), not the Federal government. Let the (50) states choose for their own citizens, better than (1) federal government blanketing 400,000,000 people.
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Charlie – Ah. Now you’re getting somewhere in terms of laying out the foundation of a position, Christian Michael: Maximize individual freedom, minimize governmental control, and keep governmental control at the lowest possible level. If this is what you’re getting at then GREAT! It’s just that much of what you’ve said elsewhere and in this thread so does NOT align with those points. Recommend you get your hands on a book called “Thank You for Arguing” or something similar to refine your rhetorical skills
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Sarah – I guess that’s where we fundamentally disagree. The government isn’t separate from the people. It is the people.
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Christian – @ Charlie – I try to use strong individual examples against the general concept of trusting government. I still recognize the need for govt, but I don’t think it was ever meant to be trusted, which is why we have the checks and balances in the first place.
@ Sarah – Yes ma’am. You believe the government is the people, I believe the government will follow the role of every historical government before it, to eventually grow until it overcomes and controls its own populace, and that our role should always be to do without government in every area we can — providing for ourselves and our families, helping the poor, innovation, cultural promotion of healthy and environmental industry — and we do so through cultural pressure and the free press. The moment we give the government power over a small area of our lives, the more difficult it will be to get back when it abuses that power.
This has been a rather interesting debate, you, too. I hope I haven’t bored either of you. LOL
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Sarah – So why is government of the people inherently evil, but big business of the people is good and beneficial?
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Christian – I didn’t say all business was good. But there are many businesses, some good and some evil. I have free to choose among them.
There is only one government, which is it’s own self-perpetuating monopoly. If I don’t force that to remain as un-monopolistic as possible, it will eventually attempt to monopolize every area of my life — security, welfare, healthcare … you name it. That’s exactly what it’s doing, too. Healthcare was cheaper before government regulated it. There were less poor until the government tried to help them. There was more individual security until gun control occurred. The government is only good at one thing — getting people killed. The least I can ask it to do is kill foreign entities who seek to come against us from the outside. Let American citizens do the rest for themselves, at lost cost, high effectiveness, and maximum personal profit for the man or woman who risked themselves to see it happen.
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Charlie – Christian: You’re all over the place, man. Rhetorical chaos.
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Sarah – One last thing, and then I’ll stop. I’m not sure I understand how there were fewer poor people before government got involved. Poverty rates ranged from 30 – 50% before and during the Great Depression. Especially for seniors and kids. Those rates fell to under 20% after the New Deal. And went down further to 10 – 15% over the past 60 years or so. It’s ticking back up again despite 10+ years of tax cuts.
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Charlie – Well, now, Sarah. Let’s not go citing data that obscures the ability to make sweeping generalizations without supporting citations or references now…. tch tch tch… You should know better.
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Christian – FDR did more to destroy this country’s long-term sustainability than any president before him. He left the gold standard, upon which all credit depends, and created the illusion of wealth. We’re not really wealthy, it’s all fake because of government-determined value of our currency. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate / UCLA Newsroom
newsroom.ucla.edu
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Christian – And the New Deal, itself, harmed poor people the most. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3357
How FDR’s New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Daily Commentary
Author: Jim Powell, Published: 2003-12-29, Type: Daily Commentary
I recently read “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.” It’s a fascinating new look back into how FDR’s policies damaged America, and how it took congress repealing both the New Deal and all of Roosevelt’s heavy taxes before the economy began an upswing, and it wasn’t the war that saved us, we were already on our way out. Why do you think congress so quickly created an amendment not to allow a president more than two terms if they loved FDR so much? Truth is, they didn’t. They knew the damage he had caused, even if the president had so well deceived the populace into thinking he was their savior.
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Charlie – Deception tends to be less rare in practice than in assignment as a label. I watched to many things unfold within the upper levels of the DoD and White House over the past couple years and then watched outcomes be described as “deception” or “lies” when they were nothing of the sort. Not so keen on historic interpretations of personal intent. Analysis of causes and outcomes is one thing, assignment of motive after the fact quite another. Not saying I’m an FDR fanboy myself, but it does strike me you’re arguing a case in which Congress and the Executive functioned as designed to…
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Christian – Congress and the Executive branch were never designed to affect the market outside of trust-busting.
