White men such as myself don’t need government for nothing, it just gets in the way of me making a perpetual motion machine and if it wasn’t for the taxes I had to pay, almost five percent, I would be richer than Bill Gates.  I might just show you all by going Galt and then you will all be sorry.  Of course when I say galt I mean I am going to hide in my tree house and wait for my mom to bring me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But won’t the dictatorship of the proletariat result inevitably in the dissolution of the state?

Roads, water, schools, mail delivery, police and fire protection, social welfare and aid to the indigent, and many other things we rely on and take for granted are best provided by the government.  We know this because at various points earlier in our history we tried using private firms.  They were always more expensive and less efficient than the government.

(0): You probably used an alarm clock to get up.  Yay for standard time!

@JonE

No.

Um.  TMI.  RT @pandagon Amanda Marcotte used the toilet this morning. #worsethanayelet

Actually, I’m totally Galt on the waking up thing. The fucking sun wakes my sad ass up.  I really hate it.  And those sleep mask things are only so effective.

I’m sure you’ve been to Europe. They have serious shutters there. Keeps the sun out. Not sure whether shutter industry is nationalized.

You forgot another bunch of hash marks. You live in an apartment in brooklyn, which exists as it does only because of government regulations and other interventions in the market. The city government made Brooklyn attractive in the 19th century by giving free land to churches (so that parishioners would move there). Then it regulated the kind of housing that could be built there (go to the tenement museum on the LLES to see the top end of how people used to live before those regs). Then it financed development and economic activity even more with the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And Fort Greene. And and and…

But I think the people who make this stupid argument aren’t against all the things government has done for them; they’re just against the things government might do for other people in the future. It’s like the affirmative action cartoon (quick look for a link yielded nothing_ where a white guy on a playground knocks a black guy down and stands on his back to get to the top of a climbing structure, and then, when the black guy stands back up and asks for a hand, says “Oh, no! You have to get up here by yourself too.”

The Sherman Minton bridge over the Ohio River had to be shut down indefinitely last weekend due to cracks in its 60’s era steel.  The two other bridges in that area are made of the same steel—but authorities assure everyone that THOSE two are totally safe!

Bridges and roads.  Try to maintain commerce without them.

“I went to 7-11 and I bought some iced tea and a newspaper. It cost $2.88. I gave the lady three bills & got back a dime & two pennies.”

Even our everyday monetary transactions would be a pain in the ass without government action to keep the physical money supply stable & relatively clean, the government decisions that forced an end to separate currencies for each bank and created a national currency, not to mention a central bank which, however you want to criticize its policies, acts to reduce excessive inflation or deflation. And don’t forget the FDIC backing which prevents “runs on the bank”.

Democratic/progressive/liberal philosophy on government:
We’re always going to have some sort of government, so it’s better for everyone if that government is efficient, effective, fair, and as unintrusive as possible.

Republican/Reichwing/wingnut/tea-klan philosophy on government:
Government is always bad!  Government is never the solution to any problem!  Government must be abolished!

...wait a minute — we need a really huge Department of War to do all that bombing we need so we can steal stuff from other countries and get the satisfaction of killing people who are not Americans, so maybe it’s okay for just that part of government to exist.

...and if we don’t have any cops, those negroes and mexicans will steal our stuff and rape our white women, and get all uppity and demand higher wages and unions — we can’t have that!  So I guess we can allow that part of government too, just to keep those dirty proles down.

...and without government, how will we suck in all that sweet, sweet privatization cash?

...and what if sluts and homos are having sex that we don’t like?  Gotta regulate that, so just a tiny bit more government.

...and if we’re going to have some small government — to build, maintain, and use a massive military/industrial complex, and to provide lots and lots of police and execute lots and lots of criminals (only negroes and mexicans, of course), and hand out really lucrative no-bid contracts to privatize important functions to ourselves and our buddies, and keep those dirty sluts and homos in line — then we’ll have to get some tax money to pay for it.  Which is wrong.  But we can’t have that tiny continually warring, police-state, privatized, sex-controlling government without money. 

What to do? 

I know!  We’ll just tax the poor and middle class people!  As long as we don’t tax rich people or corporate “people”, taxes are just fine!  Whew, dodged a bullet there…

But we can’t have a government agency called the Internal Revenue Department, no, that would be wrong.  No, we’ll call the Freedom Revenue Department — that’s the ticket…

The trouble is figuring out how to push back against the cognitive dissonance that allows people to say astoundingly stupid things like “Keep the government out of my Medicare!”.

These folks will accept/rely on all sorts of government services and then just flat out refuse to acknowledge that they are, in fact, government services.

It’s like trying argue with some one who will look straight at a stone wall that’s 5 feet in front of their face and insist that there’s nothing there. There’s not much you can do in the face of that kind of denial.

@Comment #9: paul on 09/15 at 09:24 AM

But I think the people who make this stupid argument aren’t against all the things government has done for them; they’re just against the things government might do for other people in the future. It’s like the affirmative action cartoon (quick look for a link yielded nothing_ where a white guy on a playground knocks a black guy down and stands on his back to get to the top of a climbing structure, and then, when the black guy stands back up and asks for a hand, says “Oh, no! You have to get up here by yourself too.”

I agree. Most of them are more against government that helps those undeserving people, or government that (they believe) takes all their money away. It is only a select cadre of morons that truly believes they don’t need government at all.

I recently had a long discussion with some internet libertarians about the legitimacy of government and I know very well how much this debate can feel like smashing your forehead into a brick wall.

What I got out of the discussion is that even though libertarians admit that the government does lots of good things that improve people’s lives, they insist they have deeply principled moral objections to the idea of a government that has the power to put people in jail.

It’s similar to what can be observed of pro-lifers - they present themselves as just loving babies but what they really want is to control everyone else’s sex life. Libertarians claim they just love freedom but in the end they are just sullenly complaining that a any authority exists above themselves, no matter how pragmatic or democratic it is.

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2005/12/02/a-concise-history-of-black-white-relations-in-the-usa/

Is this what you were looking for?

#6 wins the internet.

This isn’t about having “a government.”  It’s about having a government which offers services to black people.  It’s about having a government, where someone they don’t like can get elected.

Now, most conservatives are fucking stupid, so it’s easy for them to get confused.  And this kind of article helps deactivate them, which is good. 

But let’s keep in mind that conservatives generally know perfectly well that good government is good.  They just hate enough Americans that they want a fig leaf to destroy us.

