"What is YOUR solution to getting people taught to fish?  Care to name what they should train in, and how they will pay for it?  If you can't do that, you neither care to give a man to fish, or teach him how to fish."

The reading fail is yours, friend. Richard wants a government that is going to tell people, "Hey you! Go over here and do this! This is where the money is!" He's been pretty clear about that. The problem is, the government does this and all it's done is to stoke bubble after bubble.

Matter of opinion, I guess. I strongly disagree.

For a number of reasons, people don't want other to starve.  There is a reality though, that policies and beliefs have consequences, and that can result in people starving.  It can also be, as I said, that push comes to shove, a person will end up accepting starving as a reality, out of neglect, or belief that things are futile.  They may not even think of such happening.  Pretty much, it can be someone doesn't long for it, but they are apathetic to it.  And one strong thing coming through this whole 47% thing, is that there is apparently beliefs that the 47% (or may be less) are lazy good for nothing bums, who don't want to work or take responsibility for themselves.  And such individuals should starve.  Heck, look at the line Romney said in the quote.  There is a percentage of people who EXPECT to be able to get food, and are dependent on the government.  These people are the individuals who won't take responsibility for themselves, is the line.

Heck, I had one guy reply to my situation saying I should kill myself so his taxes would be lower.  This is a mentality out there.   And from a practical standpoint, while maybe people do not want it to happen, it can happen.  Heck, the guy who said that about my situation I guess didn't realize the manager of the helpdesk I was at that closed, and put me on unemployment, did take his own life after it was over.

You miss the point, and get what I have been saying backwards. I was saying the government does things that society values (well values at least seeing less so the government deals with it), that society doesn't do on its own.  If society did it, government wouldn't be involved.  Government doesn't get into things that somewhere the body politic doesn't feel is a problem.   What I see here, whether you sign up to this or not isn't even the point, is a belief that you slash government and then somehow the problems will resolve themselves.  My take  is that the problem doesn't go away simply by slashing government.  Cut welfare and housing people, they will funnel elsewhere.  The way to shrink government is for society to do things outside of government and make the problems go away.  The opposite won't do it.

If you do not believe in government intervening to give people fish, cannot show where anyone else would step in (with numbers on what the level of intervention would be), and cannot show where people can train, and what areas there are viable jobs, then you cannot show that the argument about teaching people to fish would hold, and government out would have everything ok.  See, I can name numbers here.  Without government intervention, there is a report that poverty rate would be double what it is now:

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/without-the-safety-net-more-than-a-quarter-of-americans-would-have-been-poor-last-year/

Now, unless you like numbers of people being worse off doubling, show that without government, that you would end up not only cause it to not increase to double, but be better than it is now.  Can you do this?  If you can't, then the only thing we have is, lack of government involvement means more people suffering.  

I don't believe that to be true. As long as there is imperfection anywhere - and life will always be imperfect - someone in government is going to say, "We've gotta do something about this!" It is a primal urge of government agencies to grow, never to shrink. No one in government makes his career by streamlining and downsizing; mission creep is what's incentivized.

And when something is viewed as the government's responsibility, people are less likely to take the initiative to do it on their own. So the idea that government has to just keep on doing things it can't even afford to do until society spontaneously decides to pick up the slack doesn't fly because that simply isn't going to happen.

I'm not sure where you get this strange idea that people have no agency of their own and have to be told what to do. In a market economy, people have a tendency to figure out where the money is and go there, and this is much easier in a thriving, dynamic economy than in one that is overregulated and sluggish. Someone directing people to train in a particular thing also has a terrible tendency to create a glut of workers for which there aren't sufficient jobs. See Obama's green energy jobs program and what a bust it was. All it really succeeded in doing was wasting people's time. I guess that doesn't count as people getting hurt, though.

No one is seriously advocating a sudden yanking away of the safety net. Just as we didn't get here overnight but as the result of a great ratcheting effect, it would be wise to ratchet things back rather than to do away with them in one fell swoop. I realize you have it in your head that Paul Ryan is the reincarnation of Ayn Rand just because he's a fan of her books, but this is pure hype and fearmongering. His policies are far, far closer to Obama's than to whatever hers would be. So this line of argument about gutting the safety net is a red herring because it's not something that's going to happen, unless our fiscal profligacy finally catches up to us and then the whole question of how much of a safety net we should have and what it should look like becomes moot.

The government is not some sort of entity that exists in a vaccumn and is a blob that consumes and does it.  The government is a collection of people that pass and enforce laws and attempt to reflect the collective will of the people.  It is a reflection of what the body politic wants.  The issue of the growth of government has to do with laws on the books, and no one bothers to adjust things at all.  There is no primal urge, just more laws getting added and no one bothering to cull down things.  Because people benefit from resources, there isn't an incentive to thin down anywhere.  You can speak about how it systemically works, which is fine, but to make it out as a living, and breathing entity, is absurd.

