Are the American people obsolete?

Wait wasnt Glass Steagall repealed under Clinton?

The NY Times does a story on how governments are cutting services in the downturn due to reduced budgets. I suppose I'd feel better about this is we weren't spending $700 billion a year or so building weapons, maintaining bases around the world, and trying to manipulate cultures in southwest Asia. If we're at the point where our city is closing libraries, or cutting out school on Fridays, or turning off a third of its street lights because there's no more money to fund these things, how can we say we're rich enough to be the world's policeman or engage in building our soft empire?

Jagzeplin wrote:

Wait wasnt Glass Steagall repealed under Clinton?

It was, and Clinton's been excoriated for that on these boards multiple times.

However, the initiative was that of "fiscally conservative" free market Republicans. It had a few Democratic hangers-on, but it was a major policy win for the "free market" conservatives.

This is more like my experience of government service. These are people trying to fix the problems and do the right things.

Here are some lessons Spencer Clark has learned in three years working for the federal government: When he goes to boring meetings, he sits at the table so no one will think he's a slacker. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. He's not the best thing since sliced bread. Baby boomers have a lot to offer, even if they drive him crazy.

The earnest 27-year-old with a goatee who bikes with his laptop to his job administering the Paperwork Reduction Act for the Environmental Protection Agency is helping to rescript one of the oldest cliches in Washington. A new movement is shaking up the federal bureaucracy, as an expanding pool of idealistic, results-oriented Gen X and Yers challenges the predictability and authority-driven rules of the World War II generation and the pay-your-dues baby boomers who followed.

Many of the younger workers are arriving in a hiring spree. The Obama administration hopes to fill 50,000 to 60,000 entry-level jobs in the next year, the largest burst since the Kennedy era. The administration is creating positions in security, public health, defense -- and is pushing many jobs held by outside contractors inside the government.

The pipeline at the entry and mid-levels is opening fast as close to half a million baby boomers and older workers head out the door in the next four years.

After watching government responses to such crises as Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this new crop of federal workers wants to do better. Almost one in three of the 142,690 federal workers hired last year was 29 or younger, while more than one in four were between 30 and 39, a demographic that's reshaping the bureaucracy -- and creating tension and opportunity along the way.

And people think we can't make the bureaucracy more efficient? Luckily there are people who aren't bound in their attitudes and don't spend all their time looking out for number one who are working to do just that, regardless of whether or not we think it's possible.

Robear wrote:

This is more like my experience of government service. These are people trying to fix the problems and do the right things.

Here are some lessons Spencer Clark has learned in three years working for the federal government: When he goes to boring meetings, he sits at the table so no one will think he's a slacker. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. He's not the best thing since sliced bread. Baby boomers have a lot to offer, even if they drive him crazy.

The earnest 27-year-old with a goatee who bikes with his laptop to his job administering the Paperwork Reduction Act for the Environmental Protection Agency is helping to rescript one of the oldest cliches in Washington. A new movement is shaking up the federal bureaucracy, as an expanding pool of idealistic, results-oriented Gen X and Yers challenges the predictability and authority-driven rules of the World War II generation and the pay-your-dues baby boomers who followed.

Many of the younger workers are arriving in a hiring spree. The Obama administration hopes to fill 50,000 to 60,000 entry-level jobs in the next year, the largest burst since the Kennedy era. The administration is creating positions in security, public health, defense -- and is pushing many jobs held by outside contractors inside the government.

The pipeline at the entry and mid-levels is opening fast as close to half a million baby boomers and older workers head out the door in the next four years.

After watching government responses to such crises as Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this new crop of federal workers wants to do better. Almost one in three of the 142,690 federal workers hired last year was 29 or younger, while more than one in four were between 30 and 39, a demographic that's reshaping the bureaucracy -- and creating tension and opportunity along the way.

And people think we can't make the bureaucracy more efficient? Luckily there are people who aren't bound in their attitudes and don't spend all their time looking out for number one who are working to do just that, regardless of whether or not we think it's possible.

