OrangeEmpire
The White Debonair
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2005
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What should the role of government be?, Explain your ideology...
In short, as little as possible...
The proper role of government is perhaps illuminated by a list of what it should not do as much as a list of what it should. The government should not be involved in freely feeding the people, freely providing health care, or giving money to the less fortunate.
The proper role of government should be limited to the protection of rights, specifically, life, liberty, and property.
Or, I will argue that beauracracy leads to ineffeciency. Not just in government, but in business, as well.
I think the federal government should mostly deal with foreign policy and the military. Most other issues you mentioned would be best handled by state and local governments.
Furthermore, to make this short and to the point, I believe that many of the problems that societies deal with spring from tragedy of the commons and prisoner's dilemma type situations. Human nature is basically short sighted and greedy, but humans need to co-exist socially in order to survive and prosper, and social co-existance is not compatable with short sighted and greedy behavior.
The problem is that short sighted and greedy behavior has immediate tangible benefits for those who engage in them. The benefits of such behaviors are private, the costs born by society as a whole. Thus, there is personal incentive for all people to act that way. But if everybody acts that way, the results are mutual disadvantage for all over the long term.
The primary role of government then is to elevate the private cost of anti social behavior to a level at which it is no longer profitable to engage in. As a corellary to this, government must provide goods and services that are socially advantageous to have in the long term, but in which there is little incentive for immediate private investment.
Theft, for example, benefits the person stealing but is harmful to the person being robbed. It is, from a strictly personal and selfish standpoint, better for the individual to steal wealth than it is to produce it, because the effort required to do so is less. This creates an incentive for everybody to steal. But if everybody steals instead of produces wealth, the process ultimately becomes self defeating. A condition develops in which there is no wealth to steal. So government must criminalize this kind of behavior and impose penalties for engaging in it.
Thoughts?
In short, as little as possible...
The proper role of government is perhaps illuminated by a list of what it should not do as much as a list of what it should. The government should not be involved in freely feeding the people, freely providing health care, or giving money to the less fortunate.
The proper role of government should be limited to the protection of rights, specifically, life, liberty, and property.
Or, I will argue that beauracracy leads to ineffeciency. Not just in government, but in business, as well.
I think the federal government should mostly deal with foreign policy and the military. Most other issues you mentioned would be best handled by state and local governments.
Furthermore, to make this short and to the point, I believe that many of the problems that societies deal with spring from tragedy of the commons and prisoner's dilemma type situations. Human nature is basically short sighted and greedy, but humans need to co-exist socially in order to survive and prosper, and social co-existance is not compatable with short sighted and greedy behavior.
The problem is that short sighted and greedy behavior has immediate tangible benefits for those who engage in them. The benefits of such behaviors are private, the costs born by society as a whole. Thus, there is personal incentive for all people to act that way. But if everybody acts that way, the results are mutual disadvantage for all over the long term.
The primary role of government then is to elevate the private cost of anti social behavior to a level at which it is no longer profitable to engage in. As a corellary to this, government must provide goods and services that are socially advantageous to have in the long term, but in which there is little incentive for immediate private investment.
Theft, for example, benefits the person stealing but is harmful to the person being robbed. It is, from a strictly personal and selfish standpoint, better for the individual to steal wealth than it is to produce it, because the effort required to do so is less. This creates an incentive for everybody to steal. But if everybody steals instead of produces wealth, the process ultimately becomes self defeating. A condition develops in which there is no wealth to steal. So government must criminalize this kind of behavior and impose penalties for engaging in it.
Thoughts?
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