The most concise argument on this “issue” (it isn’t even really one) is here:

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/06/23/thanks-for-the-oasis/

Short version: Utah, Nevada and all the Southwestern gated paradises the wingnuts live in are in the middle of deserts. In 1900, the population of Las Vegas was 50, in 1930, 3,100, in 1960, 64,000 (permanent residents). The population of Phoenix in 1950 was 106,000.

These cities and their booming metropolitan areas now hold millions of people. In the middle of a desert. This is possible for one reason and one reason only - the Hoover Dam. Built and paid for by the federal government over the express objections of private electric companies, who now profit bazillions from the resulting population boom.

All because the federal government doesn’t have to think about how this is going to look on next quarter’s earnings statement.

A couple of years ago, my cousin’s husband asked me if I really thought the government could do anything right.

It is a tribute to cognitive dissonance that he could hold this opinion given the fact that he and his family are from east Tennessee, and he works for a utility company (rural electrification and TVA anyone?).

Thank you for posting that comic!  It’s one that I tell my friends about but hadn’t been able to find it again.

A couple of years ago, my cousin’s husband asked me if I really thought the government could do anything right.

And this is one of the infuriating things about this whole unnecessary argument.  When you and I and Amanda defend the existence of government and point to the good things it does, the knee-jerk libertarians then caricature us as in love with government, as though we think it never does anything wrong and is the only solution to every problem.

They focus on inefficient bureaucracies (hey guys: I work for a big corporation, and I’m here to tell you bureaucratic inefficiency is not about private vs. public.) and monopoly of force (“men with guns!”) and completely miss the point: the alternative to government you don’t like is better government, not absence of government.

Someone needs to tell the Southwest that it’s not the best thing to maintain lush green lawns and golf courses in the middle of the desert. Lake Mead’s drying up.

What’s even more sad is the post you wrote here is what should have appeared in the times. Something that offers tangible examples that everyone has access to and gets positive use from.

And that’s not to dismiss our National Parks System. I think it’s great. A few years ago I was privileged and lucky enough to take three months with a friend and drive around the country living out of the back of a van, and we made repeated use of the parks. It was actually one of two or three events in my life that really shaped my politics.

Growing up around a lot of conservatives, the one thing I ever heard them give government credit for was the parks. And I honestly never got it. These are people that hate the EPA. They hate conservation. They hate anything they can’t touch exactly how they want to touch it. So, why the love for places like the Badlands and Yosemite?

Out there on the road, I figured it out. These parks are like playgrounds for the well-to-do. It’s almost like a gated community of recreation. Most of these parks are away from where people live, so you have to have the time and money to take to get to them. I know the most popular are supposedly packed during tourist season, but we always found open camping wherever we went. It also gives conservatives a chance to live out their Galt/frontier/rugged individual playacting.

It’s sad that the Times piece is necessary, and I wish the author hadn’t used the opportunity to showcase a government function the majority of Americans don’t use.

Yeah, Amanda, but I bet you had to flush the toilet twice. Which negates any other good thing you listed.

I really think a lot of the young libertarians have this bizarre, Bushian resentment that is basically infantile in nature; my dad says things used to be different/better/easier! My dad says the toilets used to flush better, the coffee used to be hotter, and the food used to taste better*! You were mean to my dad, so I’m going to take my toys and go home and send in drones to kill your wimmenz and children!

*Dad might be right about that last one in certain cases, but it’s not because of government OVER-regulation. Avoid Florida tomatoes! Also, too, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t get Thai delivery when Dad was young. Or frozen edamame at your local grocery. Or anything that wasn’t pork chops and iceberg lettuce. But you knew the butcher by name, so I guess that made up for it? (Clearly I need to take an early lunch.)

I can’t stand arguing with people who only have tautologies on their side.  Societies have governments.  It’s kind of a thing that humans do.  Make up a theory about how your anarchic world would work.  Fine.  I won’t care.

But what is being contrasted to government is the magic box of “THE MARKET.”

So the ‘anti government’ people set up this - near-diety- that ‘creates jobs’ and ‘innovates.’

Also, if you look at the cost per taxpayer of government services, they are a bargain. 

Example:  the tax for Medicare.  It shows up on your paycheck (if you are not self-employed and are paid regular salary/wages).  Could you get health insurance for your elderly relatives at that price in the private market?  Hell, no. 

Example:  public libraries.  The San Francisco public library system costs maybe $50 per San Francisco resident per year (haven’t checked lately).  For that price you have access to practically any book in the world.  $50 per year would buy you, what, two hardbacks nowadays, or 5 mass market paperbacks?

So many people just do so much routine kvetching about government, without actually thinking through what they are saying, that it drowns out everything else.

  One of my pet peeves about American political discourse is that we somehow ended up with right-wing anarchists. IMO, right-wing anarachism is an oxy moron because there can be no private property without the state and private property is very important to right-wingers, especially in America.

Also, if you look at the cost per taxpayer of government services, they are a bargain. 

Indeed.

“Here’s $0.50. Now take this letter from New York to California.”

right-wing anarachism is an oxy moron because there can be no private property without the state

I’m not so sure about that. I think the anarcho-capitalist fantasy is that private property is secured through superior force on the part of the property owner.  (A libertarian who appeals to the nonagression axiom has no practical vision whatsoever.)

I think the general ideological problem a lot of these anti-government guys have is that they are technically correct in that internet and roads and vaccinations and clean water and etc, etc could be provided by someone other than government.  After all, it’s not like your plumbing or your power would automatically fail if the guy that plugged you in didn’t have a government license.

On the flip side, even under the best Presidents, we’ve had a fair number of government screw-ups.  Right now, the DEA continues to prosecute guys like Charlie Lynch for selling pot in a state-sanctioned office.  Gitmo remains un-shut-down.  We have a rather large budget deficit.  HAMP was a general failure.  Unpopular wars have not yet been ended.  Etc, etc.

You can say “Oh, but that’s all just Republicans” if you like.  A lot of people simply see it as “the government” and figure “there must be a better way”.

Combine that with the endless, tireless FOX-style glibertarians who insist the EPA wants to steal your house and give it to the spotted owl, and you get a real mess of misinformation and dissatisfaction.

