Thanks for the thoughts, I appreciate your feedback.
I would agree that the government is pretty wasteful at times, but there are not enough rich people in the world who choose devote their resources to fighting social injustices, and inefficiency is better than nothing. A well run welfare program can take care of those who get screwed by the system. Even if we were to privatize more things (for instance, the school could probably run more efficiently if it were privately run and schools had to compete for students), that money would still have to come from somewhere. Government funded, privately run programs could solve some of the problem of inefficiency. (I understand this doesn't always work all that well, look at contracts for Iraq for instance.) But if we the people hold our representatives to higher standards, that could change too. As for those new trucks-the people of your city should protest if the government is spending their tax dollars irresponsibly, and we need to take advantage of our opportunities to vote and decide who is going to be making our decisions.
I know the government hasn't been so good with racism in the past, but now that most people seem to have their heads on straight, the government has the ability to do something about it. I just heard a report on NPR the other day about how African American students perform worse than white students, regardless of economic background--due to racism. There aren't enough people who are committed to fighting this racism, but the government can do something about it.
Some wealth is created by productive citizens, but most of it is created by citizens who had some pretty good resources to begin with. Some people don't have these resources, and need the government to look out for them, by redistributing some of the wealth of the very wealthy.
Gun control? Places that don't allow handguns are much safer than those that do.
I agree that our military presence around the world is not such a good thing, but we can't chose to ignore bodies like the UN, ICC and WTO.
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:) Thanks for the response.
I probably should have simply stuck with my original statement.
Philosophy difference: I don't trust the government to do anything well because I've never seen evidence of an effective governmental program. Perhaps it exists in other countries, but I haven't seen it (I've spoken with as many people as possible and I've rarely heard any citizen raving about his/her country's governmental programs.)
Most government programs are clumsy, wasteful, and poorly directed.
Therefore, I don't trust the government to do anything for me and I do not want the government to be expanded in any way.
:) We'll continue in person some time...
Cheers!
I had another thought (as I was driving today) that might give you a glimpse into my brain.
Have you ever gone to your local DMV and been impressed by how wonderful the service was? By how nice everybody was to you how efficient everything operated?
...not sparking an argument, it just occurred to me...
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