Can government be benign?

[sear]

Can government be benign?


Note:
I would like to thank DHodges for inspiring this topic as follows:

"I think it is possible for a government to be benign" DHodges

http://www.theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewto ... 0&start=75

[brokenhead]

My immediate reaction would be that a benign government would likely be an ineffectual one. Otherwise, we have to wait for an enlightened despot to come around, like Katherine the Great or Andy of Mayberry.

The way it actually happens is seldom benign. Government tends to arrogate to itself the authority to arm itself, systematically pay itself, and grant to itself prerogatives those it governs to not enjoy, all in the "interest' of the governed. In the U.S., we no longer get the right to openly complain about it. D.H. alluded to "benign" as in a benign tumor. Benign tumors may not metastisize, but they can and often do grow quite large and can cause a great deal of discomfort.

[sear]

OK broke,
I'm w/ you so far.

Do you think the U.S. government might be rendered more benign if the Constitution were amended to prohibit itself from enforcing laws against victimless crimes, and impose strict humanitarian protocols limiting the use of coercive force at home and abroad?
No more morality Wars against the People (18th Amendment, Drug War, sex workers, etc.).

"Benign tumors may not metastisize, but they can and often do grow quite large" broke

Right now, U.S. governments consume about ~50% of the U.S. GDP.
How about a Constitutional amendment that would reduce that to some lower fixed amount? 20%? 22.8%?

The following excerpted from U.S. Presidential candidate Libertarian Andre Marrou's 1992 stump speech.

"... the United States is increasingly socialistic under the Democrats & Republicans. The Democrats are essentially left wing socialists. The Republicans are right wing socialists. How do you define socialism? More money to government, more power to government, more bureaucrats, and more regulations, and on and on ... .
The federal government spends 25% of the Gross National Product. State, county, and local government spend another 22%. That's 47% of the Gross National Product of this country being spent by the government bureaucrats primarily on themselves. That leaves 53% in your pockets. You're the people who earn it. 47% vs 53%; how can we get your 53% up to 90%? One and only one way, we must reduce the 47% the government spends, down to 10%. That is the only way it can be done. Individual Liberty is diametrically opposed to governmental power." Marrou

[Toban]

Why not abolish the State altogether?

I can't see any reason to give one group of people (the government) all the guns and then let them tell everyone else what to do. It seems that hardly anybody considers a stateless society. I used to think it would never work, but now I can see that it was just a failure of my imagination.

This article put things in perspective for me. Highy mind opening.

[DHodges]

Why not abolish the State altogether?

There is the practical question of whether it can be done. States don't go down without a fight. Once gone, it would take constant vigilance to stop a new state from arising - which I don't think is much different from the vigilance needed to keep a minimal state minimal.

States are a matter of degree; even a small tribe will usually have a leader of some sort. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, if he is the leader through consensus, rather than through force. I don't think the state can be absolutely abolished; who would do (enforce) the abolishing? Also, I think it is good to have a set of principles that are generally agreed to - something like a Constitution. General principles like slavery being wrong, fraud being wrong, freedoms people have (like the Bill of Rights) that are not to be infringed, perhaps something about the nature of private property.

There is always the possibility of a rogue group or foreign aggressor, requiring cooperation between different groups. Whether that co-operation constitutes a "state" or not could really just be a question of semantics.

I can't see any reason to give one group of people (the government) all the guns and then let them tell everyone else what to do.

A legitimate government does not disarm its citizens. A free man has the right to be armed. A man who does not have that right is not a free man; he is a subject (he is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign.) This is one of the dividing lines between a legitimate government and a tyranny.

[sear]

"It seems that hardly anybody considers a stateless society." Toban

There were anarchists long before Socco & Vanzetti were executed.

Some confuse anarchy with chaos, riot, bloodshed, & destruction.

It's not necessarily so.

Anarchy can simply mean, without formal government.

It's an appealing idea, but doesn't really work.

Even families have a head of household.

As long as there are humans, there will be disputes.

As long as there are human disputes, there will be need of formal dispute resolution.

And in our culture, that means governments; government laws, government law courts, and government law enforcers to bind the litigants to the verdict, etc.

[brokenhead]

Do you think the U.S. government might be rendered more benign if the Constitution were amended to prohibit itself from enforcing laws against victimless crimes, and impose strict humanitarian protocols limiting the use of coercive force at home and abroad?