Thanks for sharing that - there is hope yet!

I would feel better about that if the alleged answer wasn't rapidly expanding said bureaucracy and if the opinions expressed weren't from *shudders* the Washington Post.

Robear, I'm sorry but that story made me LOL. Literally. I worked for the government once and it was one of the most frustrating and infuriating experiences in my entire professional life. We showed up to work on a project that would have taken data from all the state programs children go through in the welfare system and aggregated that data so we could try and get a handle on outcomes at each level.

i.e. Does WIC help kids in Head Start? By how much? Is more WIC assistance needed, less? Is Head Start working? For who?

It would have been an incredibly useful program. When we showed up the DBA at the state organization had created a database and a bunch of analysts had created UI screens. They said our job was to "code the middle".

We needed to understand what the actual point of it all was, what "the middle" was supposed to do so we started asking questions. It turned out that this program, running on 2 years, had shuttled through 3 other teams who had tried to "code the middle" and either quit because they didn't have any stories or business requirements to figure out the business logic of the system or just ran out of time trying to get the answers. We started talking to nurses and people who were going to use the system to try and understand what exactly they were trying to do. How they wanted to measure things, etc.

Thus for the next 6 months we spent almost all of our time in meetings talking about what they wanted. We soon found out that what they wanted was completely different form the database or the UI. We found out the way they worked was fundamentally different to what the DBA-led team had decided. We found out there was a lot of politics to changing things. Long story short we spent 6 months on requirements gathering and then gave up and left. All of us.

While I was there I witnessed on more than 1 occasion government workers pulling 6 hour days, spending half the day on union activities, playing solitaire in plain view. It was the least productive work environment I've ever been associated with. Not only did no one seem to know what they were doing, but no one wanted to extend the effort to push the project forward. We tried, but ultimately the calcification of the workforce and their unwillingness to do hard work made it impossible to finish the project.

So it's all well and good that Gen Xers and Yers are entering govt. work. I would do the same if I felt like I wasn't going to work with the previous generations. Because, by and large, they're unpleasant to work with, care more about job security than anything else even if that means lying about what they're doing and don't produce. IMHO before those Gen Xers and Yers can affect real change they need to know that people who work beside them who are terrible at what they do can get fired and more Xers and Yers can fill in behind them and actually turn govt. work into a vibrant environment. I was willing to do that and saw the reality.

The Financial Times paints a grim picture:

“The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

The trend has only been getting stronger. Most economists see the Great Stagnation as a structural problem – meaning it is immune to the business cycle. In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.”

That's really depressing. The most depressing thing I read this week was this.

http://bit.ly/9V13Su

Foreclosure Mills: America's Newest Housing Nightmare

Backdated documents, according to a chorus of foreclosure experts, are typical of the sort of shenanigans practiced by a breed of law firms known as "foreclosure mills." While far less scrutinized than subprime lenders or Wall Street banks, these firms undermine efforts by government and the mortgage industry to put struggling homeowners back on track at a time of record foreclosures. (There were 2.8 million foreclosures in 2009, and 3.8 million are projected for this year.) The mills think "they can just change things and make it up to get to the end result they want, because there's no one holding them accountable," says Prentiss Cox, a foreclosure expert at the University of Minnesota Law School. "We've got these people with incentives to go ahead with foreclosures and flood the real estate market."

So basically Fannie and Freddie are incentivizing companies to foreclose quicker and thus make homes available for lending again. These companies have perverted the process by backdating documents and piling fees up that make it impossible for people with a shot of catching up, from ever getting back to normal. They root for the government programs to help people stay in their homes (modest as they were) to fail.

In a rigged system like that it's very tempting to walk away from your home.

While I was there I witnessed on more than 1 occasion government workers pulling 6 hour days, spending half the day on union activities, playing solitaire in plain view. It was the least productive work environment I've ever been associated with. Not only did no one seem to know what they were doing, but no one wanted to extend the effort to push the project forward. We tried, but ultimately the calcification of the workforce and their unwillingness to do hard work made it impossible to finish the project.