In regards to what I said, how the heck do you think that problems will get addressed, unless a free society decided to deal with it?  In America, you have much freedom to do things.  You may have to get creative, but there is no one stopping you personally for helping those in need to teach to fish.  There is a constitution that enables the right to assemble also.  And the body politic can vote in things.  So, the reality is this: If the body politic NOW won't go about and attempt to address issues the government is doing, when the heck do you think they will if the government stops doing it?  What percentage of people will end up going to work in soup kitchens if they aren't now, if you got rid of all food stamps, for example?

And you again miss a point here.  It is that the government WILL do things or attempt to do them, if the body politic shows signs it wants it done, and don't act to do it themselves.  Until the body politic does otherwise, it will continue.  The point to deal with IS to get people to see things are their responsibility, before you get changed.  You don't just take away the government programs and expect people who don't see it to be their responsibility to suddenly act?  And certainly act in sufficient and coordinated efforts to act at the same level the government does now.

Yes, of course the government is not an actual organism. It's called an analogy, but I forgot how frustratingly literal you can be. The point is, there is no incentive for government to ever become more efficient or to do less, but to do more, more, more, even if it does it poorly. Which I see you agree with. "Because people benefit from resources, there isn't an incentive to thin down anywhere." That was... a very Romney like thing for you to say.

I'm not sure if you're actually familiar with how our system of government works. The citizenry does not vote for "things". They vote for people. These people may do things that the people who voted for them completely disagree with, but the nature of republican politics is that voters - especially superficial and uninformed voters - are swayed more by personality than by logic and issues. Perception trumps reality, in other words. We tend to vote for people whom we like and especially those whom we see as being "like us". An example. Poll after poll shows that more people agree with Romney's positions on the issues, but they are simply not buying into him as a person because he's a stiff and a terrible politician. This is how we end up with a lot of laws with which people may vehemently disagree. It's their own fault, to be sure, for not prioritizing principles over principals, but it's still why your rose-colored view of "government as the only thing we all belong to" (as the Democrats like to say) is so naive and wrong.

I personally believe (and no, I don't know what Paul Ryan thinks about this, quit trying to tie me to Romney/Ryan, damn it) that the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. The same part of the human psychological make up that turns a coddled child into an languid, ambitionless creature turns a society under an overbearing government into a very inert one, both socially and economically. I don't think it's a coincidence that churches and fraternal orders are in sharp decline as government continues to grow and grow. Yes, technically you are still free to help people. Well, sometimes. But if something is seen as "that thing the goverment does" (read: something that someone else is supposed to do), then one tends to feel that by simply paying his taxes he is doing his  fair share.

The entire idea of who you most want to have a beer with has been raised and factored into electing a president. It ideally shouldn't be about who you most connect with, but who you feel is most competent to do the job. But, it isn't. Elitism has been slammed pretty much, so people running for office get knocked for being smart, or better than others.

Thing about, on the issues, show polls which issues. The whole "we need smaller government", is so vague, that it sounds nice and people will agree with it. BUT, when asked HOW you want government to be smaller, specifics aren't mentioned really, and certainly NOT with the services people get. People are far less eager to end up having what the government does for them taken away, so it is taken away from others also.

Now, does someone want to take the 47% message and reframe it this way, that there is a need for America to tackle problems now, without the government involved, and get involved more? Done right, that can be a sell. But, when framed the way it is now, which results in pretty much one side saying upper end needs more tax cuts, and the poor need to pay more, then it isn't going to fly, nor should it. Same with scapegoating the 47% and saying they are all dependent. Also, when discussing an increased need for volunteerism, that ended up getting yelled at and shot down (if not ignored) by advocates of smaller government.

And, you need to add to the top of this a narrative of legitimate home, and showing people it can be done, and be done. It needs to be a positive message. This positive message is hard to find, when people don't have answers. Heck, I see how hard it is, trying to even do community building on my own.

By the way, for you to say I state "government is the only think we all belong to" is pretty shallow and misses a bunch.  I had said that government will get involved in things and do things that politicans see will get them votes if a nation fails to do them on their own.  While government isn't the only think all a nation belongs to, it is at least one thing all of a nation belongs to, and if other organizations and systems aren't in place in a society, to do needed things, government will grow more powerful, and become more of the end all and be all.  And yes, doing this can set processes in motion that continue.  But, one has to get other things in place to reverse things.