The first part of your suggestion sounds like a whole new can of worms.

What is "victimless"? I think many actions which are not currently crimes have victims. These victims have redress in civil courts. It is arguable - and you would certainly hear the arguments loud and clear - whether or not prostitution is victimless. If it were legal, it should be highly taxed. If drug use were legalized, it should be highly taxed. And would be, no doubt.

I spent 3 weeks in rehab to help deal with an alcohol addiction. After hearing everybody else's stories, mine paled so much in comparison, I felt like I was wasting bed space. Let's say heroin use is decriminalized. That does not make H any less addictive. Decriminalization would either have an effect on heroin usage or it would not. I say it would. If it did, it would cause usage either to increase or decrease. I say it would increase. If you can go to the corner convenience store for cigarettes and to the neihgborhood liquor store for alcohol, you can bet a distribution system for other legal drugs would emerge in a heartbeat. It has emerged and flourished as it is, with its current legal status. There is no such thing as social use of crack cocaine. People drink without being addicted. People do not smoke without being addicted. Crack and heroin would be in the latter category, much more widespread because decriminalization would take much of the overhead out of the industry. Then you would not need to attend rehab to hear the horror stories, because they would be all around you. A man who shoots up smack daily, if he has no dependents and, say, lives off a trust fund, might not be hurting anybody else. Currently, he is engaging in a "victimless" crime. But as soon as he gets behind the wheel and kills a pedestrian while stoned, then is the crime of drug use still "victimless"? And it should be immediately clear that his case is special. Just as alcohol ruins lives of poeple with dependents and jobs, other addictive drug use would as well. And with more ruthless efficiency.

What I deeply resent, sear, is the almost unfathomable use of tax dollars for military spending. It's as if we as an economically robust and productive nation have created an überclass that does not seem responsive to the rest of society. We call this our "government." For every regular citizen who gets a voice in the media, this überclass hires 2 or 3 professionals to drown the voice out. And nothing changes. I don't resent being middle-class. As long as I have the material things I need, I am cool with my socioeconomic status. But that status doesn't have much room for further taxation. It's like I am deep in a mine and they keep chiseling away at the support columns because they have already taken as much as they can. Sooner or later, it's all going to come down and crush me.

So when I see the talking heads on Sunday morning TV, everybody excruciatingly coiffed and made-up, trying to dance around the issues by spinning them this way and that, I feel like Elvis - I want to become a handgun owner and practice on my TV set. I feel like the pundits know the problem, the people know the problem, everyone knows the problem, but no one can fix it, so the "experts" affect an air of a concerned intellegentsia, self-important in their political sophistication. Everyone seems to be fiddling while Rome is burning.

I think an amendment to prohibit the enforcement of or enactment of laws restricting victimless acts might be just the ticket, though. It would never pass, as it would be a case of the überclass limiting its own purview, but it would be an eye-opener. We would have a nation-wide thunderstorm of lawsuits as the court system tried to nail down what activity is "victimless" and what activity is not. A whole new set of precendents would be required to handle the newly deregulated activities in question.

Maybe things have to get worse before they can get better.

The amendment for the strict humanitarian protocols - which I take it would be a separate amendment - dealing with the use of coercive force sounds almost like a no-brainer to me. I think we have to do it. The President is constitutionally the Commander-in-Chief, but ever since Eisenhower, this power seems to have been misused or unbridled, at best. As it stands, the Constitution apparently permits the President to attack a foreign sovereign country and engage in protracted nation-building, with you and me footing the bill and the families of the 3000+ US soldiers paying the ultimate price. I wish someone could explain to me how this could have happened, and how it could possibly come out for the better in the long run.

Do you remember the 2000 election? The man with the most votes and the most experience did not get the Presidency. Our republican system failed us, and failed the world.

[sear]

"What is "victimless"?" broke

Just about any conduct by or between consenting adults, including recreational drug usage*, sexual prostitution, gambling, etc.

broke,
On Drug War:
I believe if recreational drugs were decriminalized, their recreational abuse would decrease per capita.
Why do I believe that?