It's not uniform, and certainly I've seen this sort of thing in some agencies. Usually it's a departmental problem, but occasionally it's bigger (and sometimes it's just one person). I see a lot of highly productive environments, and some obstructionism, with others working extra to get around it. But over the last ten years and more, the ethic has been to do more with less, to make things more efficient, and overall to cut costs. That's been the overwhelming guidance in the civilian agencies (ie, non-military, non-intel).

The thing is that the various issues *can* be fixed, and it's not all negative. I feel like Aetius is simply inclined to toss the whole thing, and that he regards anyone citing a desire for public service, or who claims to have the public interest at heart, as a scammer at best. I just want to point out that there are hundreds of thousands of government employees who actually work hard, try not to waste money, and look for ways to make the processes they handle more efficient and more useful to the public.

The negativity gets to me eventually, because I personally work to keep government costs down, and the govvies I deal with are far more likely to share that goal than the contractors and many of the vendors they deal with. There are a lot of different situations to be found in even just one agency or department, and arguing that it's all broken and can never be fixed is an unfair simplification of a complicated environment.

It's also very much like someone telling you that you *can't* be doing or thinking what you and your co-workers and customers do every day, because it's impossible that *anyone* could be that way in government... You'd have a similar reaction too, in that situation.

A Wall Street Journal writer chimes in:

Who cares how the rich spend their money? Well, perhaps everyone should these days. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product, or the value of all goods and services produced in the nation. And spending by the rich now accounts for the largest share of consumer outlays in at least 20 years.

According to new research from Moody's Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer outlays. Outlays include consumer spending, interest payments on installment debt and transfer payments.

Now the rich don't even need the middle and lower classes consumerism.

Aetius, please run for President. We need you. Your argument for less government obstructi-er I mean "intervention" got me all tingly inside.

Robear wrote:
If the government budget is only $500 billion instead of $3 trillion, that can't reduce the amount of money transferred from the poor to the rich? And note it's not less money in, it's less money out - it's the spending that drives the wealth transfer.

It does nothing to address the problem, which is corruption, malfeasance and the like. It's like saying "Oh, there's a hole in the dam" and your fix is to lower the water level below it. Meanwhile, the dam is still flawed, but now people don't have the water they need.

Yes, they do - because they get to keep their water, instead of being forced to pour it into the artificial lake, where most of the water goes to favored corporations. It's not like that money disappears when the government isn't taking it and spending it!

Correct. It has very much to do with how those rules are written and whether or not they are enforced. It applies a strong bias in those rules to self-serving ends. Can you make headway in the short term? Sure. Does it matter in the long term? Only if the government is small enough that our efforts can contain it. Water flows downhill - the more that flows, the harder it is to control.

So, you right the rules to prevent the bias, or at a minimum reduce it, and you enforce them. That has *nothing* to do with the size of government or its funding levels.

It has everything to do with the size of government and its funding levels. The government is now so big, and the corpus of rules and regulations so vast, that no one knows it all - and a huge chunk of it is entirely secret as well. As long as the government assumes the role of controlling everything, there is no possible way to prevent or remove the bias, because it's human nature. There's no way to enforce all of our current laws, so the law quickly becomes a tool for government agents to use on anyone they feel like.

And yet we *still* have better government than we did 50 or 100 or 200 years ago. We can do better, sure. I'm saying we should work to improve the system; you're arguing that that is impossible, and we should simply make it smaller to make it better. Notwithstanding that making it small has *anything* to do with stopping corruption (the government in the early 1800's was tiny, and horribly corrupt), the logical endpoint of that line of thinking (less government == less corruption) is no government == no corruption. I don't see that as useful.

