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To: Road Walker who wrote (47119)	6/28/2013 1:10:57 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 85487

The grow complex as society grows more complex; they respond to need. Not primarily, they are mostly respond to political positions and ideologies and to people's increased desire to control others, or to manipulate the system to get more for themselves. A bigger more complex society doesn't create too much more actual need for a bigger more complex government. With more to regulate there is some need for a larger amount of total regulation, but there isn't a need for regulation to grow more complex as fast as society does, let alone faster as has happened. Also regulation is one of the biggest factors making modern life more complex (and not in the good way of having a lot of alternatives and diversity). As for government spending, a larger more complex and more capable private sector can take on things that arguably might have needed government involvement before hand. Government would reasonable grow, but it doesn't even need to stay the same percentage, let alone a bigger one. But even if it was mostly a response to need, that still wouldn't support the claim that "the first thing they do is create layer after layer of government. Those layers took hundreds or even thousands of years to develop, they where far from "the first thing". Come on now Tim, humans don't form governments to screw each other, they form governments to protect themselves. They mostly don't form governments to screw each other, but they often do use government's for that purpose and expand them in order to expand their opportunity to keep screwing. As for dealing with complexity, the more complex and economy and society are, the less able government is to deal with such complexity in an intelligent way.

To: Road Walker who wrote (47119)	6/28/2013 1:52:44 PM
From: Road Walker	4 Recommendations Recommended By average joe FJB Little Joe longnshort Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

I guess you're not capable of doing the following. You've wired your brain to argue from a perspective, and you can't objectively allow in other observations. I give up. Not important anyway. I've got more important things.... Strip your mind of your libertarian myths for a moment, step back and look at what humans actually do. They, we, are compelled, in any and every situation, to set up authority. To restrict ourselves in almost every way. There are thousands and thousands of regulations that you have memorized, that you obey every day by rote. It's your nature. It's my nature.

To: Road Walker who wrote (47119)	9/17/2015 10:54:14 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By gamesmistress Respond to of 85487

Clichés of Progressivism #4 – The More Complex the Society, the More Government Control We Need Leonard E. Read #Government Intervention #Central Planning #Cliches Argued a college president at a recent seminar: “Your free market, private property, limited government theories were all right under the simple conditions of a century or more ago, but surely they are unworkable in today’s complex economy. The more complex the society, the greater is the need for governmental control; that seems axiomatic.” It is important to expose this oft-heard, plausible, and influential fallacy because it leads directly and logically to socialistic planning. This is how a member of the seminar team answered the college president: “Let us take the simplest possible situation—just you and I. Next, let us assume that I am as wise as any President of the United States who has held office during your lifetime. With these qualifications in mind, do you honestly think I would be competent to coercively control what you shall invent, discover, or create, what the hours of your labor shall be, what wage you shall receive, what and with whom you shall associate and exchange? Is not my incompetence demonstrably apparent in this simplest of all societies? “Now, let us shift from the simple situation to a more complex society—to all the people in this room. What would you think of my competence to coercively control their creative actions? Or, let us contemplate a really complex situation—the 188,000,000 people of this nation [Editor’s note: now, in 2014, about 318 million]. If I were to suggest that I should take over the management of their lives and their billions of exchanges, you would think me the victim of hallucinations. Is it not obvious that the more complex an economy, the more certainly will governmental control of productive effort exert a retarding influence? Obviously, the more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.” It is unlikely that the college president will raise that question again. While exposing fallacies can be likened to beating out brush fires endlessly, the exercise is nonetheless self-improving as well as useful, in the sense that rearguard actions are useful. Further, one’s ability to expose fallacies—a negative tactic—appears to be a necessary preface to influentially accenting the positive. Unless a person can demonstrate competence at exploding socialistic error, he is not likely to gain wide audiences for his views about the wonders wrought by men who are free. Of all the errors heard in classrooms or elsewhere, there is not one that cannot be simply explained away. We only need to put our minds to it. The Foundation for Economic Education seeks to help those who would expose fallacies and accent the merits of freedom. The more who outdo us in rendering this kind of help, the better. Leonard E. Read Founder and President of FEE, 1946–1983