Government Is Good

[filkertom]

There is a longstanding argument made by many conservatives and libertarians that Government Is Bad. (This philosophy tends to be amended or ignored when there's a good war on, or when someone with different beliefs or morals than you needs supervising.) Mostly, they don't like government getting in the way of them making a profit, or being left alone (again, for sufficiently specific values of "alone" -- modern politicians tend not to support laws preventing themselves from doing something).

I disagree pretty much completely. Government, under the American system as written if not as interpreted by BushCo, is We The People, doing collectively what we cannot do individually. Taxes pay for that, a smaller amount from everybody than if we tried to pay for the same services through the private sector. This tends to honk pro-business people off; it's nonprofit! What's up with that?

Anyhow, Ezra Klein linked to a site, and a specific essay, which may make the point better than anything I could ever say or write.

Because, you see, Government Is Good.

Comments

The difference between liberals and conservatives...

[hearth-spirit.livejournal.com]

Old-school conservatives that is. Neocons don't count...

Eh, I was fumblingly trying to remember the joke, but this guy summed it up better than I can today, I think:

http://rwrld.blogspot.com/2007/05/difference-between-liberals.html

Re: The difference between liberals and conservatives...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

At least one obvious problem:

Conservatives' ideal citizen is prepared to give his life for his country.
Liberals' ideal citizen is prepared to give his money for his country.

These days, conservatives want someone else to give his life for their country. Cross reference the military careers of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol, etc., etc., etc.

[brianh]

Damn straight. Human beings acting in concert is-- well, it's one of our major evolutionary traits. It's why and how we took over the world, thanks; tool-using societies that are mechanical (ie, everyone has to replicate all points of production/use) don't get very far. It's -organic- formation tool-using societies (specialized roles, working together in unison) that succeed. Government is one part of that. Yes, there is the possibility of tyranny; the response to that is to stand up against the tyrants, not whine about the idea of government itself. Or worse, fellate the tyrants while whining about safety regulations. I mean, really.

I suppose one of the other things that bothers me about libertarians and so-called fiscal conservatives is the fingers-in-the-ears insistence that removing government restrictions will somehow keep things free and unrestricted. As though in the absence of government regulation, we will miraculously gain power balance with our employers, be able to plumb the depths of corporate obfuscation practices, and have knowledge of every aspect of the millions of things that must be known for a market to approach a value of 'free' coherent with the actual meaning of the free market-- ie one where all actors have all the facts, are free to make choices, and make those choices rationally in economic terms. Free markets can be a miracle, but they don't become free by deregulating them, much like you don't get a free country by removing all of the laws.

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

Your post is a great example of why I call myself "a little-l libertarian, not to be confused with the big-L Libertarian Party". Getting stepped on by profit-hungry companies is just as bad as getting stepped on by power-hungry governments. In your original post's taxonomy, I suppose you would categorize me as not liking government (or big business) getting in the way of me being left alone.

As for the linked article, it reads to me much more like an argument against anarchy than anything else. Most "government is bad" types I've met tend to be more minarchist than anarchist - we do generally recognize that, even if government is bad, not having one at all is far worse. But the best situation is, IMO, when government is kept small and doing as little as is necessary (but no less), rather than the current trend of having 47 laws covering the same thing.

Even so, I find a lot of the article's claims to be suspect, particularly the regular claims that safe wiring in your house and the like are only possible through government regulation (burning your customers' homes down with faulty wiring tends to be bad for business) and referring to tax credits as "the government saving you money" (paying no taxes is cheaper than paying a $15,000 tax and getting $3,000 back - which is not to say that the taxes are necessarily a bad deal, just that I'm not "saving you money" by taking a lot away, then giving some back). At least they're open about their pro-government bias, but I find it hard to take them seriously when they complain about conservatives "blindly ignor[ing] everything that is right with government" while themselves blindly ignoring the possibility that anything might be wrong with it.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Thing is, anarchy isn't self-sustaining. It coagulates into little fiefdoms, some no bigger than street gangs.

Small government isn't very effective. For a government to be able to do the things it needs to do, it needs to have teeth. That said, yeah, there are a lot of laws that are redundant, stupid, or just plain badly written. You get that when politicians put their own welfare and that of their favored interests ahead of the public interest.

Only possible, no. Much more likely, yes. Having one centralized electrical wiring safety agency, just to take your example, is, I think, infinitely preferable to every city, county, and state having its own standards, or no standards at all, leaving it all in the hands of as many private electrical contractors/inspectors as you can imagine... or none.

Recall the whole thing about privatizing Social Security? The current foofrah over SCHIP? Business interests love it when people buy stuff or get services individually. They get the most profit that way. Except they really don't, not in the long term, because very few people can handle the prices they insist upon.

And there's a lot that's potentially wrong with government. Government is at its absolute best when it does three things: protect the public interest (everything from food safety to preventing economic muckovers by overzealous lenders to international diplomacy and fielding a military), support the general welfare (get people sheltered, fed, healthy, and educated), and protect peoples' rights (especially from the "tyranny of the majority"). When it gets away from those, things go sour very quickly.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

As for the linked article, it reads to me much more like an argument against anarchy than anything else. Most "government is bad" types I've met tend to be more minarchist than anarchist - we do generally recognize that, even if government is bad, not having one at all is far worse.