Really? Consider the example of Prohibition - both in the 1930's and today. Ending Prohibition in the 30's both reduced the size of government at all levels (though not to pre-Prohibition size), and reduced the level of corruption in government by leaps and bounds, by reducing both the capabilities and incentives for criminals to control the government. We can improve the system. We just need to acknowledge that most of the time, the best solution is simply for the government to stop or reduce its interference. We can't simply ignore that possibility in favor of "fixing" things that were "fixed" a decade ago, and somehow are still broken.

Right. How can you possibly assert that that is anything like the bureaucratic corruption we had?

I find it to be largely the same. The corruption today is smoother, more professional, and less out in the open, but it is just as pervasive as it used to be - and orders of magnitude larger, with correspondingly larger impact on people's lives.

Congressmen still deliver pork to their constituents, and in much larger amounts than 19th-century Congressmen could even dream of

Really? So putting roads, community centers, hospitals, military bases and the like is the equivalent of handing out free food to buy votes?

No - building teapot museums, bridges to nowhere, airports that don't carry air traffic, agricultural subsidies, oil and gas subsidies, hundred-billion dollar bailouts of failed banks, hundred-billion dollar bailouts of insurance companies, twisted legislation that favors large corporations, and the revolving door between politically favored companies and the government is the equivalent of handing out free food to buy votes. And when the government builds roads, community centers, hospitals, and military bases, it does a generally inefficient and expensive job of it - again, favoring the politically connected contractors, managing companies, and car manufacturers.

I'd argue that at least the current system cuts down on the worst excesses. But this is not one of the outright successes, it's true. Still, why not pass laws limiting it? Oh right - if they don't have the money for projects to benefit the country, they can't be corrupt... The problem there is, what happens to the good projects? They lose too because you're unwilling to work at change in favor of chainsawing government.

Again, you make the assumption that if government doesn't take and spend that money, it somehow vanishes into thin air - which couldn't be farther from the truth. The projects that people want will get built - there are literally thousands if not millions of examples of private community centers, private hospitals, and private roads. I'm very willing to work for change - when it is peaceful and voluntary, not based on making people do what you want them to.

Government funding, banking, and development is controlled by a small group of banks on Wall Street

This came about because of the deliberate neutering of oversight and enforcement for a political agenda. It's being fixed, but you have argued strongly against that fix, and now you argue against *any* attempt to fix things, because "it's too hard" and "government is different from other large organizations without armies". (Paraphrased, obviously). Damned if we do, damned if we don't, might as well abolish the whole thing, eh?

No, I argue against the fix because it should be obvious that it isn't a fix at all, but rather an extension and expansion of corporate favoritism and graft. "Too big to fail" is now enshrined into law, along with a raft of other terrible ideas - and this is an area where the government should not be involved, and where government interference has caused huge problems. We're better off backing out, but we have to consider that as an option first!

And you know about this because...? In the past, this stuff was done within the country, and was hidden from public view. As gruesome and horrible as it is, it's still better than what we had (despite Bush's attempts to exceed Nixon's worst excesses of secrecy) and it's slowly being addressed. Not quickly enough for me. But while you've rightly cited some of the worst, on average we are still far better at running government than we were in the past. Don't mistake political decisions for government inefficiency, either.

Political decisions are what drive government inefficiency! The idea that you can forcibly take what you want from taxpayers to accomplish whatever social engineering plan you've dreamed up is appalling. Our government is better in some areas (civil rights), and worse in others (economic interference). And the trend is that government is growing exponentially larger, and getting far more involved in every day life than it should be. Bush and Obama's Top Secret America is far, far worse than Nixon could have dreamed of, and it isn't being addressed at all - in fact, it's being strengthened.

I don't object to the improvements when they occur, and indeed that effort must continue; but it should be obvious that we aren't improving overall - we're getting worse. I, too, desire to make the country better, but violence is not the way to do it. It just makes things worse for everyone. Most real, lasting improvements, such as ending the Drug War, require reducing or eliminating the role of government. Why must "making our country better" involve the government, when we have the historical record to show us that government is a terrible tool for such things?

