[Preechr]

Ok.... so first off, I don't really get my talking points from Badnarik's website, so if I contradict his points of view well, I guess I'm sorry for that.

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

So what's the problem, and what's the solution? Is the solution then to eliminate the EPA and just have "good faith" that private citizens, or better yet the polluters themselves, will be encouraged by the market to change their ways....? Sorry, not likely. We had that already, a time when we trusted business and government to come together to solve the nation's mutual problems, and it didn't always work out.

Really? We did? I didn't realize that we had the kind of modern multi-national corporations we have now back in the 20's, but if you say so...

I mean, it's obvious that technology and our accumulated knowledge has somewhat changed America's commercial landscape, but I can go with the idea that business was essentially the same 80 years ago as it is now if you want. If it weren't for government support and defense of worker unions most of us would be living in shanty towns on the grounds of the places we worked like serfs back in Dark Ages England. If it weren't for Abe Lincoln's forcible strangulation of the South's economy, the cotton gin wouldn't have been invented, making the whole idea of slave labor in the cotton industry a forgone conclusion anyway.

Yep, if we take away government regulation, the moon will surely crash into New York City within hours because no obstacle is ever surmountable without permanent government regulation, just as I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason we still pay a tax on our phone bills that was originally imposed to help fund the Spanish-American War. I'm also sure that our current healthcare crisis that government is just about to solve for us has nothing to do with government meddling in private industry or that the healthcare industry comprises 1/10th of our GDP, which is about a Trillion Dollars that government wouldn't be able to get it's greedy little fingers into without fabricating some sort of crisis and then...

Wait a minute... I went off on a tangent there.. Sorry.

I tend to get excited when I agree with people.

Let's just move on...

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

This administration, in particular, has done everything it can to slash environmental policy and set us back decades. Is that the answer? Will that protect the environment from the evil EPA, or would it perhaps be prudent rather to make the EPA more independent from the reigning administration, better financed, and more autonomous....?

Ok. I'll go with that. The function of the EPA should be less influenced by government. Sounds good. That would solve the problem you've pointed out with this, or really any, administration: they have the ability to control what's considered to be healthy for us. See, I'd like to think something like that would be independent of any political agenda, just like you. I don't like the idea of some guy threatening me with a screwed up environment if I don't vote for him.

I suppose it would be ideal if we had a system for protecting our environment that was completely separated from the political mechanisms of government. I guess it's just too bad that people in general don't give enough of a shit about our environment to protect it ourselves. I guess without the generous federal government serving as nature's benefactor and protector we'd soon be living in a sewer.

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

This, in one case, is my problem with Libertarianism. It seems like a wonderful theory....in theory. I understand "following the Constitution..." and all that jazz, but the binding nature of that document often seems like a crutch for Libertarians. You mentioned some wonderful things about the Constitution, yet neglected to mention that one thing that makes it so wonderful is the fact that it's a living, breathing document. Madison wrote something not for his time, but for future times. Not everything is necessarily applicable to our times, but they don't have to be. It's an ammendable document, one that can be changed by the people after thoughtful debate and scrutiny.

Sure it can! I don't have any problem at all with amending the Constitution when necessary. I do have somewhat of a problem with folks ignoring the Constitution without actually going to the bother of amending it, however. Whenever we get around to actually ratifying the amendment that made the income tax suddenly Ok on Constitutional terms... as the whole idea was originally, strangely and specifically banned in the Constitution and warned against extensively in the Federalist Papers... I'll accept it as one of those happy little growths the Constitution was meant to have.

The vast majority of government's power was assumed by blatantly and intentially (though somehow "legally") "misunderstanding" just two short clauses of the original document. This is not growth. This is highjacking.

See, I didn't want to get into a big Constitutional argument. These things can get messy. Let's just stick with the ideological stuff...

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

I feel like the typical Libertarian answer to tough questions is "well, I'll have to defer to the Constitution." That's fine, bt it's not necessarily the answer. I hold great admiration for most of the men who formulated and founded this country. However, we're here now, and we have, and will CONTINUE, to encounter things they could never have even dreamed of.

There you go again, crapping on the Constitution... I thout we just agreed we weren't gonna do that! *sigh*

OK FINE! What exactly is it that the original Constitution didn't account for that's such a pressing and modern concern that we should ignore it altogether? I mean, it's a great sounding argument that you've got there, but I'd like to hear what this big new thing is that we've got to protect ourselves from. So far, I'm hearing a lot about "EVIL CORPORATIONS," but I thought I'd already addressed that pretty effectively before.

The essential disagreement we seem to be having here concerns the difference between management and oversight. I'm pretty comfortable with the idea of government watching what those "EVIL CORPORATIONS" are doing and tattling to us whenever lines get crossed. That would be filling an oversight position. They report, we decide sorta...

You seem to be advocating more of a management role for government, which is a lot like what we've already got. That's all fine and good, but I'd like to see what sort of qualifications randomly selected Congresspeople and Senators should be expected to have. Wait... didn't we just agree it would be more efficient to disassociate important things like the EPA from government, which would in effect privatize them? Yeah, I think we did. Why are we still fighting?

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

I'm trying really hard to not turn this into a debate over the New Deal, but let's be honest, that's what we're talking about here. We're sort of tap dancing around it, although you'd date all of our problems prior to that, somewhere around the passage of the income tax.....

I figured you'd look that up.

If you want to debate the relative pros and cons of New Deal era reforms, we can do that. You already know what I'm going to say, however. I've seen them defended a bunch of different ways, and I always seem to leave those discussions with a feeling that, no matter how effective the arguments supporting it, the New Deal was just another example of government gaining power by fixing a problem it caused.