"In 1960 in this country [U.S.] there were only 4,000,000 people in the entire nation who had ever used an illicit drug at any time in their life. By 1990 we had 80,000,000 people in this country who had used illicit drugs at any time in their life, and the numbers who became hard core, frequent users were proportional and commensurate." DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine

I imagine it's reciprocal. If Drug War increased it, then perhaps ending Drug War will decrease it.
The law is a stupid reason to not abuse drugs. The more sensible reason to not abuse drugs is it's bad for you.

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of [their own] folly is to fill the world with fools." Herbert Spencer

Drug War makes common sense a lot less common.

"What I deeply resent, sear, is the almost unfathomable use of tax dollars for military spending." broke

Me too.

"There's no more extravagant waste than a 2nd rate military." Gen. Horner

But!
If only $80 $Billion $dollars is required to both defend and deter any military attack against the U.S. for 2009, then spending $80 $Billion and $one $dollars on the 2009 U.S. military budget wastes a $dollar.
It's better that we spend a little too much, than that we spend not enough.

But you're exactly right broke. We're spending way, way, way too much. The F-22 is the one that's got my panties in a bunch.
Did we really need that? Other examples too numerous to post.
And by the time we do need the F-22, it'll already be years out of date.

"It would never pass ..." broke

In the 18th Century U.S. federal government was our servant.
In the 21st Century, U.S. federal government is our master.

"Houston! We have a problem."

* This would not legalize DWI, etc.
But as long as the public was not significantly endangered, consenting adults could do to themselves and one another just about anything they like.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

America is supposed to be a government of the people, for the people, by the people. When this country was first formed, we had to have representatives because there was no effective communication tool where all the people could actually participate equally. We would still have to have some kind of representative/person in charge to talk with heads of other countries and do various things, but I wonder if now it would be better if everyone were allowed to represent themselves through the internet.

It would be harder to corrupt the government because there wouldn't exactly be anyone to bribe. A person/corporation would have to bribe all of the people, and I don't think that would actually qualify as a bribe. Run the government like a great big message board with good internet security and only let moderators move posts to a spam forum rather than edit or delete anything.

[brokenhead]

The law is a stupid reason to not abuse drugs. The more sensible reason to not abuse drugs is it's bad for you.

What makes you think other people are as sensible as you are?

[Unidian]

Good question, broken. That's where libertarianism falls down. When pressed, they have to admit that it's unreasonable to expect people to be a sensible as they are. It just won't happen. So what is to be done about reckless people? From a libertarian perspective, nothing can be done about them. They must be allowed to simply weed themselves out.

And that, of course, is ordinary social Darwinism.

[DHodges]

Unidian, from your point of view, protecting people from themselves is a legitimate function of government?

[brokenhead]

Unidian, from your point of view, protecting people from themselves is a legitimate function of government?

Let me butt back in briefly to answer that if I may. If government is not necessary to protect person A from person A, does that imply it (government) is also unnecessary to protect person B from person C? How about protection from other people? Person A might clear the ice from the sidewalk in front of his house, but drive like an orangutan. Person B may drive just fine but not keep his German Shepherd on a leash. Person C could be single mom who keeps the dog fenced in, but her two young teenage sons are truants from school more days than not. It doesn't matter which social norm you choose: if you can assign a score to each person that reflects that person's ability to abide by the norm, you'll find your Gaussian distribution, more or less, every single time. Which I'm sure you know. If we call the stricter norms "laws," don't imagine that if you removed those laws, the Gaussian curve would stay put. It might even not remain Gaussian-like, with one max. Human nature being what it is, though, it probably would - it would just flatten out and pool down by the lower (worse) scores. Hey, DH, you may need that handgun after all, and a sturdy pair of shit-kickers besides, just to keep your feet dry.

[Unidian]

Unidian, from your point of view, protecting people from themselves is a legitimate function of government?

Of course it is. What really puzzles me is how we (meaning Americans in particular) reached the point where this is considered a legitimate and thoughtful question. It certainly wouldn't have been in 1958, and this is one area where, in my view, we have regressed rather than gone forward.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

So you actually think that G.W. Bush knows how you should live your life better than you do?

[Unidian]

Of course not. The idea that government can legitimately protect people from making certain widely-recognized bad decisions in a reasonable manner says nothing about any specific case, and even less about any specific individual. Bush is an idiot. His idiocy does not mean government is worthless, it just means he's a dope.

