Should the government fund absolutely nothing besides the military?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No.

I wonder if who proposed this (who shall remain nameless), realizes how absolutely unfeasible and contradictory with many of his other views this "plan" is. Actually, no, he doesn't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No o/c.

[MasterJedi]

No o/c.

[David S]

Article I Section 8 of the constitution. This is what the federal governments powers are:
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and
Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general
Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be
uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and
with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject
of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the
Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin
of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings
and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and
Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning
Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be
for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union,
suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for
governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United
States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers,
and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline
prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District
(not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and
the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United
States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent
of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of
Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or
Officer thereof."


Nowhere does it say anything about medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, corporate welfare or foreign aid.

Note the term General Welfare as explained by Madison in Federalist #41 is a general term and the specifics of it are spelled out in the following lines. It does not mean redistributing wealth.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nowhere does it say anything about medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, corporate welfare or foreign aid.

It does mention things other than the military though.

[David S]

Nowhere does it say anything about medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, corporate welfare or foreign aid.

It does mention things other than the military though.

Yes it does, the post office, patent office, the mint etc. Those things are among the constitutional powers of the federal government.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And the person I'm referring to said the government shouldn't even fund them, and should not pay for anything at all except the military.

[DuEbrithil]

And the person I'm referring to said the government shouldn't even fund them, and should not pay for anything at all except the military.

hmm...I wonder who that was. I cant figure out who I think is more crazy BRTD or DWTL?

[Gabu]

(long post)

Why do many libertarians always answer a question beginning with "Should the government..." with a quote from the Constitution?  The question is with regards to what you think the place of government is, not what is legal under the Constitution.

Anyways, no, obviously not.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The whole problem with this idea is that it's simply impossible. You can't have the government work only as a bank for the military. First, where does the government come from? Someone has to fund elections, and it's pretty obvious why privatized elections won't work. Those elected officials need salaries, as do their staffs. DWTL said we should privatize the police force, yet he gave no example of how to do this (he simply said that "it's probably possible to work out some way", but I think if you support an idea, you should have a plan for it if you think it's such a valid idea and a much better way of doing things than the current situation). Well do you privatize courts as well to try offenders? I don't need to explain the flaws in that idea. DWTL's legal system won't be too effective at shutting down abortion providers like he wants.

How about border security? Yes, you can have the military guard the border, but most such people want a fence too. Well, where is the money for this fence going to come from? And how about investigating illegals in the country and businesses that hire them? You don't do that with the military, plus you need some database of citizens to know who's illegal and who's not, that requires funding to keep track of those things. Are you going to abolish the DMV and driver's licenses? It's pretty obvious why THAT is a bad idea.

And quite frankly, why do you even need a military if you're going to abolish anything else? What's to defend? You're basically establishing anarcho-capitalism. If that's what you want fine, but no military exists in such a society, well it does but it's privatized too.

Yes, conservatives do tend to support cuts in spending to government programs, and increase in military spending, so the idea of abolishing all government spending except the military would be the most extreme proposal as such. But I've heard no conservative except DWTL call for it, and the reason is pretty simple: Because it's not a viable or logical position. The only reason one would take it is out of an attempt to take the most extreme right wing positions possible on every issue, not because they generally see conservative ideas as the best plan for society.

[© tweed]

The adverbs you place in questions like this really aren't necessary.

[Padfoot]

Try running a functional democracy in 30 years after you've stopped funding public education.  I doubt anyone would be capable of reading the Constitution let alone quoting it.

[Ban my account ffs!]

DWTL is a 16 year old kid that lives with his parents who provide everything for him, including transportation.  They are probably conservatives and gripe about taxes, etc.  So DWTL takes it to the extreme either because he wants this reaction and the associated attention or he doesn't think about things very much before blurting out the ideas.

I envision DWTL's perfect world as a place where the riff raff are forcibly kept away from the few rich people by private security forces that also act as morality police.  People are sentenced to death by private courts for having an abortion and then once the execution is completed, a bill is sent to the family, but must be hand delivered by a maid at an extra cost levied against the family since the private mail service won't serve the largely rural area that the family lives in.

I mean, we're talking more inequality and worse conditions than early-industrializing England.  Even England had more regulation than DWTL proposes and 6 year olds were getting fired for getting their hand mauled off by a machine during the 17th hour of her 6th work day in a row.  I'd like to see DWTL work an 8 hour day at a cushy job, let alone some of the sh**t that many would have to endure under his plan.

If you want to live in an anarcho-capitalist world because you think you'd somehow benefit therefrom, move to a small country in Africa.

[DownWithTheLeft]

In an ideal society? Of course
In America? No
Was my statement taken out of a context b/c BRTD can't read? Yes

[Bono]

Try running a functional democracy in 30 years after you've stopped funding public education.  I doubt anyone would be capable of reading the Constitution let alone quoting it.

