[madkiwi]

Great article about politicians- and the inadvertent boost they gave the venerable M1911-A1

Not to put too dull a point on it, stupid people do stupid things. The total number of stupid things politicians have done, just over the past two centuries, just in the United States, undoubtedly exceeds the maximum number of subatomic particles possible in the universe.

Click here (http://www.rationalreview.com/archive/lneilsmith/lneilsmith020103.html)

With lines like that you KNOW it will be a good read!

madkiwi

[MrAcheson]

Wow he went throught that who piece without using the words "statist" or "statism" once. He should be proud.

The problem with this whole "repeal everything" political viewpoint (or should I say religion) is that anarchy is bad. So is its opposite: oppression. The job of government is to regulate society in such a way that society can best regulate itself. There's a sweet spot in economics and social behavior and many other areas that the government should try to keep us in, once there we can handle it. To little government power and you get monopolies and organized crime and yes rampant drug use. To much and you get Communism, legalized theft via taxation, and lack of personal freedoms.

[Marko Kloos]

The job of government is to regulate society in such a way that society can best regulate itself.

The only proper job of government is to safeguard individual rights. Period, full stop, end of story. Anything beyond that is usurpation of authority and will lead to Nanny/Daddy-knows-best Statism.

You cannot safeguard individual rights by eroding them, no matter how good your intentions, or how noble your cause.

[publius]

Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. -- Daniel Webster

[illuminatus99]

hold on.... we have too much government and still have rampant organized crime, monopolies, drug problems and criminally high taxation and are in process of losing our personal freedoms.

[David Roberson]

Yes, I'm especially interested in the theory that too little government power leads to organized crime. Perhaps you could provide the tiniest shred of evidence to support this astounding claim?

While you're at it, perhaps you could address the failure of fascist Italy to eradicate the mafia. Too little government power, yeah, that must be it.

[Marko Kloos]

Organized crime exists because the government acts as a price control system for prohibited items. Capone could not have risen to power without Prohibition. The drug kingpins in Central America would be small-time hoodlums or coffee farmers without the War on Drugs, which guarantees astronomical profits for cocaine.

Organized crime is created by government power, not caused by the lack of government power.

[Standing Wolf]

You cannot safeguard individual rights by eroding them, no matter how good your intentions, or how noble your cause.

Very well said!

[Quartus]

At the risk of seeming self serving, I'll quote myself from a thread on TFL (http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=72966) (see page 5).


The delicate balance we seek is that between liberty and security. (Both personal and societal.) The bliss ninnys seek only security; idiots of another kind (don't know what to call them) seek only liberty. Of the two, liberty is the more valuable, the more real, and the more easily lost. Therefore, always err on the side of liberty.


The Founding Fathers wisely did not intend to create anarchy. Government has its proper function, its proper place - the challenge is in keeping it in that place. (We've failed, in case you hadn't noticed.)

It is fashionable in some circles to talk as though Jefferson said, "That government governs best which governs not at all." But that is not what he said, nor what any of the FF believed. Nor is it the position of wise men.

Or to put it more bluntly, I suspect that, to a man, they'd have laughed Ayn Rand to scorn.

[rock jock]

What quartus said.

[Zander]

The only proper job of government is to safeguard individual rights. -- lendringserAgreed. However...your simplistic summation is so passe' that we are, demonstrably, in the "pickle" we find ourselves.

A regurgitation of the intent of our Constitution is admirable but hardly effective given the last century of rule by judicial fiat.

I am in complete agreement with your reading, but it doesn't mean squat when we have no real strategy to deal with the fed.gov abuses that abrogate our Rights.

IOW, what's your solution/strategy? Where do we start?

[MrAcheson]

Libertarian politics would be grand, if it worked. But it doesn't. What is the libertarian solution to land management? What is the libertarian solution to organized crime? Public Health? What is the libertarian solution to economic management? Monopolies?

The libertarian answer to all these things is that everything will self-regulate given time if the government gets out of the way. Unfortunately there are dramatic examples from the US and elsewhere that there are limits beyond which the above processes will not self regulate. The Dust Bowl. Post-prohibiton organized crime. "The Jungle" food preparation. Opium trade in china. Monopoly economic oppression of the gilded age. All these are cases were societies used self regulation and it failed and failed badly. If regulation is removed, then is there any indication that these will not reoccur? No. Are there indications they will? Sure the underlying cause of most of these are people trying to get the more of a good thing be it money, power, or good vibrations.

What about solving the next huge problem before it occurs? How will an almost purely reactive model like self-regulation handle that? It won't. Self-regulation is slow and can take generations. With modern technology people can create huge nationwide problems in only years. We don't have the luxury on generation anymore.

The truth is that small government is better than big government, but too small a government and the government won't be able to respond to the problems it needs to. (Why did Jefferson Davis say the Union won the war?) What we need however is the right amount of government and a well run and limited government so that the people can most effectively run themselves. I am not contending that this is what we have now.

