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False Choice
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Posted by Reality (more from Reality) on Fri, 6 May 2011 13:33:38 Share Post by Email
In Reply to: Re: You (still) didn't answer the questions, Noel, Fri, 6 May 2011 12:49:13
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The real choice in life is not between No-Government/No-tax vs. Maximal-Government/Maximal-Tax . . . but less vs. more.

Even if you really want to talk about ultimate long term goal, it should obviously be a "government" that provides everything that we can think of today yet cost next to nothing . . . just like the ultimate ideal car is something that has all the features that we can think of today yet cost next to nothing. The real issue is how do we get from here to there. Is improvement within the government the way to get there or is letting the free market take the reins of innovation the more realistic path to those ideal goals. The answer should be quite obvious. Western governments (especially those in North America) have been able to deliver far more at lower percentage of GDP precisely than much of the rest of the world because our governments have been less intrusive in the past, and the resulting economic growth in the 19th and early parts of the 20th century enabled the economic base the can deliver what we in the west consider a basic decent humane living even among the poorest members of our society, what much of the rest of the world would consider luxury living.

Many of the services that you have listed do not have to be rendered by monopolies, and often were, or even are, not provided by monopolies. Road, water, EMT and FireFighting all had private origins before they became government monopolies. Even today, some of them are competitively provided in the private sector. It was actually quite amusing to read some commentators decry some rich homeowners could afford their own private fire fighters sent out by home insurance companies that fought fire far more effectively than the public sector firefighters. Perhaps if the middle class didn't have their money taxed away to pay for the monopolies, they too could have afforded the more effective firefighting practitioners.

In any case, back to the topic of Car Company Bailouts, how exactly does the bailing out of makers of less well made cars help Firefighting? Water? or EMT? or Police? Doesn't the bailouts take available resources away from the various services? If the public services are ordered to buy only from Government Motors down the road, doesn't that mean the services would be running on less reliable vehicles? at greater costs to their limited budgets? That IMHO is the fundamental problem with government resource allocation: the various goals in life are instrinsically at odds with each other. The private sector competitive process is much better at coming up with new and creative solution that can resolve those conflicting goals . . . by, for example, making cars that are more reliable and cost less! That's exactly what GM being displaced by Ford, Toyota USA and American Honda means: the metal and plastic going into more reliable cars that cost less. So that the rest of the society, including government services, can get better transportation for less! Yet somehow the bigger-government crowd is against that, and insists on government forcibly directing resources to waste, all in the name of preserving old jobs that should have been displaced by more productive ones to begin with.








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