You do, actually, quite vociferously object to improvements.

When they aren't actually improvements, yes.

You object to the Financial Reform bill because one news agency got upset at it's FOIA refusals and ginned up a fake "they're out to hide the information" story. You've stated that oversight doesn't work, that enforcement can't work (both because of "natural tendencies", apparently.)

Uh, I've stated far more than that one reason, the primary reason being that "too big to fail" is now codified, and we've made future bailouts a virtual certainty. This removes all moral hazard from certain markets and guarantees another episode like the one we had in 2008, with taxpayers again on the hook. Pardon me if I don't think that's an "improvement".

You've argued that improving government is *impossible* above.

Not quite - you ignore the possibility of improving government by removing its influence from our lives, and focusing on the few areas where we actually need it.

Now you are sort of for it, but you then say that we can't do it through violence? Where did I suggest violence? I'd love to see the "War on Drugs" - another *political* initiative, not a bureaucratic one fitting the discussion) - end quickly, but that's not a failure of the agencies which do it, it's a failure of *policy*.

No, it's not. There is no policy that could "win" the War on Drugs, except a policy that ends the war. It's not winnable. Government is not omnipotent, and when it tries to be, people get hurt. Oftentimes, the best policy is no policy - which is a stance that you don't even seem to consider.

You keep saying that government is a "terrible tool for making our country better", but you have not suggested anything better.

Yes, I have. Private, voluntary action on the part of citizens and communities is more efficient, more moral, and far less corrupt.

Small government is still government. So back up this claim. What countries have been made better by the intervention of something better than government?

The obvious answer is: our own. We left the Internet alone, and it grew and blossomed from a tiny research network (yes, government funded) into a world-spanning, world-changing communications network - almost entirely on its own. It succeeded precisely because we didn't interfere, and is struggling now in precisely the places where governments interfered the most - telecom and cable company monopolies on last-mile access. Our country has benefited phenomenally in the areas our government has mostly or entirely stayed out of.

I'm confused as to what you could even mean here. Corporatism, maybe? I know you've argued against anarchism despite taking some of it's positions. So enlighten us - what's a better tool than government?

Corporatism is a government construct, so that would be impossible. I outlined it above - peaceful, voluntary interaction by individuals, groups, and communities is vastly superior to government force and it's heavy handed social engineering. I suspect that such a society would have a very large variety of economic and social constructs, since there is rarely only one solution to a problem. When we stop or reduce stealing from people, it makes the world a better place and leaves space for better things to emerge.

And for the record, do you or don't you think that we can improve government? Because you've now staked out both positions.

The only reason you see a dichotomy is because you don't believe that removing government can be an improvement - despite much evidence to the contrary.

Reducing the size and funding of government will *not* engender an economic recovery; the government funding of projects, while large, is still a small part of the economy (excepting the military here).

You entirely ignore the fact that government funding has to come from somewhere - the taxpayers. Returning that money to its rightful owners doesn't make it disappear - and reducing the size and funding of government will, in fact, engender an economic recovery, due to two facts: 1) government spending is politically driven, not economically driven, and thus is almost always an economic mal-investment, which will prolong the recession and keep the economy from recovering; 2) government economic interference props up business that should have failed, keeping that capital from being reallocated to better uses.

The implied deregulation and lack of enforcement (remember, less force in everyone's lives?) will be even more damaging than it has been in the past. And the use of violence overseas is policy, not a result of bloated government bureaucracy.

Both the bureacracy and our foreign wars spring from the same source - assumption of power by the government that should not be theirs.

I think you're mixing the problems of bureaucracy with those of policy, and thinking that if we just don't have all those departments and agencies, things will magically get better. But that does *nothing* to address the broken policies which have caused most of the problems we have.

When the policies are fundamentally broken (Prohibition, for example) and cannot be fixed, what do you do then? Sensible people get rid of them. I'm arguing that we need a lot more of that, and a lot less "fixing" that somehow seems to always benefit certain people and transfer money their way out of the taxpayers pockets.

