SamuelRSmith said:
richardhutnik said:
SamuelRSmith said:
Well, it depends on how you define "work". The Government is very good at some things, and terrible at others.
What most people mean by "Government doesn't work" is that increased Government hinders prosperity. The Government itself works fine, it's just a cancer on everything else. |
Actually, people who argue that government doesn't work, will end up saying the government does a poor job at things. Word is "the private sector can do it better".
Well, what I was saying, when it comes to implementing the will of the people influencing government, it is able to end up getting the needed money, distributing it, and using law enforcement to slow down and hinder things it doesn't like. It doesn't mean the government can completely stop things, as markets tend to skirt around a lot of government action.
I did end up comparing government to a genie, and this would fit. And I could go further by connecting genie in this context to the Muslim tradition of genie being jinn (genie comes from that). Genies would be comparable to that of a demon I believe, and I believe in Muslim tradition. there are stories of how genies would end up destroying people by granting them wishes. If one has issues with government, it would be that the genie (government) keeps granting the wishes of those who call on the genie to do this, and this set of wishes ultimately destroys the wishes of the people. Evil versions of the genie would do this.
So, one can end up arguing the government is a genie that can destroy a nation, if it isn't tempered.
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But the Government doesn't do most things well. Look at how many things they do that have gone, or will go, bankrupt. And this is despite their ability to confiscate as much wealth as they see fit, through taxation, inflation, and borrowing.
I can't think of a single thing that Government does better than the private sector.
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You are posting this on the Internet. The Internet got its birth as a government initiative founded by the Department of Defense, to build a communications network that could withstand a nuclear war.
The private sector didn't produce an Internet. The private sector gave birth to the likes of AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve. All of these fell to the wayside by an entity that was birthed by a government initiative. Nothing the private sector came up with rivals this.
Same could be said about the likes of Spain sponsoring Christopher Columbus discovering the new world. Private enterprise didn't do this.
GPS is another government invention. None in the private sector produced this.
Libraries only exist now, due to government funding.
Large initiatives which benefit society almost never come about strictly from private sector involvement. There are things that the private sector can't even get near at all, because it isn't in the interest of the private sector to do it. Later on, once established, it is entirely possible for the private sector to take it over. But the public sector is the one that kicks it off.