Heh; a lot of people respond to libertarian/minarchist/anarchist ideas of All We Have To Do Is Get Rid Of Government And It's All Good with the Somalia counterexample. A year or so ago I ran into some guys who seriously thought Somalia was a libertarian paradise where everyone was Truly Free, though.. ugh.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"Government, under the American system as written if not as interpreted by BushCo"

I'm a bit underwhelmed by the conclusion "government is good, if all the times when it goes bad don't count".

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The point is that the concept of government is good. No one's ever going to assume that it's all good all the time. I threw that in there because BushCo is, by far, the worst government the United States has ever had, war criminals and profiteers and savagers of our rights, our economy, our laws, and our international reputation. The fuckhead is still saying government is the problem, and he's the fucking government.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

That is very interesting. Thanks for the link. :)

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

The current "conservative" mantra is backwards. Small Govt gets you lower taxes, not the other way around. Lower taxes, more economy, and govt takes in more revenue than it would otherwise. These guys want lower taxes, and are willing to run up debt, which is NOT any form of conservative value.

It's not small govt that's the probllem. It's that the people chanting the "small govt" mantra right now is a lie.

The same people right now who claim they want a small govt want it to ban gay marriage, deny stem cell research, mandate intelligent design in our science classes, and fund faith based initiatives. Small govt my ass.

There's also something about the economics that don't jive with the small govt theory.

Notice that the "big government liberal" areas of the country have the highest per capita income and the best colleges. Name the best schools you can think of and they will almost always be in blue areas (even the ones in red states). Best in Red areas I can come up with are UVA and Duke.

The same is true for the tourist industry. If people visit it for something that is man-made and not a naturally occuring phenom (Beach and Mountains vs Broadway and DisneyWorld) it will be in a blue area. The biggest exceptions are the Grand Ole Opry and Mount Rushmore.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The same people right now who claim they want a small govt want it to ban gay marriage, deny stem cell research, mandate intelligent design in our science classes, and fund faith based initiatives. Small govt my ass.

Exactly. The more the government wants to invade your privacy, the more government there has to be to do so.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"The same people right now who claim they want a small govt want it to ban gay marriage, deny stem cell research, mandate intelligent design in our science classes, and fund faith based initiatives. Small govt my ass."

It's been increasingly obvious that "small government" is used by the Republican Party as propaganda for the rubes, not an actual operating principle.

To paraphrase the cartoon I adapted this userpic from, "Voted for limited government. Package contained Dubya."

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

Testify!

When someone tells you they wish to help you, always question their motives--particularly when they wish to "help" you by doing something you don't want done...or "save" you from something that wasn't hurting you.

[solarbird]

Government is an organised way of using force. Ideally, it is a way of using force within generally-accepted limits and via generally-accepted means, which is a loose way of saying "law." It is, in other words, a tool. Like most other tools, it can be used for good and it can be used for ill, and what different people mean by "good" and "ill" aren't even particularly consistent. It is in and of itself not really good or evil.

However, the larger and more comprehensive such a government is, the more often its force will be used. A powerful government is a whole lot more likely to be used as a tool for "good" than "ill" from an individual's standpoint if they are either of a majority class or a permanently-preferred minourity class. I do not use this as a weapon against you in particular, but a straight white man in this society, for example, is not going to find government used against him as member of a class. (Again, that you are straight, white, and male is not your fault. ^_^) As a dyke, on the other hand, I continually experience government used against me as an individual for membership in a class. I also continually experience efforts by members of majority and preferred-minourity classes to expand governmental power with the specific intent of hurting me more on the basis of membership in that class.

To their mind, they are using the power of government for good. They consider it good that there is official government discrimination against me and people like me. For that matter, they would consider it good if they could outlaw queers again outright, as was the case in 24 states before Lawrence v. Texas (2003). They want to do this through legal means, but they nonetheless want it, and consider it a good thing. I, of course, consider this an extremely ill use of government. And this sort of use of government is not at all unique to those in my class.

So from my standpoint, it is very difficult to see government as inherently somehow "good." When the force of that government has been used against one often enough, one might find it difficult even to accept it as neutral, or even as a necessary evil. However, rationally, I persist in the former. But similarly rationally, I do not accept the assertion that it is fundamentally "good."

Those who do not have these experiences and who are in no realistic danger of ever having these experiences will have perspectives which are quite different. I suggest that both these types of experiences should be considered.

[moquif.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, would you apply the same logic to "big business"? Companies so powerful that they wield a great deal of force to get its way.

[schol-r-lea.livejournal.com]

As long as we keep using flat-out nonsense terms like 'Liberal' and 'Conservative', we'll still be in the soup pot. Especially when both terms have come to mean virtually the exact same policies.