That’s not in their mandate, it’s not in their purview, it’s not in their job descriptions. To mess with the market is to slow it. The free market is like a motorcycle’s centrifugal force — if you attempt to slow it, you will make it fall. If you leave it be, it will right itself. The power behind that force is not consumption, but production, and he didn’t increase production, he tried controlling prices, which are symptoms, not the cause. Had he left he alone, we would have had a four to five-year depression. Can you imagine?
And I should recant. FDR wasn’t attempting to deceive, but he acted very foolishly. According to the research, he loved to tinker, and believed experimentation was the formula of the day. He kept trying one program after another after another, trying to fix things, but each time just kept screwing with what would actually solve the issues. I highly recommend the book.
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Christian – One of my favorite presidents was Calvin Coolidge. Many people don’t know that in the early 20′s, we had one of the worst crashes in US history and a 2-3 year depression, but he specifically remained hands-off, believing in the market. By the end of the decade, America enjoyed one of its largest periods of economic growth, resulting in the roaring 20′s. While we had another crash in 29, the following growth would have been even more if Hoover and FDR had remains hands-free. The market breathes in recessions and growths, and when left alone, each growth far outweighs the recession.
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Charlie – That’s a clean statement. Nicely done.
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Christian – LOL Thank you. I think this has been one of our longest debates. Ever.
You’re helping me sharpen my skills, sir!
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Charlie – Christian Michael: Y’ain’t there yet, boy.
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Sarah – This article talks about income equality trends in the 20th century, and includes data on poverty.
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp116698.pdf
From 1960 on or so, poverty rates are found as part of CPS (Census data) on the census website.
The correlation between increasing poverty rates during the years Bush cut taxes is everywhere over the past year. Here is one analysis, but there are many.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/pdf/picker_jobs.pdf
And last but not least, Social Security keeps 35-40% of seniors out of poverty.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3261
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Lisa – Charlie, aren’t you just a big pot-stirrer these days!
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Christian – 1) Social Security is unconstitutional.
2) Social Security is now insolvent because the very people who created it used it as an unlimited piggy bank, and now we have to immediately send income from taxes to those elderly, instead of benefiting from the interest an untouched pot would have created.
3) Government interference has campaigned against personal savings, which reduces the amount of available capital for investors, which reduces the availability of loans for small businesses, which increases dependency on government or other powerful corporate entity for income.
4) During the 1800′s, due to a steady, healthy deflation of currency and the stability of the gold standard, people’s savings GREW in value. That means when someone saved $1,000 in 1820, it was worth ~$1,200 (not including added interest) in 1860. Older folks used to talk about how expensive things were and how things were getting cheaper. In the 1900′s, when the government created the Fed, broke the currency’s foundation in the infallible gold standard and then began printing at will, the value of money began dropping, which is why things are more expensive today than in the past.
In other words, not only has government taken money from the people without legal right to do so, they have encouraged people not to save for themselves so they would have to depend on that government account, depleted the account, and then devalued the very money people are putting into the government for themselves, so while the amount of money in SocSec might increase according to your figures, the government is steadily decreasing its value, which means people are getting far less out of it than they even put in, and have no alternative because they were taught they didn’t need one.
Ultimately, the government serves as a single point of failure, isn’t managed well, and has no bar to our pocketbooks, from which it promises us more services that continue to make us dependent on its ability to steal from Peter to give to Paul.
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Sarah – 1) Social Security is not unconstitutional. The Supreme Court took up the issue and ruled in favor, I think 7-2. Not sure. But it’s definitely constitutional.
2) Social Security isn’t insolvent. The trust fund is good for 20 more years or so. The current reduced revenues are because nobody’s working. If/when there’s true recovery, revenues will increase again.
3) the gold standard isn’t infallible. It’s an all but finite supply, which would mean limiting the amount of cash available to the economy, which in turn would seriously constrain market growth.
4) Who “taught” people they didn’t need to save? People have various abilities to save based on income and expenses. In my County, a single parent with two kids has to make close to $65,000 a year just to get by. A family of four (two parents) has to make $80,000. The average rent for a two bedroom apartment is $1,400/month. The cheapest home daycare is $15,000 a year. God help them if they’ve got two kids in daycare. Food for three is about $7,000 a year. The cheapest health insurance with a $1,000 deductible is about $8,000 a year for three. And that doesn’t even factor in things like clothing and transportation and utilities. Much less things like saving for retirement, illness, disability, or loss of employment. There is little room for many lower income people to save. And I don’t feel $65,000 is “lower income.”
