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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (262830)	4/26/2008 9:55:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Wow, "utter nonsense" really makes me want to retract my statements about the childishness of Libertarians. If you engage with arguments that make sense logically, and ideas that have some distant grounding in reality... If you actually read people's post, and respond with respect even when you disagree (BTW respect for people doesn't mean you have to respect the ideas they are arguing for), than you don't get "utter nonsense" at least not from me, you get a serious examination of your ideas, and a response to your points about mine. But when your arguments are about applying labels, and importantly inaccurately applying labels (such as "libertarian" equals "right wing"), and than casually dismiss anyone you can (reasonably or not) apply certain labels to, without responding to or considering the points... and then you go on to make statements that actually are nonsense, and ad-hominem like "Libertarians can never close the loop on arguments they start so they just walk away muddled" then a response of "utter nonsense" seems appropriate... and at least it keeps the focus on your claims rather than making a personal attack against you. ------- At least at the end you do ask a serious and relevant question. I will respond to that in my next post.

To: geode00 who wrote (262830)	4/26/2008 11:17:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So, let's go at this from another angle, what functions that the government owns today should be given over to the private sector? Well quite a few functions just shouldn't be done at all, tariffs, price supports, price limits, enforcement of a number of types of laws and regulations, etc. Also there shouldn't be nearly the level of transfer payments where you involuntarily take from some and give to others. Some of these would be included in the last paragraph (for example farm prices supports are both price supports and a transfer program). A decent argument can be made for assistance to the desperately poor, esp, if they are disabled or children, but the extent of federal transfer programs goes far beyond that (the majority of federal transfers do not go to people living in poverty). Now this doesn't really answer your question as you asked it, because I'm not talking about things that should be taken over by the private sector but things that shouldn't be done at all, but that's the larger part of the decrease in spending that I would support. In other areas (and to an extent the one's I mentioned above) you might not have actual elimination of a federal role, or direct cuts in spending, but a reduction in the growth of spending. Stop finding so many new ways to spend the tax payer's dollars, and stop expanding the old ways at every opportunity. One category where there is inherently a federal role, and which is always going to be expensive by most terms is defense. But defense can and HAS gone down as a portion of the economy over time. As the economy grows our need for defense spending doesn't grow, with it, at least not at the same pace. So I would not seek to slash such spending, I also disagree with the people who argue that would should seek to keep a minimum of 4% of the GDP for defense. Eventually (although this may take a long time, I might not live to witness it), I see it going under 1%, without ever having to cut nominal, or even real dollars, and without ever seriously weakening the US military. (Well I do see a cut in real dollars when Iraq comes to a close, but I'm talking long term trends here, and the up and later down from Iraq, is just a small bump in the long term trends, over generations that I am talking about) Then finally there is the things that are done by the feds now, which could be done by the states or the private sector. Of course if the states take it over its still funded by taxes, but you have the advantage where different states can try different things instead of a one sized fits all solution, and you probably have greater fidelity to the constitution, but having the feds move out of more areas. I don't have some big highly developed plan for the private sector to take over but I can toss out a few ideas. I would reduce regulation on the private sector, so it is more able to take over activities and do them more efficently. I'd like to see a larger percentage of our infrastructure produced by the private sector (but I still see a big role for the public sector). I'd get rid of the US Postal Service monopoly on first class mail. I'd like to see more retirement funding be done privately (but you can't simply cut out the Social Security program when people have ran their lives for decades under the assumption that they would receive the payments, and are now elderly, or approaching it, and don't have as much time to change their decisions around). I could see the state governments moving away from socialized/public schools. They could retain public funding, but there is no need for the school to be owned and run by the government. And in many other areas the government pays for things without doing them itself (for example we have food stamps, not government food distribution centers).