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting about your statement is not the truth level (which is very, very high), but something else the terms "Liberal" and "Conservatives" have in common: the emotional charge of the labels, particularly when they augment a pejorative (e.g.: "You liberal loon!" "You conservative wingnut!")

Even odder are some of the extra labels (beyond "loon" and "wingnut") that some of the extremists have invented for their foes, such as "moonbat."

When an electrician, a technician, or a mortician tags something, it's generally considered a wise practice. Others may wish to reconsider.

[moquif.livejournal.com]

Great post. I'm working on a vigilante RPG campaign where the federal government is much smaller than today. It does far fewer things but it does those things really well. Unfortunately law enforcement isn't on the list (with a few exceptions). Local government has become corrupt and the people have long since stopped trusting any large and powerful organizations (government, economic, religious). This post will help me articulate some of the social problems in the campaign setting and the importance the characters have. (Even to the more Libertarian/Conservative players.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

GURPS Autoduel should be on your must-read list. I presume Lucifer's Hammer and The Postman already are.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Government does a lot of good stuff. It also does a lot of bad stuff. The good stuff doesn't get it a pass for the bad stuff.

It's necessary to keep chopping the government down when it grows too intrusive. Jefferson was right, and we're centuries overdue.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No argument. Right now, I feel we're in a cycle of government doing a hell of a lot of bad stuff.

Thing is, and I say this above but I'll repeat it because it really is the core concept: Government is us. We The People. When government goes right, it's because it's looking out for all of us, recognizing that we have interests both as American citizens and human beings. When it goes wrong, it's because someone puts other interests ahead of that. Public servants should... serve the public, y'know?

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I would prefer that you not lump conservatives in with us libertarians.

Conservatives think Government IS Good...they just want it to do different things than liberals do.

And one problem with a big, powerful government is that the Supreme Power you joyfully give to, say, JFK inevitably ends up in the hands of someone like Richard Nixon. Or, for that matter, Teddy Kennedy.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Or, as the folks who empowered Dubya are about to find out, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards. I don't want any of them to have it either. Not the way Dubya has stolen and abused it.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

This is another of those subjects where I waffle a bit and tend to annoy those on either end of the spectrum.

Government is a necessity. It can do many good things for us. Taxes to fund government and its services are a necessity. Hell, I work for the .gov myself.

That said, I think our government is too large, regulates things that are none of its legitimate concern and does things that would be better left to private industry. The government culture is just so ... odd. While I know plenty of people who come in and work hard each day I also see so many who reinforce the negative stereotype of the lazy govt drone hiding their sloth and incompetence behind civil service protection. I'd go into more detail, but anonymous posting is disabled. :)

There's more I could say but I really need to get to work. See you at OVFF this month?

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Here in Boston, recently, we lost two firefighters in a restaurant blaze. An article about this in the Globe yesterday commented that this actually happens less and less frequently. Firefighters are fighting major fires less and less, because modern building codes work. Better detectors, better sprinklers, better fire suppression.

One more example.

That website is seriously hurting the Left's arguments

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

A co-respondent on our Urbanagora blog made the mistake of reading Ezra and linking to this site, Tom, as a way of refuting some of my commentary.

Very, very bad idea. Even if a person is in line with the political philosophy of the Left, GovernmentIsGood.com is horrid to serve as an example because of consistent, verifiable factual errors.

Let me give you just two examples from Dr. Amy's first article, Introduction: We Need to Stand Up for Government:

In one comment, he stated that following the removal of EPA standards which required dye and other methods to make rat poison look less like candy there were 50,000 cases of poisoning involving rat poison in children under six in 2004. He cited an editorial from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that is widely quoted among environmentalists, but cannot actually be found in the newspaper's archives. Ten minutes with google brought up the information from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, who actually collect the data. In 2004, there were a total of 15,000 reported cases of rat poison ingestion by children of any age.

In a later part of that same initial article, he cited the creation of the polio vaccine as an example of the good that comes from government. The Salk vaccine was the result of a private charitable organization, the March of Dimes. The Sabin vaccine was developed at the Cincinatti Children's Hospital, and the field trials were done by the World Health Organization.

In neither case was government (of any size, unless you count the WHO as part of a world government, which is a stretch) involved in the eradication of polio.

I could go on and on through the rest of Dr. Amy's site. There are factual errors (not opinions) that could have been corrected had there been any care taken by the author. If I was attempting to make a reasonable case for governmental power, I certainly would have done so.

As a matter of fact, the site is so bad, that I suspect that it could be misinformation designed by some unscrupulous pseudo-conservative to make the Left look bad.

Tom

Re: That website is seriously hurting the Left's arguments

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's possible. But I agree with the general thesis, even if the site itself turns out to be a badly-written load of crap. I've been saying much the same for years now, so if you'd like you can ignore the site but assume that I believe what that essay has to say.

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just that I'm watching Pushing Daisies right now, but I imagine Jim Dale reading this essay.

I also must say that this clarifies the old saw "That governs best which governs least," by retorting, in essence, "Yes, but that which governs best by governing least must still, at some point, show up for work." :)