Yes, alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has the federal government ever done for us?
My local government runs all those, federal just provides the funding. Redistribution of tax proceeds is enough of a job to excuse everything else for you?
Your local government runs all your roads, canals, railroads and public order? Even the largest cities in America parcel that out to the federal government.
Well, we don't really have much in the way of canals or railroads, but they do the actual maintenance and construction of roads in the first place. They also enforce the traffic laws (which they also set for the most part), maintain and install the signage, etc. The local and state police are obviously run by local government. Federal police are obviously not.
Roads. There's a large port nearby, but it doesn't depend on canals. The electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid, again, the federal contribution is largely limited to funding.
GPS, OK, that's useful and it's existence depend(-s/-ed?) on the federal government/military I guess.
Who makes it viable by protecting international shipping, guarding the coast and regulating port infrastructure? (If you’re on a Great Lake, it absolutely depends on canals. That and Canada.)
> electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid
Not how North American grids work, outside Alaska, Texas, Florida and maybe the SPP. States have influence on NERC through the utilities. Grids don’t line up neatly with state lines, and the whole mess requires regular federal coordination.
It's also something that could be handled by an excel spreadsheet as long as the budget was set. Providing a forum for the states to argue about issues is an actually useful and non-redundant thing that the federal government does - setting the budget wouldn't work without it. The facilitation of interstate commerce through a federated union is a great thing. A coordinated foreign policy and unified military is more effective and probably more efficient. The federal government isn't useless or lacking any impact at all on my life, but the state and local governments are far, far more involved in "getting the things I depend on done", and many of the things federal government does could probably be done without a federal government or with much less of one.
This is a tired trope. Above, user "sneak" alludes to the infamous "Who will build the roads?" gambit. Below, users invoke it.
Reasonable people will disagree about their preferences. Some will even find polite ways to agree to disagree about ideology. Consider if the Federal Government nationalized toilet paper production and distribution. Perhaps in a few years, posters on this forum would assume that they could not perform these basic tasks without the state's support.
Just because something is currently a function of the public sector, does not mean that it could not be achieved better by the private sector. The entire thread is filled with hyperbole. The efficacy of either approach is not being discussed. There is very little substance here. Instead there are two to three sentence zingers thrown around. Most of this has been discussed at length by authors who specialize in the field.
>When students are taught about public goods, roads and highways serve as the default example in virtually every economics class. The cliché question every libertarian has encountered—“Who will build the roads?”—is predicated on the idea that without the state, private actors will have no incentive to construct or finance roadways because they will be unable to monetize them (or, at least, unable to do so sufficiently to meet the needs of the community). This assumption is accepted with such a degree of faith that few scholars have seen fit to even question whether and to what degree private roads have been constructed historically.
>But in the early years of the new republic, Americans underwent what some historians have described as a “turnpike craze.” The term “turnpike” specifically refers to roadways constructed and operated privately. Early Americans, wanting to connect their communities to the developing market economy, eagerly subscribed to turnpike corporations for local roads. In fact, turnpike corporations were among the first for-profit corporations in the country, and dramatically widened the population of shareholders at a time when corporate stock was rarely available to the public.
> Just because something is currently a function of the public sector, does not mean that it could not be achieved better by the private sector.
The exact opposite is often true. Just because something could be done by the private sector, doesn't mean that it could not be achieved better by the public sector.
This idea that the invisible hand of the market will keep us all clothed, fed, healthy and housed is a false one. None of that happens without the subsidies afforded to the private sector by the public. And that is in search of profit.
I would disagree with that on principle and in observation.
However you are missing the point. Even if you suggest that it could be done better by the public sector, the mere existence of the public sector program is not evidence that the public sector solution is optimal. An appeal to the status quo may have pragmatic relevance, but it doesn't rationalize public sector solutions as optimal.
We will have to agree to disagree where you assert that we would all be naked, homeless and starving if not for the public sector.
> The term “turnpike” specifically refers to roadways constructed and operated privately.
I don't know about the rest of the comment, but this is definitely not correct. According to the OED, the term "turnpike" as a shortening of "turnpike road" pre-dates the United States, and generally refers to any toll road, not specifically privately operated ones.
> I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either
I think this comment is incredibly telling. Many people tend to treat problems that do not currently affect them because of the momentous, coordinated efforts of many individuals and institutions the same as problems that do not affect them because they are naturally nonexistent.
There is a huge difference between these two categories of problems. The first will become very visible when the constant behind-the-scenes work is no longer maintained. The second will not. Confusing these two seems to be one of the causes of the mess we currently find ourselves in.
> How do the billion people in Europe do it?
As a European, I can help with the conundrum: we DO have central governments, and they tend to take more responsibility for taking care of people than the U.S. federal government has ever been allowed to. Governments don't have to be continent-wide to exist.
