[geeks] Liber-fascism

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Oct 30, 2008, at 17:03 , nate at portents.com wrote:

>> On Oct 25, 2008, at 01:00 , William Barnett-Lewis wrote:
>>
>>> I am so tired of these people who bitch about taxes while happily
>>> using the infrastructure the rest of us have paid for.
>>
>> Most of us bitching about taxes get very little benefit from the
>> infrastructure, and most of the taxes are *WASTED*.
>>
>> If anything, the "infrastructure" lowers the quality of life we have
>> and cripples private enterprise in most cases.
>>
>> The government is only supposed to take on a limited number of roles.
>> I don't mind paying for those, it's the other 60% (conservative  
>> guess)
>> that they are *NOT* authorized to manage that bothers me.
>>
>> I find it incredibly ironic (and disappointing) that we spent vast
>> amounts on socialist bullshit, and almost nothing on worthwhile
>> projects like NASA, R&D, or long-term solutions.
>>
>> Yes, I know that technically NASA is also not officially legal, but  
>> at
>> least it is a worthwhile project, one I don't mind paying for.
>
> Eh, the problem is really just one of the oldest there are - power  
> issues.
>
> Bureaurocracy gets entrenched over time, people try to grab power,  
> don't
> want to let go, mechanisms aren't put in place to balance it out or
> properly *expire* bureaucratic mechanisms created to adjust for  
> something
> at one point in time, and things get bigger, more cumbersome, and more
> unnecessarily convoluted over time.

Some people, including at least one of the founding fathers, talked  
about government offices or agencies which would actually expire.

If you wanted to keep it going, you created a new one.

The idea was to kill off the entrenched positions.

Given how inefficient an agency is once it has circled the wagon, it  
would be less disruptive than letting it continue.

Of course, it would be a hell of a fight to get that to happen.

However, a good number of laws in the USA are required to have  
expiration dates.  Of course, the morons and power mongers keep  
extending them.  What we need is a slight change in the law to state  
limits on votes to continue.

It's actually come up from some of the saner politicians, but of  
course anything like that gets shot down.

> For example, just think about how something like our existing tax  
> system
> is now messily tangled up into the (sort of) free markets we have -  
> entire
> supply/demand cycles and the prices that result from them are  
> determined
> by a lot of stupid tax stuff, so that if say you wanted to clean up  
> the
> tax code, you'd have all sorts of disruptions of markets.

I don't believe it would be anywhere near as disruptive as people  
think.  I believe natural cycles and various other issues are far more  
disruptive.

I think a lot of our perception of disruption is 100 years of  
brainwashing where we've been told it would be, not because it  
actually would be.

A free market is far more resilient and flexible than anything run by  
mandate, quota, etc.

> And personally I don't find labels such as 'socialist' very helpful,  
> since
> I think it over-simplifies the discussion.

Not really.

In this context it is socialism as a form of government.

Socialism, like democracy, is a horrible form of government or even  
agency design.

But as a tool, it has limited uses just like democracy.



>
>
> - Nate
> _______________________________________________
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"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."