And no, I don't think things will get magically better. At first, they will simply stop getting worse - and not having the government controlling things will offer the opportunity for improvement in many different ways.

I can disagree more, but I won't, as we're back on familiar ground. Aetius, you should just self-identify as anarchist, it would be easier for all of us. It's hard to tell "removing government influence from our lives" from "removing government", and your argument against taxes above is one that would nullify *all* financial support for government besides, well, donations. These are the core of your approach to government - get rid of it and stop it taking your money. That's minimal government all right - so minimal it would not even exist any more.

Maybe the Libertarians can club together After The Revolution to buy a small armored vehicle for National Defense. The rest will be done at immense cost by ideologically pure private armies - at least for the cities which can get enough donations to support them.

I guess I'm just getting frustrated again, so I'm sorry for the tone of yesterday's post. It just seems like every discussion yields no middle ground. When pushed, Aetius identifies the problems with government as unique to government, and argues that it's use of force is immoral and unsupportable. When an argument for small government includes not just making it small enough to drown in a bathtub, but actually looking at ways to fix inefficiency and corruption, that's good, because it gives us a way to evaluate politician's proposals. But when every discussion ends in polemics about how government is unfixable and should have no force to use, then we've learned nothing about how Libertarians would actually fix problems (which will exist in small governments as well as large ones, and should be ignored in neither case). As I noted above, if the problems are unique to government, and unfixable, why not just dump government and go with local collectives and true representation and individual liberties? Why preserve something so inefficient and corrupt, if the rhetoric is correct?

I'm for a smaller government. I'm for more *efficient* government. I'm for reducing corruption and increasing oversight and enforcement of rules. I'm for efforts, even imperfect ones, to do all this. But I'm not for "chop it all down and things will get better". I can't see the steps in the middle which would actually address these problems, after the proposed massive reductions in funding and bureaucracy. And being an Independent, I'd *love* to find out that Libertarians actually have constructive proposals to do this. But if government is unfixable in their view, why they even propose to keep it? After all, corruption occurs in national defense and policing as well. Stripping government back to it's Constitutional basics won't work magic, and furthermore, a standing army runs counter to the Constitution. So the only way to eliminate corruption if government is unfixable is to eliminate government. Likewise, the only way to remove the element of force from government (and thus coercion) is likewise to eliminate it's ability to use force - military and police go away and become entirely local functions.

It just seems like the Libertarian views here reduce to "get rid of government and we'll all be okay", except that functionally, that's denied. I don't see though any accommodation of a middle path, where we'd fix what we can and limit the use of force against individual liberties - because that's what I'm proposing and I'm getting serious pushback on what seemed like a reasonable path on which Aetius and I could at least reach some understanding.

Robear wrote:

I can disagree more, but I won't, as we're back on familiar ground. Aetius, you should just self-identify as anarchist, it would be easier for all of us. It's hard to tell "removing government influence from our lives" from "removing government", and your argument against taxes above is one that would nullify *all* financial support for government besides, well, donations. These are the core of your approach to government - get rid of it and stop it taking your money. That's minimal government all right - so minimal it would not even exist any more.

Maybe the Libertarians can club together After The Revolution to buy a small armored vehicle for National Defense. The rest will be done at immense cost by ideologically pure private armies - at least for the cities which can get enough donations to support them. :-)

Initially, national defense was a system of local militias. I should think this would appeal to all of the anti-war types who don't want us projecting military might over foreign territories since it would obviously be beyond a militias capability. Also, I personally (not speaking for Aetius) do not believe that we should, or even CAN, eliminate taxes altogether. I do believe that at excessive levels....well I'm not in the mood to argue either so just check this out... http://www.devvy.com/notax.html

I think some of the arguments made there are out of date and possibly inapplicable to what we face today but informative none the less.