I’m sympathetic to the newborn anti-government guy that wakes up one morning and says “Our system sucks balls, something needs to be changed”, because - on the general sentiment - I’m in absolute agreement.  I’m just tired of the kool-aid drinking die hard that rolls out the Mises Institute article or the Heritage / Cato newsletter that says getting rid of public schools and installing a bunch of toll roads are the only true paths to freedom and prosperity.  :-p

Unless you are including sewerage with the water (and the two are separate, generally, though related), you need an aditional hash mark for coffee, eating breakfast, using the toilet and pajamas.

” One of my pet peeves about American political discourse is that we somehow ended up with right-wing anarchists.”

I think this is a misreading of Reichwing talking points.  They talk about the evils of Big Gummint and how they want to “drown it in a bathtub”.  They say government can’t do anything right, how government destroys America’s ability to compete with other countries, and is somehow ultimately responsible for everything that’s wrong with the world (either government or liberals — “liberal” merely being a code-word for lefties who “love” government).  But it’s all talk.

When it comes down to it, every republican administration since Reagan has greatly expanded the size and scope of government in the US.

The “Defense” Department is a Republican favorite — and is as much or more a government jobs program and defense industry support program as it is anything related to keeping Americans safe from non-Americans.  And discussion about its gross malfeasance and waste is not tolerated, even though it’s government through and through.

Republicans love cops and prisons, farm subsidies, disaster aid (for Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama, if not for Louisiana or the East Coast), phone taps, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the American legal system (as long as it’s filling prisons with negroes and hispanics and supplying more fodder for those sweet, sweet executions), lots of roads for commerce, fire departments, zoning laws (as long as they only affect those they dislike), “free” Medicare scooters (but only for themselves), love Social Security (but only for themselves), and want lots of regulation of every activity involving uteri and peens.  All of these things involve lots of government.

So Republicans/wingnuts/Tea-Klanners all love government — just as long as it’s benefiting them and not somebody else.

There are no real right-wing anarchists, at least not until you’ve crossed the political border into skinhead/Klan/white-supremacy territory.  They’re all authoritarians who are just looking for that strong and righteous leader, who can wield a massive, all-encompassing government to do their bidding, and whom they can blindly follow straight to hell.  And don’t let them fool you into thinking otherwise…

Zifnab, people who work in government make mistakes.  That’s called being human. 

People in private business also screw up, but since their actions are viewed as “private,” they are not subject to the same level of scrutiny or viewed with automatic scorn.

SallyStrange @ 30: So right!.  Try getting any private enterprize to do that for anything like an affordable amount if it is from Susy Public’s rural box at the end of her driveway in upstate NY to Joe Public’s house mail box on his porch in Death Valley.  But cross town or cross the country, urban or rural, the USPO will get it there, usually in under a week for a letter, from anywhere to anywhere within the USA for that $0.50.

Zifnab: there wouldn’t be any internet without Government having developed it.  There wouldn’t be any clean water to pump into your house if government didn’t operate treatment facilities and distribution networks.  Have you been to countries that don’t have a government that does either of these?  I have.  The water can be purchased, at high cost for local income, by bottle , usually; but You can’t even be certain of that.
The government needs to change and government is bad are not even close to the same thought.

The alternative to government is not “no government.”

The alternative to government is “government is the guy with the gun, and you get no say and also you eat rat poison and die.”

The alternative to government is not “no government.”

The alternative to government is “government is the guy with the gun, and you get no say and also you eat rat poison and die.”

If there were a +1 button for this comment I’d be clicking it.

Or the US Postal Service. Whenever I hear someone bitch about the USPS, I know one thing: they have never lived in a foreign country. If you’ve ever lived in a foreign country, even one like Britain, you will realize how 100% awesome flavored the USPS is.

Amanda, do you really believe that people would not trade without some kind of government intervention?

I have never understood the post office hate.  I always use it to ship packages because it’s better service for a lower price.  UPS or Fedex might be the better deal for some people or companies, but when I was a college student and selling used textbooks, I could send them using “media mail” for about $3.50 no matter how big or small.  I lived in the center of Philadelphia and never had to wait in line more than a few minutes.

I’m sure there are some locations with long lines at the post office, but the lines are probably just as long at the nearby UPS and Fedex, if they even have them.

  Cris at 31: If private property has to be secured by superior force on part of the owner than there is effectively no private property because an inordinate amount of time will be spent dealing with people violating the owner’s property rights. Under a government, not only does the government enforce property rights, making it a simpler and less messy thing that superior force, but the existence of government creates an expectation that property rights will be enforced. This tends to dampen people’s enthusiasm for violating property rights, although it works better with real property and physical goods than intellectual property. Government also is better at defining the boundries of private property. This means that without a government, there is no effective way to really define or protect property rights.

It is a tribute to cognitive dissonance that he could hold this opinion given the fact that he and his family are from east Tennessee, and he works for a utility company (rural electrification and TVA anyone?).

In that case, I’d have to grant him his point—government totally screwed up, as evidenced by the fact that his hillbilly ass isn’t scrabbling out a miserable existence from a mountainside shanty.
 

I completely agree that anyone arguing for the end of government during their lifetime, or even the diminishment of government in the provision of services, regulations, and economic policy, is either an idiot or an oligarchic wannabe. But, I do think that people who imagine a distant future without government belong in a distinct category. Anyone with half a shred of common sense would quickly realize that if government suddenly disappeared (even peacefully), it would lead to mass chaos, poverty, and violence. But that’s not to say that if we lived in societies and cultures premised on cooperation, equality, non-violence, and imagination, it wouldn’t be impossible to live in peace and prosperity without government. Obviously, we’re not even close right now.

But personally, I think if we manage to win the generations long fight to create MLK’s “radical revolution in values” and end the triple threats of “racism, militarism and economic exploitation”, there’s hope for a more just future. Unfortunately, MLK’s list is incomplete, because we also need to smash rape culture/patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and probably entirely unarticulated forms of oppression that we haven’t even noticed as systematic forces in our society. Plus, we need to figure out a way to harness new technologies and direct technological innovation in ways that benefit society as a whole, instead of benefiting the military-industrial complex primarily, with accidental social goods like the Internet coming along occasionally. We would also have to seriously strengthen the sense of human community, and all those hippie concepts like love, respect, and justice. The existence of religious fundamentalism directly undermines this fantasy future. I could go on, the point is that it’s not happening any time soon, and definitely not during any of our lifetimes.

