Small Gov't
[removed]
Posted Jan 22, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC
525
who will takes its place to keep track of people/companies and how will they do it and keep them from running amok?
You do. You pick which companies to buy from, and everyone's aggregate decision determines what is acceptable enough to profitably survive, and what isn't. If we're asking a question like "Without USDA, how do you know your hotdogs aren't made from buttholes?" the libertarian/market answer would be to suggest that absent USDA certification, private companies would step in, competing with each other to cheaply deliver the best certifications consumers demand.
Begging the question that companies would 'run amok' in absence of some hypothetical government control aside.
The idea that certain things should be done on a state level follows from the founding principle of federalism, which has been somewhat eroded due to a really open reading of the interstate commerce clause. Basically, everything that you could do at a state level shouldn't be done at a federal level. Each state should have a great deal of autonomy. There is also the idea that a state government will be more responsive to and representative of its people.
3
So when I read history books about companies controlling the supply or production. Or monopolizing the industry. Or not having any competition and selling thousands of low quality products, how is that begging the question?
2
Natural monopolies sometimes exist.
Sometimes the market has difficulty controlling for negative externalities.
Those are your two basic market failures.
You're wrong about standard oil
The winners write the history books. Isn't it in the interest of the government to convince you that it's necessary to allow them to choose economic winners and losers? Do you think there would be as much lobbying going on if the government didn't have so much unnecessary economic power?
Side note OP was begging the question, I just wanted to point that out without being a dick.
1
That's a terrible source. By the time it started to say anything defending standard oil, it asked me to pay to read the rest. It may have had good information, but it's locked behind a subscription.
I don't know how the begging the question point played out any more because the OP removed his comment.
And please ditch the "History is written by the winners." Writers write the history. And a pissed off loser is going to be a lot more motivated than a winner to write a spread information. Not to mention, history is NEVER the account of one person or one side. It is analysis of the writings of the events, secondary writings of the people who wrote about the events, complex dissertations about why they wrote it, what information the parties had access too, and eventually, a best guess of the events that occurred. Yes, it can biased. Yes, it can be misinformed. But it is not so easy to erase all of the history about a thing that only one side remains. But none of that matters for this discussion.
Isn't it in the interest of the government to convince you that it's necessary to allow them to choose economic winners and losers?
Isn't it in the interest of the companies PR to convince you how they won or lost? And why do you think the government got any economic power? Because everything was fine and nobody was abusing the power they acquired from having a lot of money and the ability to control parts of the market?
The only reason we have an FDA, or a USDA, is because companies, and the people that run them and work for them, abused their power. Customers don't always have the power and choices to boycott and bankrupt a company. The only place people technically have power is in the democracy of the government. I know that this is a point that can be easily attacked. But the government is people, and the goal is to make sure that it protects itself. Dangerous food products, untested drugs, and unsafe work conditions were the direct result of natural market forces. There are few times in history where a company has not gained massive amounts of power and tried to run amok. It's the goal of capitalism to get more capital. Sometimes you get the best workers to create the best products. Other times you get children to work for pennies. The latter happens too often, and so the government intervenes. Because if companies jumped on the shit before it was an issue, the government wouldn't have to step in.
1
Oh sorry didn't mean to link you to the paywall version. Here's the fulltext
2
I wouldn't really call Rand Paul a libertarian. He's libertarian leaning conservative.
1
How isn't he a libertarian?
1
He's a social conservative.
1
He's only truly conservative on the abortion issue. His stance on gay marriage is more conservative than that of liberals, but more liberal than that of conservatives.
1
Ron Paul isn't a libertarian, he's an anti-federalist.
1
The old-school conservative.
1
Your submission was removed due to low effort. Please create a title with more than two words next time.
1
OPs post is removed so I can't respond to him. I want to say though that I like some of the things Paul says but I can't support small government. One thing conservatives are so proud of is that we're a super power, maybe even the only super power to some of them. I'm sorry guys but decentralization doesn't lead to superpowers. I can't think of an easier way to weaken the union between states then by weakening the federal government.
1
People think Obama has grown the government and that Democratic presidents always are for big government.
But Obama has been the exception. He froze salaries for years and isn't replacing baby-boomers that are retiring. As a share of the total workforce, overall government employment has been dropping since 2010.
0
Buzz-phrase. President Rand Paul would not get rid of your taxes, he would just contract a debt collection agency or private tax farmer to collect them rather than using the IRS.
0
A lot of "libertarians" who hate federal power are perfectly fine with state power for some reason. It doesn't make sense to me but you see it all the time.
Now, I understand the argument that a state government is more "in tune" with the local population, but I can't for the life of me understand how leaving rights up to states (like in the case of gay marriage or drug laws) is acceptable to a libertarian. I would think if rights are paramount that it wouldn't matter which level of government is doing the infringing.
It does make sense for a large landmass country like the US. Passing a nation wide law that might work well in California might not work so well in the Carolinas. They are thousands of miles away from each other and have major differences in economy, resources, environment, history, and culture just to name a few. It is just not efficient or effective for a large centralized government to try and rule over such a large and diverse area. It would be more effective for the smaller local governments to tailor laws specifically for their area.
It's because many libertarians are also constitutionalists, since the Constitution was written with Classical Liberal interests. As per amandments 9 and 10, many Libertarians oppose programs at the federal level but may/may not support them at the state level, since they believe that states have the right to decide.
Note: I'm not really a libertarian, but I understand the view.
A lot of it is that if a state does something you don't like, you are free to leave. If the US does something you don't like, you're pretty much SOL (look up the requirements to move to another country). If you stay, that implies consent (or at least that the issue isn't as important to you as the rest of what your state has to offer).
Ok, let's take gay marriage. Let's say we have New York and Florida (similar in population).
New York has 80% of people who support gay marriage (numbers here are for ease of math, not an actual representation of views) and 20% people who are against.
Florida has 20% of people who are for gay marriage and 80% of people who are opposed (also probably not even close to the real numbers).
So, anything you do at the federal level is going to leave 50% of the people unhappy. But if you let the states decide (presumably), New York will legalize and Florida will make it illegal. This makes 80% of people happy. Plus at least half of people can move to the other one if it's a big deal to them.
So instead of having 50% of people happy and feeling represented by their government, we have 80% of people happy, with >90% of people capable of living in an area that represents their views.
If it's decided on the federal level, you have no choice in the matter. If it's decided on the state level, you can move somewhere else. It's sort of a self determination thing. For a libertarian, prostitution was handled close to perfectly in this country.
We always hear from right wingers about how less regulation helps businesses. Having 50 sets of rules when there could be only 1 hurts business.
There's already 50 sets of rules on top of a million or so rules the feds set too.
Not every libertarian is a pro-business person.
Or at least not pro-big business.
Hell, not all libertarians are on the right.
it also hurts small businesses that cross state lines. There's probably a ton of those.
Right but gay marriage on a state level does not infringe anything really. On a federal level though it over steps it bounds by using a power it does not have. That is why a lot of libertarians do not like marriage on a federal level.