Robear wrote:

It just seems like every discussion yields no middle ground. When pushed, Aetius identifies the problems with government as unique to government, and argues that it's use of force is immoral and unsupportable.

I identify some of the problems with government as unique to government. And its use of force is immoral and unsupportable in most circumstances, with the obvious exceptions being actual defense of the country, not imperial expansion, as well as handling crimes that actually have victims - assault, fraud, and theft.

As I noted above, if the problems are unique to government, and unfixable, why not just dump government and go with local collectives and true representation and individual liberties? Why preserve something so inefficient and corrupt, if the rhetoric is correct?

There are Libertarians who argue for this, and I'm not in total disagreement with them. However, I think they ignore human nature in that regard. It may be that we can develop a stateless society, but I don't think it will happen quickly. I believe that humans are wired to set up governance systems. If you look at history, even the smallest, most isolated groups had a leader, who almost always was socially authorized to use violence in certain situations and to be a (theoretically) neutral arbitrator in disputes. It follows, then, that getting rid of government entirely will simply result in another government being set up - which, historically, almost always results in a much worse situation. Thus, the solution is to create a government that does the minimum jobs of the "tribe leader", while leaving as much freedom as possible to the people.

I'm for a smaller government. I'm for more *efficient* government. I'm for reducing corruption and increasing oversight and enforcement of rules. I'm for efforts, even imperfect ones, to do all this. But I'm not for "chop it all down and things will get better".

Ok. What about situations where the rules create problems or abuses? The canonical case is the fugitive slave laws, but there are many, many others. The fact of the matter is that, in many cases, chopping it down can bethe right answer - and the reason you don't see any middle ground is that you don't accept that. We can see this from history - societies which are more open and have more freedom are almost always better off both economically and socially. Imposing rules by force has serious consequences, many of which are simply ignored.

I can't see the steps in the middle which would actually address these problems, after the proposed massive reductions in funding and bureaucracy.

The confusion here is your belief that government must address these problems with force, no matter who is in charge. We simply disagree with that notion, believing that the costs of addressing problems by force outweigh the benefits in all but a few select cases (and we disagree internally on those). We believe that people, groups, and communities can resolve their own problems. Will it be magic, and perfect? Of course not. But it will be better - not because the situation is necessarily better, but because force is no longer employed being used to make people do things they don't want to do. It's similar to the transition from monarchies to republics - you address one set of problems, and they are replaced by others, but the others are a far better set of problems to deal with.

And being an Independent, I'd *love* to find out that Libertarians actually have constructive proposals to do this. But if government is unfixable in their view, why they even propose to keep it? After all, corruption occurs in national defense and policing as well.

"Unfixable" is the wrong word. Difficult to fix, yes. Trends in bad directions, yes. Minarchists like me think that a small government can be contained, restrained, and kept reasonably efficient and relatively free of corruption. Making the government smaller, with less power over people's every day lives and businesses, will certainly help with that.

It just seems like the Libertarian views here reduce to "get rid of government and we'll all be okay", except that functionally, that's denied.

No, they reduce to "get rid of government and we will, eventually, be better off". Removing government force makes things better by eliminating some very obvious and bad problems, like the use of force to hurt people who never harmed us. It's not a magical elixir, just as the market is not a magical fix - it's just more honest, less brutal, and more realistic.

I don't see though any accommodation of a middle path, where we'd fix what we can and limit the use of force against individual liberties - because that's what I'm proposing and I'm getting serious pushback on what seemed like a reasonable path on which Aetius and I could at least reach some understanding.

I think this is because there is a large gap between what we consider to be a "reasonable path". I consider the U.S. Constitution to be a "reasonable path", but our government is so far from that position that we can't even see it from here. Thus it is very difficult for us to come to a mutual agreement. For example, there is no Constitutional authorization for the Department of Education, so ... why do we have one, even leaving aside the fact that it has accomplished essentially nothing since it was created? I don't think we can find a middle path on that, because I don't believe it should be permitted and you believe it is critical to our society. I might be able to accept a much smaller role for the DoE, but you wish to expand it, so how can we negotiate? Our goals lie in opposite directions.