[daybrown]

The history is obscure, but there actually have been benign governments. I guess we could start with the Anatolian cities 10,000 years ago. The history everyone knows was written by the agrarians who went south to setup what we call the "fertile crescent'. Which was chronic warfare and exploitation by the alpha male warrior class about as far back as we can see.

The obscure history was only written in more recent times by archaeologists like Gimbutas, about the people who went North when chronic drought became a problem at the end of the 7th mil BC. Goodison & Morris, "Ancient Goddesses" wrote about digging into a virgin tel on the Danube floodplain that dated from when Anatolian farmers arrived until about 4000 BC.

They dug down thru thousands of years of prehistory looking for signs of warfare and violence. Didnt find any. They did this because its been a common observation among those digging these tels along the Danube & Dneipr. Gimbutas shows us hundreds of chalcolitthic artifacts from SE Europe, and its only when you realize what they didnt find that the issue comes up. There are no weapons or graves of warriors or signs of burnt rubble in the tels like after a place had been attacked.

Course, there's not a lot left after 6,000 years, but the charred stubs of the posts of their structures never rotted. The ring patterns are still visible, so they have the dendochronology going back 8000 years now. And we can see where the Cucuteni moved up the Dnepr to found Tripolye, which was a thousand years older than Fertile Crescent Ur, and 9 times larger. Again, just the post stubs found by magnetometers in what now looks like pasture.

But the domesticated the horse, and most people went into the livestock business on the Steppes, which was gonzo easier than farming for a living. If you have the horse, the cart, and bronze metalurgy. which they took all the way to NW China, where we know them as the Tocharians. Who had the same benign government ruling the cities they set up at the various oases of the Taklamakhan desert.

Only this time, there's lots to look at. The Tarim basin mummies were preserved by the cold alkalline desert soil. Freeze dried. Their costumes are intact. Everybody is middle class. There is no rich aristocracy. The ghost towns of the Taklamakhan, like Loulan and Niya didnt have the ruins of palaces. They didnt build palaces.

How did they get the cooperation of the men? Well, history is all about kings with goon squads, but these people used hotties with cunts in whorehouses. Sex or violence. Pick one. You want a benign government? You dont let men own women. No monogamous marriage.

[DHodges]

Unidian, from your point of view, protecting people from themselves is a legitimate function of government?

Of course it is. What really puzzles me is how we (meaning Americans in particular) reached the point where this is considered a legitimate and thoughtful question. It certainly wouldn't have been in 1958, and this is one area where, in my view, we have regressed rather than gone forward.

I am trying to understand your view, here. It seems to me that you are willing to grant government a certain moral authority that you would not grant to individual citizens. I mean, I do not feel I would be justified in breaking into my neighbor's house to stop him from doing something I consider harmful (to himself) or immoral.

If government has some special authority that individuals do not, where does that authority come from?

[sear]

"What makes you think other people are as sensible as you are?" broke

I don't.
But I think legal constraints don't work as well to keep citizens sober as self-restraint.

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of [their own] folly is to fill the world with fools." Herbert Spencer

If the government has to tell us:

Don't use this electric hair drying in the shower.
Don't use this metal ladder near electrical power lines.
Fasten your seat-belt.
Wear a helmet.
Don't take LSD.
etc.

Then common sense becomes a whole lot less common.

Judgment is similar to a muscle in that it gets stronger with exercise.
If the government makes all our decisions for us, how can we ever hope to develop sound judgment of such things?

I think Drug War just plain old does not work. But don't take my word for it.
Just read what DEA Constantine had to say about it.

"In 1960 in this country [U.S.] there were only 4,000,000 people in the entire nation who had ever used an illicit drug at any time in their life. By 1990 we had 80,000,000 people in this country who had used illicit drugs at any time in their life, and the numbers who became hard core, frequent users were proportional and commensurate." DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine

"What makes you think other people are as sensible as you are?" broke

When they were given the choice, they seemed to choose wisely, according to Constantine.

I think we should live up to the Founding principles of the United States of America and restore Liberty to the People.

[daybrown]

The devil is in the details. The Tocharians, for instance, who seemed to be all middle class, have been found buried with ephedra. We know the Silk Road carried on a very active trade in opium, and an Amazon grave was found with a ritual bowl containing cannibis. The Vedas, which date from the earliest days of the Silk Road towns, has lotsa 'drinking songs' about the use of what ethnobotanist Wasson shows was Soma made with Amanita Muscaria.

