[kalkin]

Getting rid of social security or making our healthcare system even worse won't do anything to shrink the FBI. A stronger welfare state is compatible with considerably less out-of-control police than we have in the United States; witness anywhere in northern Europe.

If you don't want people to laugh at your principles, maybe don't immediately turn a conversation about the security state to an argument that you should pay less taxes.

[ChefDenominator]

For the life of me, I can't find any mention of social security, health care, or taxes in GP's comment.

[messick]

"Shrink the State" is code for "I want to pay less taxes". And with less taxes, things like SSI and Medicare can't exist.

[int_19h]

Not necessarily. I know it's often used this way in practice, but this is also partly because people perpetuate the notion that you must be a libertarian to believe in such notions, and that sensible liberals are supposed to be in favor of a large state capable of solving any social problem.

Well, I think that's not true.

There's certainly room on the ideological spectrum for a kind of "liberal minarchism", for the lack of better term. If you think about it, conventional minarchist right-wing libertarianism is often defined by "state as small as it needs to be protect its citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud". But this formula has two parts, each of which can be adjusted independently.

If you take the second part - the list of goals - and add "..., to provide for a basic standard of living, and to constrain economic inequality within reasonable levels", then you basically have a liberal minarchist credo. With libertarianism, it shares the central idea that state is a necessary evil, and it must be only as big as it needs to be, and no bigger. With mainstream liberalism, it shares the desired goals.

In practice, the difference is how you approach the expansion of government. Mainstream liberals often see any expansion that tries to solve some social problem as good, regardless of how important that problem is, and whether non-government solutions exist. A minarchist approach is to start with the premise that any expansion is unnecessary, and require clear justification, with evidence, as to why it is actually necessary.

Would it result in lower taxes? Probably, but that's not the point. The point is to ensure that the government doesn't become a juggernaut that can be easily repurposed for oppression.

[swsieber]

No - they can exist with less taxes if other things take the hit.

[wyager]

> "Shrink the State" is code for "I want to pay less taxes".

Or maybe it's code for "I don't want the kind of totalitarian programs mentioned in the OP".

[danans]

It's right there in paragraph 5: "Be suspicious of all taxation."

[ChefDenominator]

Clearly, the statement was in regards to paying less in taxes, which is what was specifically mentioned. Being suspicious of taxation does not translate to exclusively wanting to pay less in taxes.

[kalkin]

What does "shrink the state" mean, then? Are those not part of the state? If only the FBI or other armed wings of the state are meant, why not say that?

[braveo]

You're purposefully misrepresenting what was said, if anyone in this thread needs to get Dang's attention it's you.

[DickingAround]

Good, let's start with the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Military. But don't think for a second that any penny you give to the feds won't accidentally find it's way over there. Social security was originally intended to be separate. And yet now here we are, those funds being drained into the general coffers that go in large measure for war. We say it should be smaller overall because unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to separate the wheat from the chaff on this one. So unless you want this too-big-to-fail system to actually fail one day in a bad way, we just need to make it overall smaller.

[hueving]

>stronger welfare state is compatible with considerably less out-of-control police than we have in the United States; witness anywhere in northern Europe.

Or Cuba or Venezuela?

[legodt]

Venezuela had a command economy that bet everything on an unstable natural resource. Terrible move, not related to socializing health care or helping the poor.

Cuba was economically starved by the US and its allies and unable to interact with the global economy. This paired with its early history of horrific human rights abuses led to a rough state that continues to this day. But, and this does not excuse how violent the state was in its early days, Cuba does have no unemployment or homelessness which is something remarkable.

Those are edge cases though. Look at the northern european countries, canada, or germany

[BurningFrog]

Sweden actually has a much smaller state than the US.

Mostly because it's 10 million people vs 320 million for the US.

Letting the US states handle everything the federal government doesn't have to manage would leave all Americans in a much shrunken state, with just as generous social security, healthcare etc as now.