The biggest cliff of all
Indeed, a reality has become too obvious for the world’s dazed inhabitants not to notice: The greatest threat to the upward arc of human progress is the collapse of public policy making. That is the biggest cliff of all.
Governments are giving government a bad name…
Government, for the past 80 years or so, has seen its purpose as mainly to “respond” to society’s failures the moment they occur or whenever they are imagined. Adam Lanza killed with guns, so modern policy-making logic posits that government must pass a law. Whether that law will accomplish its goal is . . . irrelevant.
Policy making has become an activity that supports the genetic and financial needs of policy makers and their follower tribes. The community’s role, we’ve lately learned, is to provide revenue. Medicaid, for example, is medical care for the poor. As administered by the policy professionals, it has been allowed to become awful.
Blowback
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Cliff Richard?
Kenosha Kid on December 27, 2012 at 8:07 PM
Interesting how this guy has things backwards. It is the programs that have destroyed government.
A few politicians a long time ago instituted these programs to destroy the bindings of our society.
Now politicians are slaves to the old and the poor who are in turn slaves to the government who they use to force into slavery everyone else through exorbitant taxes.
Government should cost no more than 10% of our wages. The fact that it collects 18% of GDP and spends 25% having already burdened future generations to a debt of over 100% of GDP is a shame on this nation.
astonerii on December 27, 2012 at 8:19 PM
Gotta be Heathcliff.
tommy71 on December 27, 2012 at 8:22 PM
He has a point, and it’s not on the top of his head, except to Anarcho_Capitalists Government does have a major role to play in our lives. It simply has gotten too large, moving from making us “Safer” to making us “Better.”
Government, sorry libertarians, is the best way to deal with a number of issues:
1) Sewage
2) Trash
3) Hygiene/Public Health
4) Clean Water
5) Fire Protection
6) Emergency Medicine
7) Policing.
These are all things “WE” can do better than you or I, individually. You treat your sewage, I don’t…you get Typhus, Typhoid, Cholera.
You keep your yard clean, I don’t…hey the rats don’t respect boundaries and they infest your yard, too, helloooooo Plague.
Sure there could be “private health ratings agencies” in lieu of the Public Health Dept., but how do I tell which ones are wholly owned subsidiaries of the restaurant they rate?
I like public fire and EMS.
Police are late to the game, a “police force” is a relatively modern invention, but not a bad one…and their precursor a Judicial System is a vital government function. Because the judge doesn’t care it is far less likely that the punishment will be excessive, unless you are insane a “private” Rothbardian System of Justice would simply mean Steve Jobs, John Kerry would get away with murder.
It’s when people decide that it’s “Public Health” to outlaw “Big Gulps” or Trans-fats that government jumps the shark. “We” aren’t better arbiters of how you live your life, “we” should only be concerned about your actions and the things, like rats, microbes, and the like that “I” cannot fight on my own.
JFKY on December 27, 2012 at 8:50 PM
Romney would have worked against that.
Paul-Cincy on December 27, 2012 at 9:02 PM
Romney would have worked against that.
Without inflection or facial recognition, it is rather difficult to tell sarcasm, from wishful thinking.
Let’s just say, Romney would not have been as BAD as Obama….
JFKY on December 27, 2012 at 9:12 PM