Government is evil by its very nature

"Implied consent" amounts to nothing more than inferred consent. Authoritarians on both the left and the right do not see the imposition of their best intentions upon others as a usurpation of other people's best intentions for themselves; they see it as an alternative to chaos.

Make no mistake, the power to govern always comes from the consent of the governed. No tyrant has ever had the power to govern a nation of people. Every tyrant needs those who are complicit with the tyrant. Furthermore, no tyranny has the power to govern a nation of people, at least not at first. Every tyranny needs those who are compliant with the tyranny. The real power of any tyrant comes not from those complicit with the tyrant but from those compliant with the tyranny.

Legitimate government authority comes from the voluntary consent of the governed, as jdog is careful to point out above. We have no moral responsibility to comply with an illegitimate authority, and compliance with law is no excuse for being complicit with an illegitimate authority.

 

In my opinion, the one indispensable element of the general welfare is liberty; it is authority over and responsibility for self.

 

Those who don't vote really do, for the status quo. If nobody voted, nothing would change. I've read somewhere that the Founding Fathers didn't really think government should change all that radically every election. Washington in particular did not like political parties and warned against their growing influence in his day.

 

that's why we need communism!

 

Governments are almost perfect mirrors of the people and culture they govern. It can't be any other way. If your government is run by corrupt weasels, it's because most people approve of them.

And if you really think there was some idyllic past of some libertoon paradise, you most definitely need to be suppressed and treated as a subservient peasant, because you're either insane or a willfully ignorant idiot, and suppressing you is a critical necessity for any functioning society at all.

 

Evil backwards is live.

And lived backwards is devil.

Hmmmmm.....

 

Unfortunately, that definition of General Welfare is found no where in the Constitution, so your interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's.

 

It is clear that the enumerated powers constitute the general welfare. Your statement is incorrect. You have the means to correct your error but I doubt you will take it.

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Are you so incurious?

 

Ah, another self-educated Von Mises graduate.

Every country on the planet has a government. Call that exhibit one.

The US has a gov for and by the people..a democratic republic. A person's CHOICE to live in the US is implied consent to its government and laws. Call that exhibit two.

Exhibit one and two are facts. The crapola in your post is libertarian drivel. I discuss facts and pertinent concepts. You discuss fantasies and wishful thinking.

Tell me jdog, how is government on your back? What federal chains bind you? Forget those questions. I'll just get some Ayn Rand drivel where you're the dogged intrepid hero standing against some imagined oppressive federal government.

I really get a kick out of the fact that people like you exist with your ridiculous beliefs in earnest.

 

Oh yes, taxation is theft and you'd be so much more of a success if you only had your payroll taxes back. Damn gov.

You seem to be an anarchist. No government. Everyman for himself. The US has a democratic republic where each citizen has a say in the governmental operation by dint of her vote the power to lobby. Hardly the province of psychopaths.

I would characterize psychopathology as a personality disorder marked by disassociated social behavior--isolationism to the extreme. An anti-social character where sympathy and empathy with other people are impossible. Where behavior is impulsive and extreme and shortsighted to dangerous proportions.

You know, sort of like someone who views all government as evil, that people doing the simple administrative burdens / tasks of government are psychopaths, that gov should be eliminated.etc.

Does that sound like someone you know?

 

While I agree with your first statement, your second one confuses me, at what point did I indicate there has ever been an idyllic past? If you are going to lecture me please provide justification for your indignation.

 

Our problem was assuming that elected officials are honorable/ethical/moral, when they are just employees that will get away with anything they are allowed to get away with.

 

The key to the definition of general welfare is found in the word "general" which indicates the action of government.

General: affecting or concerning all or most people, places, or things; widespread.
"books of general interest"
synonyms: widespread, common, extensive, universal, wide, popular, public,

The phrase general welfare is obviously meant to encompass an action which is universally good for the population as a whole, or that benefits all the citizens to a fairly equal degree.

In order to follow the letter of this law, in order for a governmental action to be legal in Constitutional terms it must meet 2 basic criteria.

1. That is actually be beneficial to the people.
2 That it not benefit one group of citizens at the expense of another.

 

If M rises, in order the the equation to hold, either V must decrease or PQ must increase.

 

Except it's not "clear". It is open to interpretation and those interpretations wildly differ. If it was clear, that wouldn't be the case.

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And they do. Globalization results in a net outflow of dollars from the economy, reducing V and GDP increases every years except when we have a recession.

 

Some on the left already know True socialism requires social morals for free to achieve a secular and temporal, Commune of Heaven on Earth. Only the right doesn't seem to have a clue or a Cause.

 

PQ = MV

So my claim was that a rise in P (inflation) is due to a rise in M. You say this is not the case. You also say that V is dropping. So how do you explain inflation (rise in P) in the face of falling V? What are Q and M doing to keep the equation balanced?

 

We'll see if inflation is rising when reports on Q4 2014 and Q1 2015 come out. The decrease in the price of oil should have done a number on that.

 

That's not the point. I made a general claim that inflation (a rise in P) is a result of an increase in M. You said this isn't the case. So what would be your explanation for a rises in P if they are not caused by a rise in M?

 

The gov is evil in the sense that if it asks a question like election or referendum it is not that it wants our opinion it is more like an exam to check if people understood it then since it knows what everyone chose it makes the punishment.

 

No, I said that Money Supply is not the only determinant of the Price Level. That is demonstrably true. People claiming that inflation only occurs do to government action are completely wrong.

 

I didn't claim that inflation only occurs due to government action. I said that he quantity of money, and hence its price, is, under our current system, entirely controlled by the government.

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and until we make it legal for them to put you in jail. Until we do, a corporation, unlike the government, can't legally put you in jail.

 

The single worst case of inflation was brought about by a world wide flu pandemic in the early twentieth century.
Kill off a significant percentage of the world's population and the cost of the rest will go up.

 

To exaggerate makes it more difficult to come to solutions. Government is GREAT by its very nature. It's the quality and quantity that make it bad.

When the Executive branch can get away with changing parts of Obamacare AFTER it's been passed in one, specific form, that is poor quality govt. When govt. tries to sell licenses to 8 year-olds to sell lemonade, that's too big of govt.

But to run the military and build roads, I'd say govt. is the way to go. Also to make a few rules to keep Capitalism in line, but NOT the ones we currently have. New ones like keep jobs in America. Not limiting the size of soft drinks you can sell.

 

If the government can't stop them, then their actions are functionally legal. Wanting a government so weak you can strange it in a bathtub results in the wealthy effectively deciding the law.