(For Charlie: http://www.mannafood.org/index.cfm?page=hunger-quiz )
But also remember that savings rates have gone up pretty significantly since 2007. Nobody knows what the future will bring so they aren’t spending. And because everyone is saving, people aren’t buying nearly as much as they used to. And that’s a significant reason why we aren’t seeing much recovery and possibly face a double dip recession. Remember when Bush cut taxes and told people to go out and spend (and by extension to be patriotic)? He certainly wasn’t telling people to bank that Treasury Check he sent in the mail. But maybe that’s what you mean by telling people they don’t need to save?
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Charlie – Christian Michael: I’ve listened to the video clips you’ve posted with an eager ear. Some smart and reasoned folks there. Thing I’m noticing about you though is much of what they say reappears in your posts almost word-for-word. It makes for an interesting blend of absolutist assertions and blame assignment that doesn’t actually address the challenges at hand. Additionally I’ll note that when someone provides data points that counter things you have stated as fact you tend not to acknowledge but instead post additional parroted facts and blanket statements. Lots of interesting catch phrases and metaphor interwoven with absolute qualifiers — but rather than being convincing it’s really quite exhausting.
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Christian - 1) Just because the judiciary failed to check the balance, doesn’t mean they made the right decision. Ever heard of prohibition?
2) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-38741237/5-social-security-myths-that-have-to-go/?pageNum=6&tag=contentMain%3BcontentBody – SocSec is poorly invested
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/mar/12/social-security-trust-fund-solvency-myth/ – SocSec is in the Red.
3) The amount of gold never limited our growth from the beginning of our country on. Why should it have become dangerous in the late 1900′s? Principles of economics, when the currency is finite, it increases in value, which means prices drop, which means the value of savings increase, as does individual spending power. That’s a GOOD thing.
4) When the government says: “We’ll do it for you,” that sends a pretty clear signal that “we’ll do it for you.”
As for the increase in savings, the value of the money being saved decreases every time the government raises the minimum wage and prints more money. So, not only does the government promote “not saving” through taking for social security and a flagrant promotion of Kenesyian economics (spending over saving), it deflates the very value of the money of both the money taken for social security and the money they save for themselves.
As for Bush sending money and advocating the bailout, I consider it the highest of travesties, sending a clear message that the government can send you your own money years in advance. Or, at least, everyone else’s.
As for saving, that is what saves economies – and families – during recessions, not spending. Spending is a byproduct of production, not the cause of it. We can’t simply spend money from nothing, in hopes of creating something. Let spending slow, prices will drop, insolvent businesses will falter, and spending will start again when prices match. What’s healthy for the individual is healthy for an economy.
5 Social Security Myths That Have to Go – CBS News
Before we can “fix” Social Security we have to lose some persistent misconceptions about what it really costs.
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Christian – @ Charlie – Theories of economics and liberty are pretty basic, and they helped this country grow at unprecedented rates for 140 years, suddenly to be abandoned?
Now why would politicians advocate control of an economy that had grown faster than any in the history of mankind? That same economy raised the standard of living from the poorest to the wealthiest, steadily drove costs down and drew millions of immigrants for the same chance at freedom. Our exercise of that liberty was the flawed element, not the principle. I don’t mind repeating truth if that truth has such a fantastic record of effectiveness and efficiency.
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Charlie – ”Abandoned” is another absolute qualifier. Theories do tend to be basic. That’s the purpose of theories — to simplfythe complex. But reality ain’t so basic, so while theories are useful tools they rarely function as absolute solutions to a given problem, they merely serve as different lenses through which a problem might be viewed. Thing about theories is, they are neutral. Neither right nor wrong. They just are. So using a theory to support a moral opinion becomes a challenge. I advise against confusing theory with Truth. You’re suggesting that particular theories are “true” and in doing so assume — nay, PRESUME — a wide range of valid perspectives are not valid from the git go because you already pre-sorted them into motives-based categories you disagree with. That’s a dangerous path that sells your well-intentioned effort short.
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AND THAT’S WHERE WE LEFT OFF AT AROUND 20:00 TONIGHT. IF YOU READ THIS FAR, YOU MUST BE REALLY BORED! THANKS FOR READING!
