07-07-2010, 01:32 AM
Quote:I don't see my government as the means to solving the problems of the people (or the species), but rather preventing us from being harmed, or harming others. I think now it has become common to use the government as the means of raising funds to "build" or enact something without regard to minority interests.But the most pressing problems, the ones that (purportedly) require a powerful Federal government, are exactly those that are not so simple as you suggest. Global trade. Environmental damage. Military threats. Criminal networks. Migration. Technological regulation. Shared resources. And so on. You can't just devolve enormous problems to the local level, because they can't be dealt with at that level.
Humanity is not endangered by very much other than itself, and yet that one danger seems almost certain to kill us sooner or later. What, except a consistent set of laws over a large (possibly global) area, has any chance of "preventing us from being harmed, or harming others"? Almost all of the problems we face are caused by humans. We live an an age of externalities, where what we do in one place has an impact across the globe. Getting those issues sorted out doesn't even seem to be possible with governments at a national level. What possible hope could there be amongst hundreds of thousands of localities?
Were we to adopt a policy of total harm prevention, as you suggest, ("100%") we would find our government utterly paralyzed. The question is usually where the buck stops, and with that policy, the answer would be "everywhere".
-Jester