Brain Fertilizer

It is my impression that:

1) Liberals think the government is the best answer to most social problems
2) Libertarians think that the best government is the one that governs least -- the problem being that no two libertarians ever agree on the minimum level of government...
3) Greens think the government needs to stop big business from ruining the ecology...but are close to the liberals in that they see a problem and want the government to fix it
4) I'm not really sure how to sum up the conservatives in one sentence...they generally want to retain our nation the way it was...when? Well, no one I've seen wants to go back to the 50s, or the 60s, or the 70s, or even the 80s...although maybe the 80s. Also, conservatives seem to think that most problems can be solved with Free Markets: the Free Market of Business, the Free Market of Ideas, the Free Market of School Choice.

I don't like any of these, but I do find myself closest to the conservatives in many ways.

So a person's definition of a "good" government depends on what they think a government's purpose is in the first place.

I've said before that a government should do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, or cannot do individually: national defense, interstate commerce, resolving disputes between states, or even (sometimes) between individuals if they feel they cannot get fair treatment from a lower level of government.

I'd like to revise that, if I may.

I looked at it from this angle? Why do we need government at all? Why do governments form?

Simply this: without government, the strong do things to the weak for the benefit of themselves and to the detriment of the weak.

If that's too technical, what I mean is that the even if you did everything right, you could still feel the negative consequences of someone else's selfish or shortsided behavior.

Governments in general have improved over time. Improvements in technology meant accumulations of wealth, and economic power has always resulted in political power. Over time, more and more people have been insulated from the consequences of someone else's selfish or shortsided behavior.

In many ways, this has culminated in the US Constitution. The beauty of the US Constitution is, as I stated earlier, that it was designed to prevent the accumulation of power into any one branch, much less any one person. Even when "strong" Presidents or "strong" Courts seized too much power to themselves, the system retained its elasticity and gradually separated the power again. In effect, it has allowed more people to have input into governmental decisions, and the more people that have input, the more likely they will notice and correct any mistakes, misapprehensions, miscalculations, etc. (This is one reason I don't buy the Bumper Sticker-level philosophy of a Tyranny of the Majority)

Lately, however, we (as a nation) have stopped trying to protect our citizens from the consequences of someone else's bad decisions and instead have begun trying to protect our citizens from the consequences arising from their own bad decisions, their own selfish or shortsided behavior.

In this, we've gone too far. We must allow people the right to experience the consequences of their decisions, or we will inflict our citizens with permanent immaturity. There must be negative consequences to some behaviors. There must be positive consequences to other behaviors. It is well within the duty of the government to recognize some behaviors as being positive to the well-being of the populace, and to help encourage those behaviors. And we do: tax breaks for having children, for buying homes, saving for your retirement. It is also well within the duty of the government to recognize some behaviors as being negative to the well-being of the populace as a whole, or the welfare of the nation, and discourage those behaviors. And we do: tickets for speeding, sentences for murder, kidnapping, etc.

To the extent that we do not allow natural consequences to occur and thus shape behavior, we encourage negative behavior to increase. As long as abortion remains as inexpensive and easy as it is right now, it will never be rare. As long as welfare is as comfortable as it is right now, some people will never make the effort to be productive again (and while welfare may not allow you to drive a Porsche, it is sufficient to allow air conditioning, cable TV, internet access, cell phones: all are distinct luxuries for someone living on the sufferance of the taxable population).

I think there are few things that should be encouraged, and other things that should be discouraged. Like the liberals, I think the Free Market is probably insufficient to correct some social problems, or at least too slow. On the other hand, passing laws to criminalize certain behavior does nothing to change the attitude of the individual. I think if the government made an attempt to deliberately use market forces to discourage racism, the vestiges of discrimination would be gone within 10 years. I think the government could do the same thing with the war on drugs, and win it within 10 years. The drawback would be that there would be no governmental help for those who prefer to remain addicted, and thousands would probably die.

The other problem is that some moral judgments would have to be made. At some point, it might become clear to a majority of the populace that something is bad. Look at smoking vs drinking. Alcohol and The Prohibition represent the liberal method: outlaw it. Didn't work. Smoking and tobacco represent my way: shaming and education and natural consequences. The problem with smoking bans is simply that smokers do not recognize how much their behavior impacted non-smokers. ...but you know what? Our nation is better off with less than 25% of the nation smoking than with nearly 50%. We'd be better off, still, with less than 10%.

If my view of government is ever adopted (which it won't be, I know...this is just an amusing little diversion for me today), the same conflict will happen again. It would be better for our nation if only 10% of 14-year-olds were sexually active, but the kids who are determined to have sex would feel oppressed by the measures put in place to discourage it. It would be better for our nation if there were only 1000 abortions a year rather than 1,000,000, but people will feel oppressed if anything is actually done to discourage it.

We've forgotten that Government is Us. We decide what government we will have, we decide what our government can do, we decide what our government will say on our behalf.

We've allowed our government to become a bureaucracy that is insulated from us. We've allowed our government to seduce us with the siren-song of Protecting Us From Ourselves.

And we reap what we sow: we are becoming a permanently adolescent nation.