Post by biglinmarshall on Sept 24, 2008 13:43:09 GMT -5
This is an issue on which people in all democratic countries disagree fiercely. How much of our money should the government take in taxes, and where should what it DOES take be spent?
Few people would disagree that the government has a duty to protect its citizens at home and abroad. We need armed forces to protect us from external aggression and a police force to protect us from criminals at home. There also need to be laws which courts enforce in order to establish that particular actions ARE crimes and to pronounce punishment for them.
What else, if anything, should a government - local or national - do? Should it repair the highways, build schools, provide an education system, deliver healthcare? Should it provide and maintain prisons? Should the government provide public housing? Should it give welfare payments to people out of work? How far, if at all, should it regulate business or intervene in the economy? Should it legislate for public morals?
In general, most of us fall more on one side than the other of what you could loosely call the libertarian and authoritarian divides. Unfortunately both terms have become so distorted by deliberate musues that they are almost meaningless. All the same, I'll use them as shorthand for the sake of convenience.
This particular division (libertarian/authoritarian) goes far beyond the left/righ divide which is essentially economic rather than political. You can be a libertarian socialist and an authoritarian conservative, or vice versa. It's the role of the STATE, and NOT the organisation of the economy, which is at issue between libertarians and authoritarians.
I am a libertarian, who wants the state to do as little as possible. I worry about the knee-jerk reactions of control, regulation and banning that governments are far too fond of. I worry about unnecessary laws that are passed simply to make it LOOK as if the government is doing something when really it ISN'T.
I'll address some specific issues in follow-up posts and explain how and why I feel as I do on the particular points.
I'm sure members here will have their own views and I look forward to reading them.
Few people would disagree that the government has a duty to protect its citizens at home and abroad. We need armed forces to protect us from external aggression and a police force to protect us from criminals at home. There also need to be laws which courts enforce in order to establish that particular actions ARE crimes and to pronounce punishment for them.
What else, if anything, should a government - local or national - do? Should it repair the highways, build schools, provide an education system, deliver healthcare? Should it provide and maintain prisons? Should the government provide public housing? Should it give welfare payments to people out of work? How far, if at all, should it regulate business or intervene in the economy? Should it legislate for public morals?
In general, most of us fall more on one side than the other of what you could loosely call the libertarian and authoritarian divides. Unfortunately both terms have become so distorted by deliberate musues that they are almost meaningless. All the same, I'll use them as shorthand for the sake of convenience.
This particular division (libertarian/authoritarian) goes far beyond the left/righ divide which is essentially economic rather than political. You can be a libertarian socialist and an authoritarian conservative, or vice versa. It's the role of the STATE, and NOT the organisation of the economy, which is at issue between libertarians and authoritarians.
I am a libertarian, who wants the state to do as little as possible. I worry about the knee-jerk reactions of control, regulation and banning that governments are far too fond of. I worry about unnecessary laws that are passed simply to make it LOOK as if the government is doing something when really it ISN'T.
I'll address some specific issues in follow-up posts and explain how and why I feel as I do on the particular points.
I'm sure members here will have their own views and I look forward to reading them.