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by patrickmay
4583 days ago
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The problem is that too many people reach for government power as a first response instead of the last resort it should be. Government force is always going to result in unintended, negative consequences. Those socialistic programs you laud, with the high taxes, intrusive regulations, and government debt, are a net drag on the economy. Working together voluntarily is vastly superior to being compelled by force, however well intentioned. |
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If we are reaching for government power, then we have encountered a problem which has not or cannot be solved by the free market as is. I have not seen many people saying "hey, we should socialize the software industry, Google just isn't doing well enough." It already is a last resort.
> Government force is always going to result in unintended, negative consequences.
I rarely use the word always because all it takes is a single counterexample to disprove the point, and I can name a few: Firefighters, police, military, are all "markets" that would not be easily regulated by the free market and the government has done instead (and done so quite well, in most cases.)
> Those socialistic programs you laud, with the high taxes, intrusive regulations, and government debt, are a net drag on the economy.
Lumping ALL those programs together (again) invalidates your point. There are some programs that work very well and have more benefits than costs. I agree that this is not true for all programs/regulations, thus my point: Fix what's broken.
> Working together voluntarily is vastly superior to being compelled by force, however well intentioned.
This argument could be used to support ANY form of government. Communism would work wonderfully if we all worked together voluntarily! Fact is we live in a world of game theory. Sometimes people work together, sometimes they don't. Capitalism works because in theory, even if you are working only for yourself, you are working for society as well. But that is not always true, and so we need to pull together to make sure that those who would abuse the system can't. We need to pull together so that everyone, or at least the majority, benefits from our society.