The thing about these mind altering compounds is that those who use them generally come to realize the Bible is bullshit. Jesus is not god. Which is why governments dominated by Christians have made so many of thes entheogenic potions illegal. These potions do not make people crazy, but only makes it obvious if they already are. And indeed, when given to psychotics, they have been successfully used in therapy.

Its worth considering that these ancient Silk Road towns constituted the world's first great free market economy beyond the hegemony of Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Chinese empires. Because of all the literate merchants traveling, there was great diversity of religion- Buddhist, Confucian, Manichean, Taoist, Vedic, Zorastrian, and others more obscure. You cant really have a free market system that is dominated by a single cosmology because the moral views of a cosmology affects, as we see with the drug trade, the nature of contracts.

If you want a truly benign government, begin with getting rid of the Christians dominating it. Anthropology and psychology reveal that people have an innate moral sense, and do not need a dogma that power trippers always use to advance their own personal agendas.

A benign government would, as the US government did all thru the 20th century, decide who is competent to manage their own affairs, and who because of youth, senility, or mental dysfunction, could not, and needed more intensive case management. Hominids did not evolve in large urban masses like herd animals, and the larger the communities have become, with the increased mobility among strangers, the greater the portion of the population which needs more intensive case management.

The vast majority of our ancestors until the last few generations, lived in isolated villages of no more than a few hundred. Psychological tests show most people can only remember a few hundred faces. After that, they need to rely on status symbols to know how to relate. I think we all see what kind of trouble this has produced. If you are rational despite all this, and some few of us are, you are fucking lucky.

As for the rest, we cant really expect Christians to do competent case management. It is the lack of rationality among the power elite which raises all these questions about just who the masters of the masses of slaves to passion should be, and results in the abuse of power rather than promoting the public good and general level of mental health. As long as so many are this nuts, you cant really have a sustainable free market economy. Removing the regulation by government only creates a power vacuum filled by transnationals.

[sear]

"A benign government would, as the US government did all thru the 20th century, decide who is competent to manage their own affairs, and who because of youth, senility, or mental dysfunction, could not, and needed more intensive case management." day

Perhaps.
I could easily imagine a heavenly scenario where government might offer certain living assistance benefits to those that might feel the need of them.

I can also easily imagine a nightmare scenario of dictatorial government making decisions for citizens without logic or justification.

"A benign government would, as the US government did all thru the 20th century, decide who is competent to manage their own affairs, and who because of youth, senility, or mental dysfunction, could not, and needed more intensive case management." day

Perhaps you had in mind here a "benevolent" government rather than a "benign" government.

The intended topic here is whether government can be "benign".

Perhaps the answer is yes.
However, for whatever reason, it seems the norm is for governments on Earth to be either dictatorial, exploitively corrupt, or incompetent.
Why are there so few (if ever any) simple, libertarian States?

[DHodges]

However, for whatever reason, it seems the norm is for governments on Earth to be either dictatorial, exploitively corrupt, or incompetent.
Why are there so few (if ever any) simple, libertarian States?

Perhaps it is inherent in the hature of government. How about some quotes on the topic?

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.

________________________________________________________

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

The truth is that men are tired of liberty.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

To read too many books is harmful.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

[sear]

"Perhaps it is inherent in the hature of government." DH

"hature"
Excellent pun / Freudian slurp.

"How about some quotes on the topic?" DH

Thanks DH.
Well done.

I hadn't read the Lord Acton one. I like it.

[daybrown]

The government Machiavelli admired were the free city states of Germany. Competent men voted with their feet. amd tje gpvernmemts, whether republics, oligarchies, or tyrannies, competed with each other. Which is the case today on a global scale; as professional expertise becomes more common, its mobility will drive down the cost of government to them.

[Unidian]

Oh, what's the use? This never stops.

Personally, I've become a big fan of federalism over the years. I think the United States would be 100% better off if we simply let all the anti-government people have the flyover states and essentially secede from the union, in order to establish their anti-government libertarian paradise. The only requirement would be that they sign some sort of treaty stating that they can *never* ask the rest of us for help. Sink or swim, just the way they like it.

And this is one case in which I'm all for hellaciously tight border security. A physical wall would be best, and will undoubtedly be necessary after just a couple of decades.