It's not a question of more or less government. Just like it's not a question of socialism vs capitalism.
We know that some problems are best solved when society pools its resources, and other problems are best solved by market forces.
For those problems where pooling society's resources is the way to go (healthcare), it's a question of what are the "regulations"? Are they effective at preventing corruption? Or, are they built in order to facilitate corruption?
The devil is always in the details, and that's what matters, not whether there's more or less regulation. Take healthcare for example, if we went single-payer, that's a government solution, but it also requires far fewer regulations than the current system.
There are systems that can be put in place that are simple and effective at serving the general public. The reason they don't get put in place is because big business has captured the legislators. Is this the fault of government, or is this the fault of big business? I think we need to fight to put in place those simple, effective systems and not eschew all government. People's memories are short, but we've seen what happens when the government is small or non-existent.
However I find the balance right now is so grossly in favor of the government being given all the power (to the point that on the so-called "libertarian haven" of HN, libertarians are routinely openly mocked for their beliefs, almost uniquely amongst the political orientations here) that it is not an unreasonable approximation to speak of the government just having power stripped from it. That takes some structure to pull off (many of which were actually written into our government, and defanged in various ways over time), and that's why I'm a libertarian and not an anarchist, but there's no contradiction, precisely because liberatarianism isn't anarchism.
As with the other message, if the point is to convince me that I shouldn't be a libertarian, one should probably avoid arguing against anarchism instead. In the meantime, I can't help but notice the frequency of the basic argument
1. Sometimes governments need power.
2. So, yeah, they need this power too.
Just that. Bare, plain, and simple. Also I love "The government invented the Internet, so, yeah, they need to spend trillions of dollars on everything."
It's not a question of more or less government. Just like it's not a question of socialism vs capitalism.
We know that some problems are best solved when society pools its resources, and other problems are best solved by market forces.
For those problems where pooling society's resources is the way to go (healthcare), it's a question of what are the "regulations"? Are they effective at preventing corruption? Or, are they built in order to facilitate corruption?
The devil is always in the details, and that's what matters, not whether there's more or less regulation. Take healthcare for example, if we went single-payer, that's a government solution, but it also requires far fewer regulations than the current system.
There are systems that can be put in place that are simple and effective at serving the general public. The reason they don't get put in place is because big business has captured the legislators. Is this the fault of government, or is this the fault of big business? I think we need to fight to put in place those simple, effective systems and not eschew all government. People's memories are short, but we've seen what happens when the government is small or non-existent.