But if the question on the table is "tax cigarettes or don't," and you want to reduce tobacco consumption... (shrug). You know how it is.
Yup.
In general, it seems like we rarely make explicit the distinction between a global optimization and a local optimization. As a result, we all have a tendency to pick and choose which one we want to focus on based on how we want the answer to come out. When presented with a binary choice like "tax cigarettes" or "legalize same-sex marriage", I can easily characterize any attempt to think about the issue more broadly as a pointless, unrealistic exercise in wishful thinking, and insist that the only practical way to think about the issue is to consider solely the choice immediately presented. Or I can just as easily say, look, we're not ruled by space aliens, our government is of and by (and occasionally for) people, so if we want to we can declare both choices lousy and reform the system from whatever starting level we choose. The question of how ambitious to be when approaching any given issue hardly ever seems to be really explicitly asked -- instead we drag out whichever approach supports the position we were already taking.
Heh. Speaking of which,
But maybe that's not it.
I never intended to imply that I was considering a choice between a +govt state and a -govt state. So, no, none of what you're guessing. Whether I can accurately describe what I was attempting to convey remains to be seen, possibly as soon as the next paragraph.
Government is a necessary evil; absence of government, i.e., anarchy, would be hell on Earth (vide Somalia). One could characterize the legitimate function of government into two classes: making the "general will" known, and protecting rights. The former is why we have majoritarian decision-making -- it's a decent mechanism for finding optimal compromises that leave the greatest number of people as satisfied as possible. The latter is why we don't have an Athenian-style direct democracy but do have notions like constitutionally protected rights.
My claim that government is evil is more or less an assertion that those two functions of government are inevitably in conflict. If we give government enough power to fulfill the first function, people will always use it to try to subvert the second function. We don't want to forgo the first function, as the alternative is worse, but that does mean deliberately handing people the power to oppress their fellow citizens.
I mean, I agree with your description of government, but describing it as evil in consequence of that strikes me as being an awful lot like saying that government is good because it permits people to breathe.
Maybe I'm just being dim, but it doesn't seem at all like that to me. Permitting people to breathe is I suppose technically a function performed by every entity in the world, from my town government to theater companies to the Federated Apostolic Church of Southeast Nauru, but it really doesn't exemplify the typical activity of government.
OTOH, voting to increase the hotel tax and direct the proceeds to the schools is pretty typical government behavior and is all about this. As a community, by electing representatives who negotiated among themselves the level of taxation and the proportions of the budget to spend on police vs. schools vs. road maintenance vs. waffles, we determined that we wanted a certain level of education funding; if the conclusions were radically different from the will of the median voter, some representatives would probably get replaced in a way that brought the policy position closer to the "best" one for the electorate. A non-democratic form of government doesn't reliably represent the "will of the people" as accurately.
Simultaneously, however, a question arises as to how we're going to cover some unexpected shortfall in property tax revenue. We could cut education spending, or increase property taxes, but it's politically easier to pick a minority interest like the hotels and just extract the extra from them. The purpose of the money is a "good" one, the result of a process of determining what people want their government to do. But the power we gave our government, while necessary to accomplish this desirable goal, also allows them to just pick on someone and take some of their money. We have instituted certain restrictions on their power, such that they can't simply seize the money from an individual -- they have to designate a broader revenue base than "Joe Smith", like "hotels", but they inevitably retain enough flexibility to whimsically select hotels as the victims while not imposing equal tax burdens on taco stands or tire dealerships or canine obedience schools.
I agree with you that giving governments enough power to do the things we benefit from governments doing also involves giving them enough power -- or at least, allowing the possibility that they will take enough power without being stopped -- to do things we don't benefit from, or do things that actively harm us.
Not least of which because it's not always clear which is which, and because there's lots of different "us"es.
Yup.
In general, it seems like we rarely make explicit the distinction between a global optimization and a local optimization. As a result, we all have a tendency to pick and choose which one we want to focus on based on how we want the answer to come out. When presented with a binary choice like "tax cigarettes" or "legalize same-sex marriage", I can easily characterize any attempt to think about the issue more broadly as a pointless, unrealistic exercise in wishful thinking, and insist that the only practical way to think about the issue is to consider solely the choice immediately presented. Or I can just as easily say, look, we're not ruled by space aliens, our government is of and by (and occasionally for) people, so if we want to we can declare both choices lousy and reform the system from whatever starting level we choose. The question of how ambitious to be when approaching any given issue hardly ever seems to be really explicitly asked -- instead we drag out whichever approach supports the position we were already taking.
Heh. Speaking of which,
But maybe that's not it.
I never intended to imply that I was considering a choice between a +govt state and a -govt state. So, no, none of what you're guessing. Whether I can accurately describe what I was attempting to convey remains to be seen, possibly as soon as the next paragraph.
Government is a necessary evil; absence of government, i.e., anarchy, would be hell on Earth (vide Somalia). One could characterize the legitimate function of government into two classes: making the "general will" known, and protecting rights. The former is why we have majoritarian decision-making -- it's a decent mechanism for finding optimal compromises that leave the greatest number of people as satisfied as possible. The latter is why we don't have an Athenian-style direct democracy but do have notions like constitutionally protected rights.
My claim that government is evil is more or less an assertion that those two functions of government are inevitably in conflict. If we give government enough power to fulfill the first function, people will always use it to try to subvert the second function. We don't want to forgo the first function, as the alternative is worse, but that does mean deliberately handing people the power to oppress their fellow citizens.
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I mean, I agree with your description of government, but describing it as evil in consequence of that strikes me as being an awful lot like saying that government is good because it permits people to breathe.
Reply
OTOH, voting to increase the hotel tax and direct the proceeds to the schools is pretty typical government behavior and is all about this. As a community, by electing representatives who negotiated among themselves the level of taxation and the proportions of the budget to spend on police vs. schools vs. road maintenance vs. waffles, we determined that we wanted a certain level of education funding; if the conclusions were radically different from the will of the median voter, some representatives would probably get replaced in a way that brought the policy position closer to the "best" one for the electorate. A non-democratic form of government doesn't reliably represent the "will of the people" as accurately.
Simultaneously, however, a question arises as to how we're going to cover some unexpected shortfall in property tax revenue. We could cut education spending, or increase property taxes, but it's politically easier to pick a minority interest like the hotels and just extract the extra from them. The purpose of the money is a "good" one, the result of a process of determining what people want their government to do. But the power we gave our government, while necessary to accomplish this desirable goal, also allows them to just pick on someone and take some of their money. We have instituted certain restrictions on their power, such that they can't simply seize the money from an individual -- they have to designate a broader revenue base than "Joe Smith", like "hotels", but they inevitably retain enough flexibility to whimsically select hotels as the victims while not imposing equal tax burdens on taco stands or tire dealerships or canine obedience schools.
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Not least of which because it's not always clear which is which, and because there's lots of different "us"es.
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