Government is immoral.

People are immoral.
Why expect more from government than from the people it represents?

 

I disagree, Surfer Joe but I'm not a liberal. I think people are mostly good and decent. When my son was leaving home I told him that 95% of the people in the world are good. The trick is figuring out who the other 5% are.

People can act, not just in their own self interest, but to benefit others. People can do what's right even if it harms them. People have been known to risk their lives and die for others.

I certainly don't expect governments to have any decent human traits.

 

You're sorely mistaken,

The Wild West, despite its Hollywood portrayal was actually relatively peaceful and was anarchistic in nature.

Medieval Iceland is also a good example of anarchism in history.

Somalia, even with its implosion of government (which is bound to cause problems if it happens violently and not over time peacefully) has actually improved their standard of living and infrastructure since government has been gone.

So your solution is to put these evil, hate filled, selfish men in charge and give them power over us? Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense.

 

I disagree, a gun can be used in self defense. A government only exists to coerce, extort, and oppress. It is literally a monopoly on force in a given area, in which some people have more power for no reason other than they have more guns.

 

No need to trot out your partisan bull(*)(*)(*)(*) on this topic, Pat.
It's silly to always think in terms of good people versus bad people, especially when you then conflate it with some puerile political ideology and try to start posturing about the moral superiority of one group over another.

The reality is that all men fall short and all men sin, so your weird 95%/5% split is delusional because those 95% account for more problems and suffering in the world than the other 5%.
The fact is that good people also do bad things out of fear, out of selfishness, out of tiredness, out of anger or out of ignorance.
And all of those small, bad things add up and are often passed on to someone else who then does something bad as a consequence of being treated badly.

It's easy to tell who the truly immoral and evil people are by their extreme actions, and they generally get caught and taken out of the equation.

The world is hurting not from a few really evil people, but from the steady drip of small immoral actions that we are all guilty of.

The world also progresses, not from the grand actions of a few really holy people, but from the small, honest actions of a lot of average people.

That's why Jesus said that even the most perfect person sins 7 times 70 times a day, and that if we want to do right by God then we must care for the least among us, and that only he who is without sin should cast the first stone.

But sadly, the world is full of good people who invent excuses for dismissing the least among us and who are very willing to cast a first, second and third stone, and who continually fall short of what they should do to help make the world a paradise.

And government is nothing more than the taxpayer, the local policeman, the city councilman, the state legislator, the regulation officer, the faceless bureaucrat, the soldier, the governor, the senator, the judge, the president- normal, good people who often fall short at doing their best and all of their sins help to create the conditions in which we all have to live.
Blaming government is a cop out. A government is nothing more than the people who run it.
If you want to improve government, improve the individual.

 

That's all very poetic, but it just doesn't have much basis in reality.

This just isn't true, large corporate players and the government it controls trample human rights everyday. Government creates entry barriers to markets to eliminate competition for big business (permits, licensing, inspections, rules on where a business can be set up), it gives privilege to those individuals that it favors (subsidization, bail outs, corporate tax breaks, grants, etc.). Government also violates civil liberties by make drugs, prostitution, and gambling illegal.

So you are wrong when you say that it isn't a few individuals that do harm. It is a few hundred politicians and the corporations that control them that are doing the greatest damage to this world.

See Above.

You just pointed out that these are all people, I agree that they are people. These people are in positions of power over others that they don't have any natural right to be in. Blaming government isn't a cop out, it's blaming the fundamental problem.

EDIT:

That's my point, people shouldn't be running it. Improve the individual? You can improve an individual all you want, make him super smart and caring and generally awesome, he still shouldn't be able to rule over his fellow man.

 

Sorry, but what has no basis in reality is that you can exist in a world without government.
The more complex the organism, the more complex the governing mechanism.
If you have a country of 1, then you are like a single-cell organism, and you don't need much to govern your essential functions.
But as complexity increases, you need a more complex governing mechanism to maintain the essential functions and the balance between those functions needed for survival.
To think that a society as interconnected and interdependent as any typical industrial society today could operate or survive without government is delusional.
Your problem is that you think of government as something arbitrarily forced on you by others.
But the fact is that government is historically a natural progression of what a society needs to do to operate, survive and hopefully flourish.

 

Instead of dismissing my entire post, address my points one by one. You just did a side sweep of everything I just posted.

 

It won't let me edit my post so I'll just have to double post.

The post you just made, was complete drivel. All you did was insult my arguements and throw logic out the window.

What. WHAT. Are you trying to compare government to an organism? This doesn't even make sense, I could say the exact same thing and replace governing with communication and it would still make as much sense.

How did you get from 'Society is interconnected' to 'Society needs government'? Why is it delusional? Use logic, make a point. Saying something doesn't just make it true, I can sit here and call your arguments delusional too but that wouldn't make my case very strong and it might make me look kind of, well...brainless.

 

I would love to live in a nation that has the "Rule by the gun" system.....First thing I would do is go to your house kill you and your family and take all of your stuff.....

 

You're living in lalaland. The Wild West, while not really like the movies, wasn't heaven on earth and it had a freaky amount of problems. Idealizing a past based on a false picture of it is just stupid. And suggesting Somalia isn't one of the most dangerous places to live on this Earth is stupid too.

 

so right you are.

 

why would it?

 

we have rule by the gun now..

 

5, 4, 3, 2, 1....

well you didn't do it.

 

since men are evil why do we let men rule over us? are the ruling men better than the rest of us men?

 

some people are indeed immoral, but your conclusion does not logically follow from your premise.

 

also self interest.. among other things.

 

We have a freaky amount of problems now..

And as for Somalia.. did you even click on the link?

It was worse when their was government, it improved without government.

Read the link.

 

lol... yes. But in a forum like this, the inmates tend to run the asylum.

 

Not at all.
You're new here, so I'll try to explain.
You came here to proselytize. Nobody is going to change your mind with logic or facts, so why waste bandwidth?
And no one is under any obligation to wallow through the minutia of your posts or engage in some endless circular argument with you.
I'm sure that some here will, but I'm not into that.
If you don't like a response that you get, move on or reply as you feel like.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, try the following thought experiment:
tell us exactly how things would work in this brave new world of yours.

For example, as you drive to work, who decides to stop or go at an intersection?
If you don't like people telling you what to do, you certainly won't like a stop sign telling you what to do.
Who will build and maintain those roads and pay for it? The local population?
What if someone doesn't want to pay their share? What do you do? Force them at gunpoint?

These are just some simple questions.
There are many more significant situations that would play out very differently if there was no controlling authority to intercede on the individual's behalf or manage essential activities.
I don't think that you have thought any of this out and examined the consequences of your proposed society.
In my opinion, it's a very immature, delusional idea, and I've already wasted more time than I want trying to be polite to the newbie.
Good luck to you with your attempts to create your perfect world.

 

Proselytize? I thought this was a political forum...was I mistaken? As a matter of fact, a number of people agreed with me. This is a place to discuss and debate politics, if you think it's a waste of time talking to people with a different point of view, maybe you should leave the forum.

If you honestly think that roads must be built and maintained by the government, you lack even the slightest ounce of creativity.

Read this. That should answer all your questions.

What does this even mean? Be more specific and I'll answer your questions.

It's very immature and delusional, yet you know nothing about it? You're going to dismiss my argument because I just joined this forum? That's what's immature.

Who said it would be perfect? All I'm suggesting is that their are better ways to deal with social problems other than the use of brute force.

 

I would love someone to tell me how taxation is not theft How can you justify taking peoples money by force to spend it on something that they didn't ask for?

 

Government is not 'immoral' it is 'amoral'.

 

you can't own property man..