Anyway, the reason why no government would be better than some government (if we lived in a future hypothetical hippie society) is because of the inarguable truth that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In fact, most of the injustices and cruelties listed above are a historical result of people with power using their power to divide everyone else against themselves. Many people upon realizing that truth will argue that we need to end government and then suddenly all of those problems will end. That is idiotic, because as long as people value power over equality, justice, and love, the cycle of oppression will never end. Of course, sociopathy is undeniably a (disturbingly large) variation within the human species. Humanity will always have sociopaths. But if we lived in a culture premised on opposition to oppression, isolated sociopaths would never be able to band together to oppress everyone else (as they do today through governments and mega-corporations). Anyway, this comment is already super-long, so I’ll stop here and stop ripping off the lyrics to John Lennon’s Imagine.

@Comment #41: bananacat on 09/15 at 03:16 PM

I have never understood the post office hate.  I always use it to ship packages because it’s better service for a lower price.

Me either. I suspect that much of the hate is just racism. (Most of the postal workers I see around Chicago are black.)

Me either. I suspect that much of the hate is just racism.

Generally a safe bet, but I disagree.  The anti-USPS mentality is widespread, and doesn’t look to me to have anything to do with demographics. (Most of the postal workers where I live are white guys with armed services tattoos.)  I think it’s kind of a general reaction against inconvenience (waiting in line), compounded with extreme confirmation bias. (This one time they lost a package! Plus another time something arrived a day late! See, I told you these people are totally incompetent!)

Bananacat, when I lived in philly, I *lurved* the 30th street post office. I had a box there because it basically meant 24-hour delivery and if someone couldn’t deliver to a post office box, I guess I didn’t need the product that badly. Plus, it was a gorgeous old art deco building and it was really nice to have a lovely building like that -for public use-. UPS and FedEx—if you weren’t home, they’d leave a note and tell you to come pick it up—out near the airport where no public transit went, so if you didn’t have a car, you were SOL. So fuck ‘em! Postal Service rules!

White men such as myself don’t need government for nothing, it just gets in the way of me making a perpetual motion machine and if it wasn’t for the taxes I had to pay, almost five percent, I would be richer than Bill Gates.  I might just show you all by going Galt and then you will all be sorry.  Of course when I say galt I mean I am going to hide in my tree house and wait for my mom to bring me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Right.  Now pad it out to 400 pages, throw in some manly manly men with big guns, swarthy foreign stick figures for teh bad guys, and a couple of blow-up dolls painted like conservative women for the sex scenes, and I can show you half a dozen places to get it published.

I think it’s kind of a general reaction against inconvenience (waiting in line)

People who complain about the lines are generally in one because they decided to drop their packages off at lunch.  A line during a rush period?  Who could have thunk it?

Seriously, the postal service has so many automated services now that only someone who can’t comprehend machines at all would need to talk to a live person the majority of the time.  I’d go as far as to say that the person who can’t use an automated stamping machine who drives must live in a time warp where full service gas stations are on every corner, because self service is just to hard.

Me either. I suspect that much of the hate is just racism. (Most of the postal workers I see around Chicago are black.)

That combined with the stereotype of the government’s civil service/post office as having such a relaxed environment and strong job security that its workers sit around reading papers or otherwise goofing off most of the workday on the taxpayer dime and exhibiting horrid customer service attitudes towards the public they’re assigned to serve. 

Of course, this is far from the truth as it is often IME put forth by those in mid-senior corporate level positions(i.e. ibanker execs, biglaw partners, etc) as a way to disparage anyone who didn’t go down the “more competitive” private sector or those in the greater public who treat public service employees like medieval peasants to be disdained and condescended to by them as perceived “nobility”. 

Moreover, if they think US government services like the post office are annoying to deal with….they need to spend some time in places like Mainland China where the bureaucrats serving the public are not only unresponsive most of the time….but act irritated as if they are doing you a “go out of their way” favor for asking them to do their assigned job of assisting you as part of the greater public.

Zifnab, people who work in government make mistakes.  That’s called being human.

People in private business also screw up, but since their actions are viewed as “private,” they are not subject to the same level of scrutiny or viewed with automatic scorn.

Which means, of course, that government organisations will proceed to adopt procedures to cut back on mistakes, document processes, and painfully demonstrate procedurial fairness at all times.

And then get slammed for not being as efficient or innovative as private industry.

“Right.  Now pad it out to 400 pages, throw in some manly manly men with big guns, swarthy foreign stick figures for teh bad guys, and a couple of blow-up dolls painted like conservative women for the sex scenes, and I can show you half a dozen places to get it published.”

...pad it out to 1200-pages, throw in some trains, a female leading character, some moochers and looters, a speech that’s over 70-pages long, and an incomprehensible “philosophy” that raises selfishness to the ultimate virtue and you’ve got Atlas Shrugged...

Seriously, the postal service has so many automated services now that only someone who can’t comprehend machines at all would need to talk to a live person the majority of the time.  I’d go as far as to say that the person who can’t use an automated stamping machine who drives must live in a time warp where full service gas stations are on every corner, because self service is just to hard.

There are quite a few technophobes and even outright luddites in the greater US public.  What’s more….this is not solely limited to the elderly as I’ve personally encountered many young twenty-somethings and even teens who are so terrified of computers/technology that they go out of their way to avoid it. 

Moreover, there are certain situations when the automated services don’t provide a specific type of service/help, break down, and/or other unforeseen circumstances causing the long lines.

Seriously, the postal service has so many automated services now that only someone who can’t comprehend machines at all would need to talk to a live person the majority of the time.  I’d go as far as to say that the person who can’t use an automated stamping machine who drives must live in a time warp where full service gas stations are on every corner, because self service is just to hard.

Not true at all. Above 13 ounces (which is less than a pound), you *must* hand your package to a postal worker, you can’t drop it in a box or otherwise have it picked up somewhere.

I’d go as far as to say that the person who can’t use an automated stamping machine who drives must live in a time warp where full service gas stations are on every corner, because self service is just to hard.

You mean Oregon?

Seriously though, our unemployment is plenty high without allowing us to pump our own gas like the rest of the country. It’s archaic, but I’m not complaining.

Amanda- to roads, add “and pretty much any other form of transportation: railroads, ships, airplanes, etc.”  Which is why things like the FAA and the federal Railroad Workers’ Pension program are under assault.

Not true at all. Above 13 ounces (which is less than a pound), you *must* hand your package to a postal worker, you can’t drop it in a box or otherwise have it picked up somewhere.

Almost.  You have to go to the post office, but you don’t have to hand it to someone.  You can use the automated machines in the lobby to create a label (the machine weighs the box), which you then affix to the package.  The package can then be dropped off, generally in a area designed for boxes. 

