[DictumExNihilo]

> let rich & corporations get loose

This belief only causes the state to grow. It inflates politicians to the point where they are worth buying, so they are bought. They then make laws that hurt their competition and help their corporation. They make laws that make it extremely difficult to ever start a business to compete to begin with. So the corporations get bigger, and have more to buy the politicians with. And the scope of what the politicians control grows, so it costs more to buy them. So access to your government shrinks to the point where only the most wealthy have any real say in it.

And what does that look like? That looks like what we have. Congratulations for being a part of the problem through the unwarranted fear of your fellow man.

Because so many of you only want to see simple cause and effect, not the multitudinous unintended consequences that every law and regulation creates. You are controlled by your fears. If the state fails to do something, grow it. If it succeeds at anything, grow it.

This is all I will say on this subject. I have spilled a lifetime of digital ink over this, as have countless others, but to no avail. When the civil war comes because everyone finally decides that everyone else is the enemy, don't ask me for help. I'll be looking after myself and mine. I want with all my heart for that not to happen, but you're going to start wanting it with all your heads first.

[dang]

HN is not a place for this sort of ideological rant, so please don't post like this here.

[xenadu02]

At least in the USA, people didn't wake up one day and say "Gee, bigger government would be awesome".

The growth of government is a direct response to constant abuses at the hands of smaller local government, corporations, and wealthy individuals.

I have never heard a proposal for "shrink the state" that manages to address that underlying truth. If there isn't an existing avenue to achieve power then power-hungry people will create one. We had the closest thing to a libertopia ever in the 1870-1929 USA. It was a disaster, resulting in multiple financial panics, thousands of deaths from tainted food, huge private interventions to seize control of entire countries, etc. Small towns were often run like a personal fiefdom with disregard for the law; if you were the target the sheriff would just lock you up and the judge might hand down a sentence with barely a show trial. In many ways the growth of the federal government has been a huge boon to cleaning up local politics and did-entangling wealthy influence.

Not to mention that scale matters. No pollution regulation only works when there are relatively few factories doing the polluting. Without the EPA we'd have the poisoned waters and dangerous air that China has.

[wyager]

> The growth of government is a direct response to constant abuses at the hands of smaller local government, corporations, and wealthy individuals.

Or maybe it's a direct response to the fact that the people who have the power to grow the government also work for the government and are therefore incentivized to grow the government.

Which idiot is going around saying "wow, this one level of government sucks, I'd better give more money and power to a slightly different level of government"?

I think you're also wrong that local governments are frequently committing abuses; the federal government seems to do that much more frequently (possibly by nature of its tremendous scope), and has an approval rating to match.

[ctrl_freak]

> I think you're also wrong that local governments are frequently committing abuses; the federal government seems to do that much more frequently

I think I read a study not too long ago that indicated state and local governments actually had much higher corruption than the federal government. I tried to find it now; the best I could come up with was an article from nymag [1]. It's an interesting read, and one of the interesting tidbits it notes is that state house elections track US house elections with a correlation of 0.96, in other words, much less accountability at that level. Perhaps one of the reasons why the federal government seems more abusive than local governments is that it gets more media attention.

[1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/ferguson-worst-...

[braveo]

I would agree with that, but I think a large reason for it is because people don't pay attention to local as much as federal anymore, so it slips under the radar a lot.

[azinman2]

So instead Koch brothers are just completely unchecked? No thanks. What we have is broken, but to remove the state is to allow the US to become a 3rd world country where the mega rich get richer, federal parks land is auctioned off, and pollution remains unchecked. We have enough examples of failed states world wide to understand that rivers turning pink is what happens when you don't have laws for the people.

[Trundle]

Are the Koch brothers abnormally strong or something? The state is what gives anyone the ability to control that ridiculous amount of wealth. The idea that them being unchecked without state backing is a problem is laughable.

[angersock]

> to remove the state is to allow the US to become a 3rd world country where the mega rich get richer, federal parks land is auctioned off, and pollution remains unchecked.

But that still happens anyways...?

[RA_Fisher]

I'm with ya, friend. For those curious to read more, I suggest the Mises Institute: https://www.mises.org/

[java_script]

Was curious indeed; did some googling. Libertarianism is hilarious: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute#Grea...

[WaxProlix]

I've seen quite a bit of mises institute being posted around here in brief, otherwise insubstantial comments. It's nice to have a single link to follow them up with, so that curious parties can get a view from other perspectives.

[hueving]

Most of those items are appeals to absurdity, lacking any particular rebuttals of the things they ridicule.

I think you will find that claiming something is obviously ridiculous to someone who actually needs convincing is one of the worst approaches possible.