[mikeash]

And if the Federal government stopped paying for all that stuff, what would happen? Financial collapse, chaos, and perhaps war. Would our hypothetical financially independent software developer be able to continue living his life in the same way when that happens? I doubt it.

It's foolish to think that you only benefit from government spending if it results in money in your bank account or services you directly, personally take advantage of.

[stale2002]

There would actually be less war, seeing as we are the one who starts them.

I'd argue that the "benefit" of getting rid of all the unnecessary wars would vastly outweigh all the "drawbacks" of the supposed chaos that would happen by getting rid of all the other programs.

IE, getting rid of all of it at the same time would be massive benefit to the overall world, in aggregate.

[mikeash]

Halting interest payments on the US government's debt would instantaneously crash the world economy. This would almost inevitably lead to massive wars, not these little brushfire wars we have today.

[stale2002]

You don't have to default on any debt.

All you got to do is pay it off.

We could solve the debt problem is the same way that Andrew Jackson did. By selling off a bunch of government assets. The amount of debt we half is a drop in the bucket, compared to total government assets.

[mikeash]

Like, find buyers for a dozen nuclear-powered supercarriers?

[stale2002]

No.... The USA has a lot more assets than just its military assets. EX: the gold in fort knox alone,a single USA asset, is worth 200 Billion dollars (or 1% of our total debt)

We really don't have that much debt, when compared to our total revenues.

We don't even have to halt everything at once. If we just get rid of the majority of our military spending, we would very quickly be able to pay off all our debts and then shut everything else down afterwords.

We could do it in 10 years if we really wanted, which is a very short period of time, as far as nations go.