No human interaction required, and usually no lines (the lobby is open after hours).

In addition to Oregon, New Jersey also doesn’t allow self-service gas stations. The first time I drove to college in Connecticut, it did take about a minute to figure out how to do it. But it’s not that hard. I do appreciate it as a form of employment stimulus, though. NJ is fortunate to have some of the lowest gas prices in the country because we have so many refineries, so it makes sense to benefit from that.

You also missed all the food regulations that made your breakfast non-poisonous and the safety regulations for your pajamas so they don’t burst into flames if you brush up next to a heater.

the postal service has so many automated services now that only someone who can’t comprehend machines at all would need to talk to a live person the majority of the time.

Disclaimer:  I love USPS, but that still isn’t true.  I’ve never seen more than one kiosk even at the central post office in downtown Seattle.  If one person who has a lot of stuff to send or if one person who doesn’t know how to use the machine* is in front of you, you’ll wait longer than if you got into the line for the counter.

*Elderly patrons, frankly.

Av0gadro @ 55: curiouscliche @ 58 is right. 
It drove me crazy to have someone else fueling my vehicle the whole 4 months I worked there when I didn’t get across the Hudson to NYC often enough to fuel over there, though cheapest gas was generally between Jersey City and Sucaucus (sorry, my spelling sucks today) near the lead up to the Lincoln.  Any one know if it still is?

Our local USPO recently removed most of their automated machines because of the high number of patrons who couldn’t figure them out, but insisted on trying and causiing crowding through the lobby greater than that from counter lines.  Which is just sad.

Antigone: Yes. Thank you.

Oh, and whoever asked whether people would trade without government, the answer (demonstrated in lots of part of the world) is no. There will be some very small very local trade, but without a government that enforces basic rights, trade is limited to the distances and amounts of stuff where it’s not worth the trouble for people with guns to go to the site of the trade and take the property of both parties to the transaction.

@51 PiaToR/Zifnab

Never forget that public employees have immunity for all their mistakes.  Namely, you cannot sue the civil court clerk for rejecting your discovery motion at a critical juncture in the litigation, which causes your client to lose their suit wherein millions of dollars are at stake. 

You cannot sue the Patent Examiner who takes more than three months to respond to an office action, and thereby causes your patent to be effective for only 15 years instead of 17, costing you millions of dollars in sales by competitors who were producing knock-offs overseas.

You cannot sue the DMV for failing to send you a registration renewal, thereby causing you to miss the deadline for auto registration and causing you to be cited by a police officer for driving with expired registration.  Don’t even get me started on how traffic citations affect your insurance premiums.

The difference between public sector workers and private sector workers is that the private sector workers are required by law to carry O&E or malpractice insurance, for when their mistakes harm the public. 

Working in the public sector means never having to say you’re sorry, and never being punished for your mistakes.  I decided a long time ago that when I grew tired of working in the private sector, and wanted to live a retired lifestyle while still collecting salary and benefits, I’d simply work a public sector job.

Also, for some perspective, check out Alyssia Finley’s article in the Wall Street Journal:  “California Prison Academy:  Better Than a Harvard Degree.”

I have never understood the post office hate.  I always use it to ship packages because it’s better service for a lower price.

Which is why we actually have a post office in the first place.  In the early days, we had private mail services and, like the other things I mentioned above, they were more expensive, less convenient, and less efficient.

@Rachel Tyrel #63: You’re forgetting, of course, all the ways private companies prevent themselves from being able to be sued, such as binding arbitration agreements in small print and lobbying for tort reform to disenfranchise people who interact with them.

You’re also forgetting that government workers are at the whim of random government shutdowns whenever Republicans feel like it; budgets (and, by extension, jobs) that are cut as political gamesmanship; and overbearing members of the public who think that, just because they pay their taxes on time, they’re entitled to yell at whatever poor sap is working the desk at the DMV if it takes them more than 10 seconds to do anything.

I know this is an anecdote, but not data, but the people I know who work in the private sector are far lazier and better at slacking off in the jobs than anyone I know working in the public sector.

It seems to me that when your choice is between two kinds of imperfect organizations, where Type 1 has as its charter a set of goals explicitly including the working toward welfare of all citizens, and Type 2 has as its charter a set of goals that explicitly does not, the question of which would be better at providing public goods would be a no-brainer.

Lewis Powell and his heirs should be revered in marketing circles as gods.

But, the Holocaust!  The Holocaust proves that all government everywhere is evil!

I have been shocked over the past couple days at how naive libertarians are. Ron Paul saying that society would take care of that guy. WTF, libertarians? Society? I thought you fuckers all believed we are totally rational, self-interested actors and not altruistic social creatures. I looked into Paul’s actual plan for healthcare and it is basically that you pay for health insurance through tax subsidies—which is effectively the same thing as just socializing healthcare and having the government pay for it, except the poor run out of money a lot faster.

This also brings to mind that “Bullshit” show with Penn and Teller. There is an episode about the American with disabilities act where they end by claiming the market will force businesses to comply with those standards. Which, true to the shows title, is complete bullshit! People with disabilities are a small, poor part of the overall populations. Why would a business make expensive accomodations to cater to that demographic when they could spend that money competing for richer, able-bodied that is WAY larger? The best case scenario for disabled folk is that disablity ghettos will pop up where there are enough disabled people in an area that a business can survive just catering to them. The most likely option is that they would be completely dependent on relatives or, failing that, the altruism of others.

For all the complaints of irrational liberal idealist mush heads, libertarians are a bunch of fucking pollyanna’s! Either that, or they are just to dishonest to admit that it would optimize efficiency if at the point keeping you alive costs more then everything you have plus what loved ones are willing to spend on you, the market says you should fucking die.

@65 Literroy

Sorry, but arbitration is generally cheaper and more efficient than litigation, because arbitration is private, and litigation is public.  Just because a litigant wins an award in arbitration doesn’t somehow make that award worth less than if it had been obtained in litigation.  The loser still has to pay the winner the amount of the judgment, or they have their assets foreclosed, repossessed, or put into receivership.  Sorry if you have a problem with that, but in that example, All Roads Lead to Rome.  The end result is the same (the award), it just cost less to get there because the government didn’t have to be involved. That’s just how it works. 