You've overestated by more than a factor of two how many people are in the EU and willfully ignored the fact there IS a central goverment of sorts here too.
We’ve really gone full circle when the argument for less government is pointing to Europe, and the argument against the military-industrial complex is the guy directly arguing for more military spending.
Depending on how you slice things, and what you count as ‘military’.
Based on the GOA, approx. $500 billion/yr (including veterans benefits) goes into actually running the military [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59475]. Much of that appears
to be VA benefits, and it’s increasing.
So the remainder (minus war bonds!) feels like the Military Industrial Complex, which seems to add up to around $500bln/yr.
Google annual revenue appears to be up to approx. $282 billion/year now.
So unlikely any MIC component is close, but overall the MIC still seems quite a bit larger.
Alphabet's revenue last year were about $340 billiion.
550 billion is just for compensation. You also need to pay for the upkeep of bases, fuel etc.
MI complex probably still has larger revenues as Google, but difference is much smaller than you think and that is comparing the whole industry to just one tech giant. There are others with revenues as big or bigger.
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
Obviously blatant waste and fraud should not be tolerated, but ignoring the huge value of the military is very short sighted. When you hear the phrase, 'backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government', what do you think that means? The US has been in a privileged position for so long they don't even realize why they are there. People flock to the USD because of stability, rule of law, and the ability to park a carrier strike force off any coast in the world and project that 'full faith and credit' the US speaks of. The military is not solely responsible for the US's success, but it is a large part.
And to add on, even the military brass is not in favor of wasted spending of the military industrial complex.
The military itself has been trying to close unneeded bases, get rid of weapons it doesn’t need, etc. But Congress and the rest of the civilian leadership won’t let it because the civilian leadership is more interested in kickbacks from contractors than doing what is best for the military.
Military leadership has also been warning about the destabilizing effect of climate change and the dangers of our deficit.
This is a meaningless phrase, much like “died for our sins”. Endless reptitions don’t make it into a meaningful logical statement.
The only inherent value of the USD is that you can pay US taxes in it. The “full faith and credit” bit meant something when you had to trust the USG to redeem it for physical gold or silver, but as you know that hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Now it’s about the same situation as the Tether fraud. Bitfinex doesnt need a carrier strike group for me to be able to trade USDT for cheeseburgers or gold coins.
People talking about the rule of law in the USA this week are especially comical. The graft and corruption are on full display for the entire world stage. They’re not even pretending any longer. It is now demonstrably clear that the value of the USD is not dependent on the rule of law in the US.
This sort of kneejerk culture war regurgitation mischaracterizes your argument, as well the people you are talking to, and undermines your own credibility. Separately, it adds positively nothing to the discussion except noise.
The world isn’t as black and white as you seem to be convinced it is. Not everyone is neatly categorized into reasonable friend and nonsensical insane foe, unfortunately.
Do you enjoy meaningless culture brawling in the comments? Does it provide you with some sort of emotional supply? It certainly isn’t accomplishing anything else (other than breaking the social contract here). I’m truly confused, on a purely intellectual level. (I don’t expect you to change or do anything differently, I am simply thoroughly baffled.)
Your original question was also “culture war regurgitation” by any standard which includes the post you’re replying to. If you want better discourse, you have to start that way and bring receipts that you’re participating in well-informed good faith.
Claiming there is no central government for 'billion people' 'in Europe' and then lashing out when someone engages you on the same level is a very positive addition to the discussion.
> whose going to check that the food being produced is safe?
Honestly, we could do with less of this. It isn’t hard to tell if fresh food is safe. It’s impossible with hyper-processed nonsense. Increasing liability for producing unsafe processed food might be what we need to tip our food balance in a healthier direction.
> You're right–I didn't think about fresh, prepared foods.
If only that. What about lead salts added to spices for better color (red pepper, curcuma)? What about all the other billions of ways to cut costs and make food unsafe, who is going to check for that in the absence of governments? "Increasing liability" is incredibly naive, the perpetrators don't care about that if the chance they are not caught is high enough, which it is if food chain monitoring isn't continuous.
> What about lead salts added to spices for better color (red pepper, curcuma)?
Less of a problem with whole spices.
> What about all the other billions of ways to cut costs and make food unsafe, who is going to check for that in the absence of governments?
Local markets are good at sussing this out. We need federal regulation when supply (and thus trust) chains get longer. One of the best ways to undermine trust in the regulation we need is to over-regulate where we don't need to.
RFK going off about raw milk is Exhibit A for this. Would I drink raw milk? No, particularly not with the bird flu ruminating in dairy cows. Do I think banning raw milk makes it more likely (on the margin) that in 10 years I'll be eating leaded spices? Yes.
Note that I'm not arguing against food regulation as a whole. I'm arguing against its breadth at the federal level.