Don't get me wrong... I admire the effectiveness with which the Fed system has learned to manipulate the economy. It is truly an amazing thing to watch when it's working well, as it is at the moment. I also do not dispute the benefit We the People gained from stuff like the TVA, the Interstate Highway System or subsidized universal electrical routing. I'd likely appreciate it if the Federal Government forced broadband to be available to me at my home, which is a proposal much in the same spirit of those earlier projects.

In general, government has a rich history of providing the things that we need yet are not necessarily profitable to produce. Is that bad? I dunno. Should "making jobs" be included in that? Well, that makes me a little edgy. There's a line in there somewhere I think. A good, modern example is, as I went off on before, healthcare.

We are all concerned that some people are "unfairly" dissallowed access to private health insurance because of pre-existing conditions and/or expense. For the matter of the latter, many of our nation's often referenced uninsured are teenagers that can't reconcile the expense of insurance with their actual health, which is generally quite good. While there are some of us that actually need insurance that truly cannot afford it, most of those folks are the ones that are subject to pre-existing conditions exclusions or up-rates. They've had medical problems before and insurance companies shy away from covering a likely loss.

These people are the ones that our hearts bleed for when we anguish over the inequities of the system we have. Fortunately, the Federal Government, in it's infinite wisdom, long ago planned for this problem. They empowered the individual states to fund "pools" for the otherwise uninsurable, which generally function much like another generally-less-than-profitable enterprise: Worker's Comp.

Essentially, those that are not considered to be insurable for a profit, or those that truly cannot afford the high price of their private insurance, should be allowed access to set rate insurance through a state run pool. If an insurance company wishes to make money selling profitable insurance in a certain state, it also has to take on it's share of those purchasing insurance through the pool at pre-determined (read less-than-profitable) premiums. There are private charity funds that are available to those that still could not afford the lowered rates, and access to those charities could easily be integrated into the function of the state.

Unfortunately, many states, such as my own, have not set up these systems and many more do not fund them sufficiently. I suppose they are taking an "all or nothing" stance on the matter, and I don't blame them. Complete control of healthcare is one of a growing government's big brass rings, and in America's case we're talking about a Trillion Dollars just begging for government control.

Most of the rest of the problems with our healthcare system are directly attributable to state and federal mandates on health insurance, which cause increased premiums. This isa great example of the problem I have with government management versus oversight. Accomplishing something by using government is always the least efficient means to do anything, and thus it should only be considered as a last resort, when all other means fail and the need for whatever it is is proven to be vital to society's proper function.

All too often, government makes up a crisis in order to offer whatever solution suits it best. Yes, I tend to think of government on adversarial terms, but we'll get to that in a minute...

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

We're talking about different perspectives on the role of government. Is it here to serve us, guide us, or control us. I feel that is the wrong frame for the debate. I am an ardent believer, to paraphrase FDR, that the government IS US. We need to find that private/public balance that allows us to use government wisely, and reign over it properly, so that it remains a reflection of us and not a master over us.

So, forgiving my tangent, I guess this is my issue with Libertarianism. I feel like the typical Libertarian can SEE the problem, perhaps better than most. But then it's almost as if they're bound by doctrine to blame government....right, the EPA is the reason water is polluted, the DOE is the reason our schools suck, the IRS is the reason people don't give to charity more, and on and on......

See? We've arrived there already!

Libertarians generally see government action as a means of force. I'm sure you've heard one of us describe taxation as something akin to armed-robbery before. The simple fact is that we have and maintain a government for only the means to force unwilling others to do what's considered to be right for society. Government is the only entity that can legally hold a gun to your head to make you do something you don't want to do. That's a power that, by my admittedly libertarian estimation, should only ever be used when absolutely necessary.

See, I'm Ok with the idea of having my life or freedom threatened if I'm trying to harm someone. Should I be Ok with being shot because I sought to alleviate the pain of terminal cancer with marijuana? There's a line in there somewhere that none of us feel should be crossed. The only difference between you and a libertarian is the location of that line. Well, to put a finer point on it, you deny you are a libertarian thinker probably because you've yet to plumb the depths of your feelings on where that line should really be.

Maybe you know something about the efficacy of government that I don't, or maybe I'm just too jaded to see the truth of the matter. I judge government on an objective, realistic basis, and it seems you have a more idealistic view of what government is capable of. Sorry... I just don't see how that's justified. Our Constitution was the very first governmental charter to agree with my point of view, and we could spend all day counting up how many states throughout history have failed and how many people have died due to the notion that a government can be trusted. Power corrupts, and politics is nothing more than the art of attaining power.

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

I think this creates excuses for the self-interested human being. See, I have a very conservative outlook on people......I don't trust us. I think we are remarkable beings, but we are flawed, and often selfish. I personally think it becomes necessary at times for the whole (ie. the government) to protect ourselves from the "ambitions" of the individual.

See? It all comes down to trust. You, like Republicans, don't trust some of us to live right on our own. There's something in your psyche that attributes unjustified power to those that live to screw others over, just as conservative Christians live in perpetual fear of those that are screwing their own lives up. It's just irrational, in either case. Neither way is a good way to live life, man. Let go! Be positive!

You are not the only one in the country that knows right from wrong. Most of us do, in fact, the vast majority of us do. If you find someone that's screwing someone over, you'd likely be surprised at how many join you in disparaging that guy. Your problem is your fear that mean people could possibly get away with being assholes if they hide what they do.

Those people hide what they do within the shroud of law, man. That's how they get away with it. I'm not saying government is inherently evil per se, but it is pretty complicated, and the devil's in the details. I prefer to keep things simple and transparent. If you can find a way to do that while allowing government to grow unfettered, I'd be happy to listen to you explain it to me.