As for government workers being at the whim of politicians when it comes to layoffs, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it.  That’s why they get to retire after 20 years of service with 85% of their final compensation for the rest of their lives.  Show me a private sector job with that kind of retirement plan.  And another thing:  Paying one’s taxes on time DOES entitle everyone to prompt, courteous, efficient service by public agencies.  That’s why the agencies have such strict standards of performance, and what is considered acceptable service is written in all those manuals. 

Your anecdote is no bigger than my anecdote.  For every example on the one hand, there is always a counterpoint on the other.  We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Rachel, you’re seriously trying to argue that arbitration doesn’t benefit the super-rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else’s legal right to a fair trial? This is not an anecdote: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2004/argument_andrias_mayjun04.msp

As for public employees versus private, just how exactly does one argue with a straight face that Medicare bureaucracy is less efficient and accommodating than that of insurance companies?

Rachel, where did you come up with that figure that government employees get to retire after 20 years and get to keep 85% of their pay as a pension? Not even the military is that generous, a military retiree only gets 50% after 20 years and it incrementally increases to 75% for 30 years of active duty service. Federal employees get a three tiered system consisting of individual savings, a small pension of 30% of the average of your highest three years and social security (which is curtailed because of windfall prevention). And a fed is only eligible based on at least thirty years of service and reaching the eligible retirement age. Granted the Federal Employee Retirement System is better than just a 401K, but it ain’t 85% of base pay.
For more information on FERS: http://www.opm.gov/retire/pre/fers/index.asp
Rachel, you’re just making shit up. Links or it didn’t happen.

Excuse me Rachel @69, where is the source of information that government employees get to retire after 20 years and get 85% of their pay as a pension? Not even military retirees get that much, they only get 50% of base pay after 20 years of active duty service. And civilian employees are under FERS, maybe you should read up on government employee retirement plans before you make shit up. Here’s a link to get you started: http://www.opm.gov/retire/pre/fers/index.asp

Ugg, sorry for the double post.

I’m with lee #29: private property! It’s one of the great almost invisible, but absolutely basic government services. In fact, the way you can tell if something is a government is whether it enforces some form of private property.

The right wing also loves another government service, those government chartered authoritarian collectives, limited liability corporations. It’s the liberals who tend to think of them as some kind of government screw up.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that red states and right wingers are often extremely dependent on the government and they resent it. Look at most of the red states. They generally have a positive federal-state tax-benefit balance. They often require massive public works to even exist, e.g. the Hoover Dam, the TVA, the interstate highways (because the old South resisted railroad expansion until after the Civil War). They have a relatively underdeveloped private sector, partly due to history and partly due to their cultural resistance to actual pro-business attitudes: xenophilia, symmetric relations, tolerance and less concerned with insulted honor.

It’s sort of the harder they suck the teat, the more they hate mommy.

Never forget that public employees have immunity for all their mistakes.  Namely, you cannot sue the civil court clerk for rejecting your discovery motion at a critical juncture in the litigation, which causes your client to lose their suit wherein millions of dollars are at stake.

I have had plenty of jobs in the private and public sector, and I am never personally liable in a court of law for my fuckups. My employer may be liable, but I will never be personally sued. At worst, I will get fired, and then find another job. “Limited liability” is the foundation of modern business (enabled, of course, by the government).

It’s kind of funny—I hear people like Rachel go on and on about all the gobs of money that government workers make and how easy they have it and how quickly they can retire. Yet, strangely those people never take those jobs. If they’re so great, how come they’re not first in line to try to get one of them? The answer: those jobs either don’t actually pay so well, or they’re so horrible that hardly anyone actually wants to take them.

If it were true that you could retire on 85% salary after 20 years, it would be financially worthwhile to take that job, work at it for 20 years, and then start a second career at 42, getting hired at a level where one had 20 years of experience while still drawing on your 85%-of-previous-salary retirement pay. In fact, it would be so financially worthwhile that no one would choose to do anything else. And yet, few people go this route, because that route doesn’t actually exist.

While it’s true that large-scale private property, or property as possession of land or natural resources is impossible without government, I’m not really sure why that’s considered a good thing other than as a way to point out right-wing hypocrisies. It’s also empirically false that currency is necessary for long-distance trade. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-–-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html

And another thing:  Paying one’s taxes on time DOES entitle everyone to prompt, courteous, efficient service by public agencies.  That’s why the agencies have such strict standards of performance, and what is considered acceptable service is written in all those manuals. 

Bullshit.

It entitles you to as prompt, courteous, and efficient service by public agencies as resourcing, regulations and other factors allow.

If you starve an agency of resources, expect it not to provide services.  If you saddle it with regulations to prevent any possible hint of unfairness, expect it to suffer.  And if you abuse the poor bloody human beings who have to deal with your miserable privileged ass, courtesy will suffer too.

Ah, the bullshit “state employees are overpaid” line again.  I’m from Wisconsin, so it’s all I’ve heard for the past nine months.

Anecdote.  My mother worked for the state of Wisconsin for 37 years, as an executive assistant to a department head.  Her salary when she retired was $35K.  She never took her sick time, and worked her ass off, so much so that after she left they still kept calling her because they had no idea just how many things she’d been handling on her own.

What boggles my mind is that people can look at the benefits of being a state worker and decide that it automatically means they are all lazy freeloaders, instead of asking themselves why don’t private companies treat their workers with more dignity?  You’d rather see something taken away from people rather than demand it for yourself.  And now in my state, I’m actually seeing people argue that teachers and now police and firefighters are the bad guys!  It’s like being in bizarro world.

And finally, it is YOUR responsibility to know when the registration is up on your car.  Claiming that it got “lost in the mail” doesn’t cut it with private industry, either.  Try telling your credit card company that’s why you didn’t pay last month.  And considering that you can do this stuff online now, talking about suing the worker who “didn’t send you your card” (even though chances are that YOU lost it in junk mail, etc) is just stupid.

@Comment #77: curiouscliche on 09/15 at 11:58 PM

While it’s true that large-scale private property, or property as possession of land or natural resources is impossible without government, I’m not really sure why that’s considered a good thing

It’s because, for all their problems, people’s standard of living would be lower without these things.

Every time some wingnut Republican starts yelling about taxes, I think of Life of Brian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSELOCMmw4A

Talk about a nanny state, Rachel Tyrel.  You don’t know when your registration is about to expire?  You need the DMV to send you a notice?  Don’t you ever open your trunk?  Usually there is a sticker on your license plate with a month and year.  It’s usually the same month that you got the registration last time.  All you have to remember is the year, really.  It’s not that hard.