Actually, you're wrong. E. G. West examined the history of the rise of government schooling in Britain and the U.S., and he has established several important points which go far to refute the popular idea that mass education can exist only through the intervention of the state:

1. Schooling expenditure in Britain represented about the same fraction of national income prior to government intervention and compulsory schooling laws as it did after both were introduced.

2. Prior to government involvement, almost all children were going to school. The opposite claim, widely made in Britain by the supporters of government involvement, was based on fairly simple statistical errors. The most common was to calculate how many children should be in school by picking an arbitrary and unrealistic number of years of schooling and using it to calculate how many children would be in school if all children went to school for that number of years. The ratio of the number of children actually in school to the calculated number was then treated as if it was the fraction of children who went to school. In practice, as West shows, more direct evidence suggests that almost all children in the period just before the beginning of government involvement (c. 1830) went to school for at least a few years. The discrepancy between actual and calculated attendance mainly reflected actual school attendance for fewer years than assumed in the calculation.

A particularly striking example of this fallacy was an unfavorable comparison of the British private system to the Prussian state system, made by the Manchester Statistical Society in 1834. The authors assumed that British students attended school for ten years, used that assumption to calculate that just under two thirds of the children in Manchester attended school, and contrasted that to the (claimed) hundred percent attendance rate of the Prussian system. The Prussian system, however, provided for only seven years of schooling-so even if the claim that every child got the full seven years was true, the average years of schooling per child were about the same in the two systems (7 in Prussia, about 6.5 in Manchester). The Statistical Society offered no evidence that the British number represented two thirds of the students attending school for ten years each, and later evidence made it clear that it did not. The actual number who never attended school seems, from slightly later studies, to have been between one and three percent.

3. Attempts to measure educational output in the form of literacy, using both a variety of studies at particular times and a crude measure (percentage of grooms who signed their names when they got married) that is available over a long time period, show no significant effect of government intervention. So far as one can tell by the (very imperfect) evidence, literacy was already rising rapidly prior to the beginning of government subsidy. Most of the measured increase in literacy had already occurred by the time a nationwide system of government schools and compulsory attendance was established.

4. The eventual expansion of the government school system was in large part the result of efforts by the people running it, plausibly explained by their own self-interest. Its main effect was to replace, not to supplement, the pre-existing private system.

The source for this date is West (1975); Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, Institute of Economic Affairs, London 1965; "The Political Economy of American Public School Legislation," 10 Journal of Law and Economics, 101 (1967); "Private Versus Public Education: A Classical Economic Dispute," 72 Journal of Political Economy 465 (1964).


Indeed, for America's first two centuries — the 1620s until the 1840s — most schooling was completely independent of government involvement. church schools, charity schools, private schools, dame schools home schools and apprenticeships offered an educational diversity that created the most literate population in history, the one that spawned the Founding Fathers.  People who voted for the founding fathers and birthed this Republic in the late 1700s never attended "free, universal, and compulsory public schools" (which were invented 50-60 years later). Before 1850, when Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to force children to go to school, literacy was at 98 percent. In the 90s, it was 91 percent, although if the "functional illiterates" were removed, the rate would have been much lower.

[Bono]

DWTL is a 16 year old kid that lives with his parents who provide everything for him, including transportation.  They are probably conservatives and gripe about taxes, etc.  So DWTL takes it to the extreme either because he wants this reaction and the associated attention or he doesn't think about things very much before blurting out the ideas.

Why is family solidarity a bad thing? Is it "helping people" only good when you're forcing people to do it at gunpoint? It never ceases to amaze me how liberals are hostile towards people whose families help them in life. I guess if you use the money of complete strangers taken from them at gunpoint you're much superior than if you rely on the bonds of love.

I'll ignore the rest of the ravings because they're just a bunch of unfounded assumptions, except to note that African countries have governments.

[David S]

(long post)

Why do many libertarians always answer a question beginning with "Should the government..." with a quote from the Constitution?  The question is with regards to what you think the place of government is, not what is legal under the Constitution.

Anyways, no, obviously not.

Gabu from a legal perspective, before government decides whether it should do something or not it should first determine whether it has the constitutional authority to do so. If it doesn't have the authority then it shouldn't do it.

Now if you want it to be a philosophical discussion as to the proper role of government then I think the constitution does a pretty good job of it. So for me the legal question and the philosophical question are pretty much the same. My only real exception to that is that I would prefer to limit government even more by repealing the 16th amendment.

