[vixen99]

That's your assertion. It's always fun and easy to spend other people's money which is why the liberal solution is popular. Building up a debt of, for instance, nearly $18.7 trillion and rising has no eventual knock on effect and is quite in order? Probably misinformation but I saw an estimate that as much as some 70% of the American public depend in significant ways on their government for financial survival. You call that 'solving social problems'? Sounds ultimately terminal to me. But that's just me sounding off. I do gather that some really well-informed folk do take that view and can back it up.

[nhaehnle]

Make that 100% of the American (or really any state's) public. Do you think your life would just go on without any troubles at all if government suddenly disappeared?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that everybody[0] depends on the social structures around them (which includes the government). It's just that for whatever reasons, often pretty arbitrary ones, there is a consensus narrative which labels some of those dependencies as "bad" and others as "good" (or "normal"). Then people invent lots of after-the-fact rationalizations and categories to try to ignore the "good" dependencies and focus only on the "bad" ones.

[0] There may be some persons out in the woods who live in a cabin they built using their bare hands, with only the tools that they built themselves, without using oil-based fuels or something like the weather forecast. I'd say it's safe to ignore those persons for the purpose of this discussion, if they even exist.

[mason240]

>Do you think your life would just go on without any troubles at all if government suddenly disappeared?

The classic "I'm going to pretend your criticism of one part of government means you want to completely abolish all government" strawman.

[nhaehnle]

I'd agree with you, but vixen99's post does not actually articulate an awareness of criticizing a particular part of the government. There's talk about "dependence on the government" by 70% of the public (probably the incorrect number according to what they really mean, but let's go with it). My point is really that this statement is meaningless because it's really 100% of the public who depends on the government when you think of it.

For example: people who work for recording companies undeniably depend on government handouts for their financial survival (think copyright law). Do you think vixen99 intended to include this group of people or not?

So my criticism, which you unfortunately missed (because I admittedly could have been clearer about it) is that the language used to attempt to discuss an argument is already wrong.

The intended argument itself may have merit, but as long as you talk about it in a misleading way you're not helping the debate.