You think the government is inefficient?  Try having the private sector do all the roads, water, sewer, police, fire, etc.

And even if a government employee got 85% of their paycheck in retirement which I don’t believe for a second, most government employees aren’t paid very much to begin with.  The government offers incentives to do these shitty jobs most of us don’t want to do in the form of benefits, including health insurance and a retirement package.

And even if a government employee got 85% of their paycheck in retirement which I don’t believe for a second, most government employees aren’t paid very much to begin with.  The government offers incentives to do these shitty jobs most of us don’t want to do in the form of benefits, including health insurance and a retirement package.

Moreover, with a few notable prestigious exceptions, the public sector is often viewed by those in the corporate sector(i.e. Rachel Tyrel)* and highly ambitious high achieving students at elite educational institutions* as a dumping ground for “unambitious”, “mediocre”, and “lazy” students/people who can’t make it in the private sector.  Even some politicians have gotten into the act as a certain Massachusetts governor in the past illustrated when he called state government employees “lazy pigs” or something to that effect which provoked a loud outcry from them. 

* Lost count of how much of this BS I’ve heard from highly ambitious high school classmates, undergrads at various Ivy/Ivy-level universities, and corporate execs/biglaw lawyers I’ve had the dubious pleasure of encountering in my school/professional life.

And another thing:  Paying one’s taxes on time DOES entitle everyone to prompt, courteous, efficient service by public agencies.

I pay for products and services in the private sector on time, and that doesn’t entitle me to prompt, courteous, or efficient service.  Why does the public sector need to be held to a higher standard than the private sector?

I stand in line for a short time at the DMV, but I stand in line for much longer when I go the Verizon store.

USPS consistently delivers packages in the same amount of time as Fedex or UPS.  So you can’t really bitch about slow service from USPS (which isn’t even slow) unless you also bitch about slow service from the private companies.

I see that there have been some misunderstandings.  Allow me to correct those.  If everyone will kindly look at Alyssia Finley’s article that I cited in my previous post, readers will find the 85% of final compensation after 20 years of service.  In that regard, I was referring particularly to Prison Guards.  I’m afraid that the sad truth is that here in California, corrections officers get paid about twice to three times that of public school teachers.  The training to be a prison guard in California is only four months long, whereas the training to be a public school teacher is five years. 

That disparity is one of my primary concerns; namely, why do we require so little and pay so much for people to watch over hundreds of thousands of non-violent inmates, but we don’t show such devotion to school teachers, firefighters, and other public employees who are obviously doing much more important jobs with much longer-reaching impacts into the future?

As to the point about arbitration benefiting the rich at the expense of a fair trial, the linked article concerns labor disputes.  Sorry to be a broken record, but here in California, we have made arbitration clauses in employment contracts nearly unenforceable, because workers’ rights to be paid properly for their labor is an unwaivable right.  Workers always have administrative remedies available because of the unconscionability of asking workers to waive their rights under the labor code.  If there are states that do not enforce that aspect of their labor laws, it is a problem that needs to be addressed through legislation and appropriate enforcement authority resting with the State Labor Commissioner/Department/Agency.  Not to beat the dead horse, but the public employees who work at the Dept. of Labor Standards Enforcement are performing much more valuable services to the public than prison guards.  Why are they not compensated in like fashion?

As to speedbudget’s suggestion that private enterprise do public services; again, here in Orange County, California, we have quite a bit of that.  The Toll Road project is a Lockheed Martin enterprise that creates thousands of jobs and collects millions of dollars per year in tolls, both of which generate tax revenues.  Our water supplies are managed by such entities as the Irvine Ranch Water District, and other public-private hybrids that run primarily on subscriber fees.  The community of Coto de Caza maintains its own private security force, independent of the Orange County Sheriffs’ Department.  And so on, and so forth.  Somehow, despite all this private involvement in public affairs, Orange County still manages to score better on public safety and quality of life than our neighbors in Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

Rachel: arbitration was brought up in the context of labor rights, and you said it was superior to actual trials, in that context. Also, any efficiencies that arbitration might have over courts is a direct result of the lack of funding that’s been undermining justice throughout the country. Apparently, the problem is particularly acute in California: http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/07/08/27652/california-chief-justice-blasts-budget-cuts-courts Arbitration pays for itself, because it requires at least a $125 fee deposit to the arbitrator, PER DAY (and that’s just just for damages below $10,000), plus lawyer fees, if the Plaintiff is to actually have a chance at winning . A lot of workers and consumers cannot afford that.

Atheist: Do you have evidence for your assertion? This graph tells a different story about the “quality of life” with private property. Please note that Perestroika wasn’t implemented until 1986. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/d/d4/20091030205217Russian_male_and_female_life_expectancy.PNG

I love it when libertarians who have lived all their lives in California or some other heavily-unionized blue state yap about how the free market would solve everything. If they really believed it, they would move to Tennessee or some other right-to-work/arbitration-loving/corporate-feudal state.

I can say this because I grew up in Tennessee—and prufrock, you’re right, without the New Deal and the Manhattan Project East Tennessee would be an economic wasteland. (Of course, without the aforementioned there would probably also be far less nuclear waste in East Tennessee. But there are downsides to everything.)

Sorry, curiouscliche, you have misinterpreted what I wrote.  It was literroy in post number 65 who brought up arbitration, without reference to a specific area of law or legal practice.  I am assuming, from the context of post number 65, that literroy was referring to business disputes between providers and consumers, such as when an overbilling dispute occurs with a cardholder and their credit card company. 

It was your post number 70 which mentions arbitration in context of labor rights.  In number 85, I responded, and I never wrote that arbitration was superior to civil trials in the labor context.  In fact, 85 is fairly clear that arbitration doesn’t apply to labor disputes in California because of administrative regulations prohiting workers to waive their right to lawful compensation, which is managed by the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement. 

Now, the underfunding of the Superior Court system in California is a whole other kettle of fish.  But, as an experienced litigator, I have to tell you that the $125 per day deposit for an arbitrator is nominal in comparison to Jury Fees and Court reporter’s fees, which have to be paid to the Superior Court Clerk for every day of trial.  The minimum daily jury fee deposit in OC Superior Court is $150 per day. 

Just a few years ago, in fact, I was working on a trial (Dilan Esper was my adversary, if I recall correctly)  where the daily jury fees and court reporters’ deposits were running on the average of $700-$900 per day.  All those expenses are in addition to attorneys’ fees, and you’re right in that nobody but the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford those kinds of fees to resolve a dispute. 