Ok. What about situations where the rules create problems or abuses? The canonical case is the fugitive slave laws, but there are many, many others. The fact of the matter is that, in many cases, chopping it down can bethe right answer - and the reason you don't see any middle ground is that you don't accept that. We can see this from history - societies which are more open and have more freedom are almost always better off both economically and socially. Imposing rules by force has serious consequences, many of which are simply ignored.

ABSOLUTELY I agree that chopping down problematic laws, regulations and the like is appropriate. Not only do I accept that, I *argue* for it every time we cross this topic. What I was referring to is your consistent response that this very thing - fixing government through means other than just obliterating it's funding - is even possible. I'm serious confused here, because you've just spent all this time telling me that changing the rules won't work and can't work, period.

The confusion here is your belief that government must address these problems with force, no matter who is in charge. We simply disagree with that notion, believing that the costs of addressing problems by force outweigh the benefits in all but a few select cases (and we disagree internally on those). We believe that people, groups, and communities can resolve their own problems. Will it be magic, and perfect? Of course not. But it will be better - not because the situation is necessarily better, but because force is no longer employed being used to make people do things they don't want to do. It's similar to the transition from monarchies to republics - you address one set of problems, and they are replaced by others, but the others are a far better set of problems to deal with.

I have no idea where I said or suggested that government "must address these problems with force, no matter who is in charge". This is a mystery to me (along with the methods of enforcement government would use *without* any force left to it - both positions seem extreme, but luckily I'm not arguing either.) But you make it sound like I think everything will be solved by simply pointing guns at people. I've spoken simply about working *within* the system to fix it before we consider going outside to break it (for example, by defunding it without attempting to fix it, which is what you actually argued for above).

This misunderstanding may be coloring your reading of what I write. Put it out of your head.

No, they reduce to "get rid of government and we will, eventually, be better off". Removing government force makes things better by eliminating some very obvious and bad problems, like the use of force to hurt people who never harmed us. It's not a magical elixir, just as the market is not a magical fix - it's just more honest, less brutal, and more realistic.

Earlier, and on multiple occasions, you told us you were not an anarchist. I'm confused. I'm fine with anarchists (well, not bomb-throwers, but you know), I just think it's unrealistic above the local level. That hardly makes me a Sam Browne belt wearing brownshirt...

I think this is because there is a large gap between what we consider to be a "reasonable path". I consider the U.S. Constitution to be a "reasonable path", but our government is so far from that position that we can't even see it from here. Thus it is very difficult for us to come to a mutual agreement. For example, there is no Constitutional authorization for the Department of Education, so ... why do we have one, even leaving aside the fact that it has accomplished essentially nothing since it was created? I don't think we can find a middle path on that, because I don't believe it should be permitted and you believe it is critical to our society. I might be able to accept a much smaller role for the DoE, but you wish to expand it, so how can we negotiate? Our goals lie in opposite directions.

Neither is there provision in the Constitution for dissolving government, or removing it's ability to use force. But we now both are saying that regulations and elections and changing laws and reducing funding can help. Perhaps that's a middle path. I don't think we'll ever get rid of taxes; I don't think we'll see the government fall peacefully; but there's a *lot* we can do to reduce it's expenditures and allow lower taxes and get more efficiency. Heck, I'd be happy reducing DOE to the number of people it takes to define a national curriculum. (I do feel as did most of the Founders that education is a legitimate concern of government.)

But you seem to think my position is waaaaay past what I've actually said. I'm really puzzled by that. But okay. At least I have a better understanding of where you're coming from. We do actually have a middle ground, but I wish I could express myself clearly enough that you don't think I'm some kind of authoritarian hard-liner, because that's about as far from my beliefs as you can get without my actually signing back up to Chomsky's agenda...

What a weird conclusion to the argument.