Maybe that makes me a statist and if so I'll wear the badge with pride.

[David Roberson]

Precisely how did lack of government cause the Dust Bowl, which all my readings tell me was caused by poor farming practices combined with a sustained drought? Passing laws requiring more rain does not to me appear to hold much promise.

Post-prohibition organized crime? In many cases, an outgrowth of Prohibition organized crime, which was created because of -- drum roll -- government regulations (prohibition of a previously legal commodity which created a lucrative black market). The same principles apply in the ongoing War Against Some Drugs.

"The Jungle" food preparation? Arguably the government did help in this case, but there's no evidence that education and publicity about such practices didn't play at least as large a part. "The Jungle" wasn't a government publication, after all, it was a novel -- and its main purpose was to further the cause of socialism, not to improve food-preparation practices.

Monopoly economic oppression? To the (exaggerated) extent it existed, it was largely built through government regulations favoring politically connected individuals in certain industries, particularly in oil and railroads.

Solving the next big problem before it occurs is a great idea. What makes you think that the government wants to attempt this? Government's main interest today is in increasing power for those in government -- which is precisely why it should be as controlled and small as possible.

[Don Gwinn]

Land Management:
The owners of the land should manage it as they see fit. The government should not own more land than is necessary to fulfill its proper role in society. They can have the capitals, whatever they wish to purchase on the market for office buildings and such, and military bases.

Organized Crime:
Most of what is described as "Organized Crime" is not crime at all. If the Mafia couldn't run gambling, prostitution and drugs, it would be a tenth its size and power. Protection rackets, murder, robbery, etc. are crimes and a Libertarian government would deal with them just as our government claims to--by arresting the criminals responsible.

Post-Prohibition Organized Crime:
This was mostly made up of criminals who'd had a good time getting rich off Prohibition and were not willing to give it up. They moved into other areas. Again, a Libertarian government would ignore those "crimes" that make up the bulk of the mob's activities--gambling, prostitution, and narcotics. The Mafia wouldn't have it quite as rich as they do now if they had to compete with your average mid-sized corporation. They're a disorganized bunch of wackos compared to a normal company.

Public Health:
Libertarians are in favor of it, they just see no reason to lie and pretend that they can provide it. Kind of like world peace. Private industry takes care of health pretty well.

Economic Management:
Are you not paying attention? Economic management is a bad thing. Libertarians would avoid it whereever possible (which, contrary to what most people think, is most of the time.)

Monopolies:
Libertarians are against monopolies, which is why they would stop allowing the government to run so many.
It's a common misconception that a lack of government intervention created the monopolies of the robber barons 100 years ago. That's not quite true. Most of the "trusts" that Roosevelt and others hated so much were paying legislators far more than their salaries in bribes every year and using the government as their enforcers. Wouldn't have worked with a Libertarian government.

[BigG]

Capone could not have risen to power without Prohibition.

Your point is well taken but not exactly accurate. Capone (and his forbears) had a long history of coercion mainly against their own ethnic groups with the protection rackets, gambling, prostitution, and the like. Alcohol just gave him a chance to multiply his profits, but his organization (and many others like it) were already firmly entrenched long before Prohibition.

Any time price controls are imposed, a black market is sure to arise, imho.

[Quartus]

Any time price controls are imposed, a black market is sure to arise, imho.


Hmmm. If we are talking about controls on selected items, I'm sure history agrees with your assessment.

But not if the price controls are across the board, I think. That's what Nixon did, remember? I don't recall any mass black market developing. What did happen is that once the controls were gone, the prices surged upwards, giving us the inflation that Jimmah got blamed for, though it wasn't all his fault.


OK, that nit is picked! :D

[madkiwi]

Quartus- you have your cause and effect mixed up.

Nixon put in price controls in an ultimately failed attempt to control inflation. He was attempting to pay for both the Vietnam War and a War on Poverty (popularly referred to as a "War on Self-Reliance") that had been handed to him by Johnson. The US decided the simplest way to pay for all the "guns and butter" was to deflate the value of the US$ by printing many, many of them. President DeGaulle decided the French would rather have gold than greenbacks, which also prompted Nixon to close the gold window in 1971, thereby cutting it off from any stability it may have had.

Anyway, the problem was any "black market" that could have been created out of those circumstances is one the government has decided it will not tolerate. That would be the one that involves printing your own money. Government hates competition.

madkiwi

[Quartus]

Agreed, the problem was not created by the price controls. But they exacerbated it, and their demise led to the sudden jump under Carter The Clueless. Basically, they postponed it a while, then let it loose with pent up energy.

But my point wasn't about inflation, but about the effect of broad based price controls vs. selective price controls. Really, the Nixon broad controls were an anomoly - usually price controls DO result in a black market.