The 7 Vital Principles about Government
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- LadyKelien
- Starblade
- LadyKelien
- Franc28
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» LadyKelien - This is my question.
Being southern, Im inclined to be for a smaller federal goverment and allow the states to govern themselves. For instance I believe that the best thing we could do for education in america is to get rid of the Board of Education. But here in lies the question. What would happen if a Liberitarian actually got ellected to Washington?Would he or she get caught up in the power game that is politics or would they truly be able to change things. If you think they could take us back to the absolute reality that the constitution was written on, what would be the effects of doing so? How would you go about reducing goverment without increasing the population of hungery and homeless?
At this point you cant just turn the programs over to the states to run or get rid of as they see fit. The states dont have the funds to educate our children properly much less run medicad and medicare. So how do we go about lessening goverment without creating anarchy? Or is anarchy the goal?
You could call upon the people to create private non profit groups to cover these issues but that is dependant on the peoples willingness to actually donate money to these organizations. As well as the willingness of someone to create organizations to do what needs to be done. To me in order to be able to truly lessen goverment effectivly without actually distroying lives in the process the non profit groups would have to be set up and funded first. Who is going to go about doing this? After all the reason there was a need for some of these programs in the first place was that the private programs we had were not adaquate at doing what needed to be done in mass scale.
The homeless shelters and soup kitchens are always on the edge of closing down for lack of funds. Private Free Clinics that help with health care and medications are poorly funded, poorly maned and poirly equiped. Would that really change because we stopped the goverment programs? How could we truly insure a high quality of life for everyone?
Perhaps the idea is that not everyone neccisaraly is entitled to a reasonablly good and healthy life. I really would like to understand all of this. As of late everytime something about the primary elections comes on the news my husband says I think I should become a Libritarian. Before I just completely accept the idea of him doing this I need these questions answered.
I understand that Libritarians in general believe the system is broken and needs to be rolled back to less goverment in order to fix it. The question is, can you say there is a true reality to that possiblity that wont distory our very way of life?
-- posted by LadyKelien
» Starblade - Re: This is my question.
In response to message posted by LadyKelien:Well, one thing you need to know is that, while the Libertarians are very skeptical of federal government, they're also skeptical of state government and local government as well. They're skeptical of any government. But not the concept of government so much as who is running it, and how they are running it.
You say that the states should be self governing. But what if the states violate my right to be self governed? What if a black person and a white person want to voluntarily associate but the state government, because it is allowed to, forces them not to because of segregation laws? Or what about a law restricting the number of people that can live in a house? If it is true that under capitalism one should be allowed to invest in a more efficient method of production in order to make a greater net profit, then isn't it true that private persons should have the right to put more people in a smaller house so that they don't have to spend as much money? What if the state made it illegal to carpool, because it supposedly hurt the auto industry?
This is why libertarians fight against government at ALL levels. They fight to prevent it from assaulting freedom, and to compel it to protect genuine freedom. It doesn't matter of that government is an international body of diplomatic rulers, a federal body of busy but yet somehow inefficient beurocrats, a state or provincial body of elected republic class automatic authorities, or a county or other local kind of government of free citizens imposing their will through direct democracy. Whenever a person initiates force or fraud against another, one is committing a violation of their rights. There is no right to violate the rights of others.
However, the larger levels of government still need to respect the smaller levels of government to some extent, otherwise it would put the larger levels of government in a position to eventually be capable of micromanage the smaller levels of government without their consent, and that's also wrong.
Basically, the federal government can step in to protect rights, even if that right isn't written out explicitely in the constitution, but rather is implicit in its function, but it cannot make new rights out of thin air, like the right TO have food, clothing, and shelter, even if it imposes an obligation onto another to provide it, or the right TO a lien on another person's property just because you worked there, even if you had a contract that relinquished said lien, or the right TO live in a drug-free community, reguardless of whether or not another person wanted to give up their drugs, or a right TO force another person to do service to the nation when you should be the one protecting it if you care for it so much.
However, that doesn't mean libertarians want to destroy law. Far from it. We just believe that there is a law ABOVE the law, reguardless of whether or not it is written, that prevents force or fraud from being abused by ruling bodies. That is, we want the rule of law, rather than the rule of man.
I hope this explains our position well enough for you.
(...Starblade Riven Darksquall...)
-- posted by Starblade
» LadyKelien - Re: Re: This is my question.
In response to message posted by Starblade:So its a form of controlled Anarchy based upon the idea that if you leave people free to do as they will they will naturally do the right thing instead of the current view that if left to their own means they will do the wrong thing? Along of course with the notion that right and wrong are subjective and dependant upon not causing delebrate harm to anyone but yourself.
-- posted by LadyKelien
» Franc28 - Incorrect on both counts
In response to message posted by LadyKelien:
"So its a form of controlled Anarchy"
No, libertarianism still upholds the necessity of a government. It is not anarchic.
"based upon the idea that if you leave people free to do as they will they will naturally do the right thing"
No one claims people will "naturally do the right thing". In fact, it is quite the opposite ! It is precisely because will not "do the right thing" that we need to minimize the impact of individual political decisions on you, me and everyone else.
"instead of the current view that if left to their own means they will do the wrong thing?"
People *will* do the right thing about their own lives, yes, but not when you add power in the equation. When you have political power, it becomes in people's interest to fight each other to control that power, instead of cooperating in a harmonious society.
"Along of course with the notion that right and wrong are subjective and dependant upon not causing delebrate harm to anyone but yourself."
Nonsense. I'm an Objectivist and I certainly don't think "right and wrong are subjective" or that your definition is correct. That has nothing to do with libertarianism either way, which is purely political.
-- posted by Franc28
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