[opebo]

This question is misleading.  The essential function of the State is to protect the interests of the priviledged, mostly through protection of 'property'.  So to suggest that the State only funds the military is silly - it allocates all the 'funding' or production of society, even in what some call a 'free market society'.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

In an ideal society? Of course
In America? No
Was my statement taken out of a context b/c BRTD can't read? Yes

You still have yet to explain how this "ideal society" is going to function with the issues I outlined above, and why in the military is even necessary in this society. And aren't you taking into account that if the military is the ONLY government institution, then you've basically established a military regime ala Burma?

[Ban my account ffs!]

DWTL is a 16 year old kid that lives with his parents who provide everything for him, including transportation.  They are probably conservatives and gripe about taxes, etc.  So DWTL takes it to the extreme either because he wants this reaction and the associated attention or he doesn't think about things very much before blurting out the ideas.

Why is family solidarity a bad thing? Is it "helping people" only good when you're forcing people to do it at gunpoint? It never ceases to amaze me how liberals are hostile towards people whose families help them in life. I guess if you use the money of complete strangers taken from them at gunpoint you're much superior than if you rely on the bonds of love.

I'll ignore the rest of the ravings because they're just a bunch of unfounded assumptions, except to note that African countries have governments.

You're a hypocrite, Bono.  And since you're so good at criticizing me, why don't you take a look at what you've written and figure that out for yourself.

Am I hostile towards people whose families help them in life?  No.  My family helps me a ton.

What bugs me is when immature children run around calling poor people lazy and stupid and inept when they have shown absolutely no proof that they aren't just lazy, stupid, and inept themselves because daddy and mommy provide for their every need.  They don't know what going without is like and yet they would like to take away what little many hopeless people have.

Some people are poor and hopeless with no families to dig them out of their problems or to support them when they are in need.

For someone who doesn't ever provide any real good solutions or ideas on how to fix problems, you sure seem to have a lot to say about how big government should be and what its function should be.

[2952-0-0]

(long post)

Why do many libertarians always answer a question beginning with "Should the government..." with a quote from the Constitution?  The question is with regards to what you think the place of government is, not what is legal under the Constitution.

Anyways, no, obviously not.

Gabu from a legal perspective, before government decides whether it should do something or not it should first determine whether it has the constitutional authority to do so. If it doesn't have the authority then it shouldn't do it.

Now if you want it to be a philosophical discussion as to the proper role of government then I think the constitution does a pretty good job of it. So for me the legal question and the philosophical question are pretty much the same. My only real exception to that is that I would prefer to limit government even more by repealing the 16th amendment.

I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but what would you advocate if you lived in a country with no written constitution, like Britain? Should the British government not do anything since they have no constitution? What about some countries such as Portugal, whose constitution is far-reaching into economic and social affairs? Would you then talk about the same aspects?

[Gabu]

Gabu from a legal perspective, before government decides whether it should do something or not it should first determine whether it has the constitutional authority to do so. If it doesn't have the authority then it shouldn't do it.

Now if you want it to be a philosophical discussion as to the proper role of government then I think the constitution does a pretty good job of it. So for me the legal question and the philosophical question are pretty much the same. My only real exception to that is that I would prefer to limit government even more by repealing the 16th amendment.

But this isn't a legal question.  It's a philosophical one, asking what place one thinks that government should have.  If you agree with what the Constitution says, fine, but state why.  Just quoting the Constitution and saying "case closed" does not help the debate along at all.

[MaC]

no.  They should fund a justice system also.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but what would you advocate if you lived in a country with no written constitution, like Britain?

You could "quote" precedent, convention and so on I guess.

[David S]

Gabu from a legal perspective, before government decides whether it should do something or not it should first determine whether it has the constitutional authority to do so. If it doesn't have the authority then it shouldn't do it.

Now if you want it to be a philosophical discussion as to the proper role of government then I think the constitution does a pretty good job of it. So for me the legal question and the philosophical question are pretty much the same. My only real exception to that is that I would prefer to limit government even more by repealing the 16th amendment.

But this isn't a legal question.  It's a philosophical one, asking what place one thinks that government should have.  If you agree with what the Constitution says, fine, but state why.  Just quoting the Constitution and saying "case closed" does not help the debate along at all.

From a philosophical perspective I like the US constitution (not that of  some other country) because it limits the government to  bare bones necessities, mainly the military, the justice system, post office, mint and a few other specific duties. The country got by quite nicely for over 100 years when it adhered to those limits. But beginning in the  1900s the government began to get more involved in the personal affairs of the people  (banning drugs and booze) and it also began spending money on things that are not authorized such as SS, medicare/medicaid, welfare, corporate welfare and foreign aid. Since then our debt has started to rocket out of control and the future debt looks looks just plain scary. ( in excess of $50 trillion).

I'm always reminded of the words of Sir Alexander Tytler who said:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

It seems that's exactly where we are headed.