Their belief that government is being "oppressive" simply for taxing people to deliver the greater good. It just seems like a very heartless ideology.
The problem with government is that it has become unresponsive, and has become it's own self sustaining ceneter of power.
I am an advocate of what is called philanthropic capitalism, when money is allocated for good works, but continued funding is tied to actual results.
A small example:
Back in 1999 myself and a few of my business partners collapsed one of our companies and realized a fairly nice profit. We decided to set up a small foundation with some of the proceeds. It's a very small foundation but we are able to give out annual grants totalling about +/-$70,000 per year.
We are all big advocates of basic educational skills, mainly Math which we happen to think is very badly taught by and large in the schools.
We annully request grant applications where we require applicants to spell out two things:
1) What do you hope to accomplish?
2) How will you measure what you have achieved?
While most of the grant applications are great at #1, they are almost always wretchedly bad at #2.
A couple years back we pulled a grant from one group because they simply could provide absolutely no evidence that ther project they ran made kids better at math...
That almost never happens in Government.
In Government, when a school fails badly, we give them more money, not less and this is just morally wrong.
If as a society we decide to spend X dollars to educate children is it not a moral imperative that we "buy" as much education as we possible can for than money? -
Is it nor morally wrong to give that money to bad teachers and bad schools, when for the same money we could get better results giving it to good teachers and good schools?
Everybody is (correctly) shocked when the Pentagon buys $4000 hammers. $4000 hammers are a lousy way to defend a nation.
Yet we have $60K teachers, many of whom are no brighter than that $4000 hammer, yet we reward them with more money for failure...
As a libertarian what I hate about Government is the disconnect between money in and value out.
There is no connection and no accountability, and no incentive for economy.
The entire Budget of the US Salvation army is under a 1/4 billion a year.
Think of all the Salvation army does in a year.
Think how little the government can do with a quarter Billion.
Here is a question for all you honest Liberals out there.....
The US spent about 1.1 trillion on welfare last year.
If we totally abolished Welfare and gave the whole $1.1 Trillion to the Salvation Army, would the poor be better or worse off...?
If you answered "Better" you have seen the obvious and are one step along the path to becoming a libertarian...
