[Originally going to post this in the yellow peril thread, but it grew...]
How about this; we make the government only have three tasks;
1: Tasks that can't properly be paid for individually (military, police, infrastructure, environmental protection, fire protection, health services, since all of these end up helping everybody or else nobody- for instance, you can't have the military only protect the houses of people who've paid their social security bill, and flu shots are so much more effective if everyone gets them, and not just the rich people. Infrastructure includes roads, power, water, and basic information access, but not content creation, of course. Got to have power there, otherwise it's California all over again.)
2: Ensuring the absolute maximum of liberty for everyone, which is actually really easy. You only have laws that prevent people from taking liberties away from other people, like people that take the liberty of life away from others, and otherwise keep everything as open as possible. Want to say you're married to that dude? Fine with me, bro. Wanna worship Yog-soggoth, god of tentacles? As long as you don't stab anybody, that's A-OK, buddy. Want to come over to my house and tell me to worship your crazy beardy white guy in the sky? Nope, sorry, that's infringing on my right to sleep in on Sundays, or as it might be put in more legal terms, my right to privacy, my freedom of religious expression, and freedom from coercion. But you want to put some statues in front of the church you run or whatever? That's cool. Some time you aught to check out the statues the Yog Soggoth guy's gonna put up at his place. Wanna get some guns? Sure thing. No, not you, captain aluminum hat. Gotta make sure that you aren't about to go around infringing on the freedom of life and the liberty of not being concerned that some guy is walking down the street screaming at himself and carrying an AK-47.
3: Provide the bootstraps for people of any disadvantage to pull themselves up by, such as education, emergency income, and health care free from debt so that when a tree falls on you and you loose your job at the skateboard testing company, you won't spend the rest of your natural life repaying the loans you needed to get to keep from dying; or so that you could get an education to become the medical doctor to keep skateboard testers alive. Yes, this will take some money away from everyone else, quite possibly a significant percentage of it, but this is an investment, so that next week when a tree falls on you, you'll at least know that the skateboard was well tested and that there's a doctor out there who isn't worried about his economic future and planning on quitting tomorrow to become a plumber.
And, of course, there's the secret fourth one that basically says that the design of this government should inherently ensure that people who try to change it can only do so if the new way is better. I figure that that, and the required freedom of the press from all influences, government and economic, is covered under #2.
That's pretty much all that a government needs to do. I notice that "invade places", "kill communism", "spread itself", "burn gays", "keep secrets" "convert Muslims" and "kill immigrants" aren't on the list, and really seem kinda counterproductive to the rest of it. I mean sure, you need a military, but they should only be doing anything if the neighbors start acting up. If it's just random hicks of some creed or annother that for some reason, hate us for being laid-back and helping each other, then what we really need is the police to prevent them from making their way in, and to figure out why these dudes hate us so much and see if we can convince them to chill.
There we go! I just laid out a plan that says more about what I want the government to be like than basically every politician out there, and the entirety of the republican, tea, and democrat parties put together.
Largely, that's because each of those parties platforms are "The opposite of those (red/blue) idiots!", with the added tea party note of "Only moreso!"
Anyway, is there anyone who disagrees with the three?
Poll
Author
Topic: Lol Polaticks (Read 3870 times)