The point that I’m making is that the entire legal system is broken, and has been rigged to disproportionately disavantage the poor and working classes while the wealthy and affluent pay for their desired outcomes.  But that’s nothing that can be solved by making a choice between arbitration and litigation.  They’re both horribly expensive models of dispute resolution, but I’m waiting for someone to suggest something superior to anything else we’ve got.

Oh Maureen, that post cracks me up.  Just so you know, I’m a progressive anti-authoritarian, not a libertarian.  I’m the one who keeps reminding everyone on this blog that Ayn Rand was a crystal-meth tweaker who influenced the policies that govern the Federal Reserve via her kinky tweaked-out sexcapades with Alan Greenspan in the 1950s. 

Secondly your assumption that I have never dealt with the frustration of being poor and working class in America is misplaced.  Just so you know, I moved to California in 1998, from a rural shitberg in Arkansas.  You read that correctly:  Arkansas - The Armpit of the Known Universe.  But I came from a wealthy family, right?  WRONG.  My family was dirt-poor.  I went to a crappy, decaying, inner-city public high school in Little Rock.  I went to undergrad on a scholarship (I was bright and my family couldn’t afford to pay for university).  I worked summer jobs and every holiday break to pay my rent, utilities and other living expenses. 

Please do not assume that just because I have several examples of the ways that privitazation makes public works more efficient that I am some Randroid.  I have a very large and very particular beef with prison guards and other forms of government waste.  But I am open-minded enough to admit when certain principles work.  That’s an important part of being educated about politics:  being able to concede when the opposing side is winning the affections of the voters.

I’m going to outline this argument against anarchism to point out its flaws:

1) Many services in the society I live in are provided by the government.
2) These services cannot be provided by any other means. (unstated but implied)
Therefore,
3) We need government.

The problem with this argument is point 2). Every single one of the services described can, and have, been provided by organizations other than the state. In the case of roads, this has even been done in this country in living memory. So, while there are good arguments against anarchism, this isn’t one of them.

Now, you can soften premise 2) by adding the word “efficiently” before the word provided. But once you do that, the argument lacks the knockout punch that it previously had. Now you have to talk about empirical comparisons. This is difficult since you end up making a lot of comparisons between one time period with a state monopoly and another time period (usually earlier and less technologically advanced) with some degree of competition. The ability to make firm statements about what sort of social system is better becomes much more difficult.

But the real problem with this sort of retort to the “conservatarian” Tea Party types is that they’re not anarchists. Michael Lipsky’s argument didn’t “have to be written”—it’s totally missing the point. The right isn’t campaigning to end government. They want the American government to focus on its “core competencies”—promoting the interests of wealthy, white men. I thought it was relatively easy to tell the difference between anarchists and fascists but some liberals sure do struggle with that.

9.1 million acres = 14,218.75 sq miles; the US is 3,794,101 sq mi.  Therefore 0.37% of the US is protected wilderness.

Re: Comment #57 by prufrock

No, really, security is what is claimed and you have to hand anything over 13 oz to a living person.  Generally, this is pretty easy, as you can hand it to anyone at the counter, at the receiving counter, at the UPS or FedEX or mail drop stores, or where-ever there’s a commercial mail pick-up.  I’ll often get automated stamps, and then go to the UPS store or grocery and ask, ‘Can I leave this with you?’ and they take it and drop it for me.

There are no longer slots for larger packages at the US Post Office.

Did you know, per capita, California has the most private wells/water supplies/septic systems?  It’s true!  Even with millions of people using water from hundreds of miles away in the Bay Area or LA Basin, many are on well-water.  It used to be most!  Weird, huh?

I’m lucky that I have a local water utility that operates wells on each of the hills and a large reservoir.  But this means 100% of our water is rain-fed.  It also means I have to treat my own sewage…

Post offices vary a lot. My post office has a place to put large packages after you put postage on them from the automated postage machine. I sometimes just print postage at home and dump a huge box in the lobby slot, and people get the package, so…

You would never get done, because you learned the skill of writing in a notebook at a government-run school.  Every tick would be something government made possible, requiring another tick, and so on.

Just so you know, I’m a progressive anti-authoritarian

Yeah, there’s a lot of those that think arbitration is some kind of fantastic deal for people. Troll better.

Just so you know, I moved to California in 1998, from a rural shitberg in Arkansas.

Well I moved to Arkansas! From Mississippi! And worked six jobs! And paid for school by selling kidneys! Four of them!

Show me where I was a troll, Dan,  and not just recounting the arguments that the Tea Party folks are going to use to demonstrate their points that some privatization measures actually increase efficient service and save the government money.

Now, I completely understand that you don’t like my argument.  I freely admit that I am absolutely an exception, and that the majority of my high school friends are still in Arkansas, eeking out a living in the industrial trades or transportation logistics or working in one of many enterprises whose only client is Wal-Mart (because Wal-Mart is all there is in Arkansas, unless you’re in chicken processing and the alternatives are Tyson and Cargill, both of whom employ coyotes to illegally transport workers from Mexico to work at their facilities in Northwest Arkansas - so, no jobs there).  I totally get that you don’t like me as a person, you don’t approve of my lifestyle, and you basically think I’m an uppity bitch.  I understand all that.

But I want you to explain how it is trolling to start restating and analyzing the Tea Party arguments before they’ve been made, so that progressives can start formulating the counterarguments that will shut those points down. I don’t accept that developing counterargument before the argument gets started isn’t a legitimate way of heading off the opponent before the contest begins.

So go for it.  I want to see how much of your problem is with my arguments, and how much is ad hominem.

Libertarians are welcome to come up with an example of a government at their preferred level of centralization which produced prosperity.

The problem with libertarians is that they want us to be poor and die of preventable diseases so that they don’t have to admit that their mommies worked hard and weren’t well compensated.  That’s libertarianism, from start to finish. 

Well then, Punditus, by your definition, I couldn’t possibly be a libertarian because I think that one of the proper roles of government in society is to provide universal healthcare for everyone.

Paid for, of course, at the expense of millionaires and billionaires who would have their taxes adjusted to a fairer share.

I totally agree with the philosophical underpinning of this post. But I second CTD and have a nitpick: 8 and 13 are circular—if the toilet regulations and mandated vaccines are necessary in the first place, the government has to be the one to do them, but if I were going to argue against the existance of government I’d take the position that they are not. It’s not like your toilet would vanish if the regulations hadn’t existed.