Or how about:
1. F*** off
2. Die
Topic: Knowledge check: If a government had only 2 functions,what would they be? (Read 3309 times)
May 19, 2013, 10:18:07 AM
May 19, 2013, 09:42:41 AM
Let's not get lost in the details. The two goals are:
(1) Endure
(2) Expand
In other words, a punctual rephrasing of "be fruitful and multiply."
Everything else (keeping peace, waging war, making and enforcing laws, providing social services etc., etc.) is an inevitable, but strictly incidental set of consequences. Like defecating for living things: inevitable, but hardly raison d'etre.
More like means to those ends. (1) Endure
(2) Expand
In other words, a punctual rephrasing of "be fruitful and multiply."
Everything else (keeping peace, waging war, making and enforcing laws, providing social services etc., etc.) is an inevitable, but strictly incidental set of consequences. Like defecating for living things: inevitable, but hardly raison d'etre.
Charles Tilly distinguishes four activities performed by the State, as those "biological functions":
Quote
war making (“eliminating or neutralizing their own rivals outside the territories in which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of force”), state making (“eliminating or neutralizing their rivals inside those territories”), protection (“eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of their clients”), and extraction (“acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities—war making, state making, and protection”).
In a just world, only the third and fourth activities would be acceptable, and the fourth only voluntarily.
May 19, 2013, 06:45:09 AM
Let's not get lost in the details. The two goals are:
(1) Endure
(2) Expand
In other words, a punctual rephrasing of "be fruitful and multiply."
Everything else (keeping peace, waging war, making and enforcing laws, providing social services etc., etc.) is an inevitable, but strictly incidental set of consequences. Like defecating for living things: inevitable, but hardly raison d'etre.
Those goals have applied to everything, from molds to humankind, and persisted since (at least as far back as) the beginning of life. The rest is sentimental fluff. For those who like nifty quotes, here's one: "Consign it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."*
*I remembered it as "For it is nothing but sophistry and illusion: Consign it to the flames", but Google set me straight
(1) Endure
(2) Expand
In other words, a punctual rephrasing of "be fruitful and multiply."
Everything else (keeping peace, waging war, making and enforcing laws, providing social services etc., etc.) is an inevitable, but strictly incidental set of consequences. Like defecating for living things: inevitable, but hardly raison d'etre.
Those goals have applied to everything, from molds to humankind, and persisted since (at least as far back as) the beginning of life. The rest is sentimental fluff. For those who like nifty quotes, here's one: "Consign it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."*
*I remembered it as "For it is nothing but sophistry and illusion: Consign it to the flames", but Google set me straight
May 19, 2013, 12:00:09 AM
1. Waste time
2. Take up space
2. Take up space
May 18, 2013, 11:54:03 PM
1. Be huge
2. Be idiotic
2. Be idiotic
May 18, 2013, 10:19:24 AM
Why always the roads? I think the Statist paradigm has truly run it's course, as y'all come up with the same "argument" over and over.
Let's face it. Governments SUCK at building and maintaining roads. You would do better to find some justification for them in aggressive war, because killing and destroying is all they are good at.
I live in Western Pennsylvania, if being in PA can be called living. Given the highway budget they have, our roads should be aucking fwesome. Instead, they haven't bothered to fix 'em in two decades, except to throw a bit of asphault over the bodies...
Let's face it. Governments SUCK at building and maintaining roads. You would do better to find some justification for them in aggressive war, because killing and destroying is all they are good at.
I live in Western Pennsylvania, if being in PA can be called living. Given the highway budget they have, our roads should be aucking fwesome. Instead, they haven't bothered to fix 'em in two decades, except to throw a bit of asphault over the bodies...
May 18, 2013, 09:51:48 AM
One example of what I was talking about is roads. No one person or enterprise can justify spending money maintaining urban roads. Highways, yes. You could build a toll road, but in the city many people use them and there has to be easy access on and off. No room for toll booths, etc. It's a public good. But no one person or business gets enough benefit from them to be willing to pay for their maintenance.
Oh come now, you can't think of any other way to pay for roads than tolls or taxation?
Not a single one?
Good thing the market is more than just one person, and there are some pretty innovative thinkers out there. (The paint on the pothole patch reads "Re-freshed by KFC")
May 18, 2013, 07:45:45 AM
To establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
those are some beautiful words. if only magic spells could actually constrain the government.
May 18, 2013, 07:45:22 AM
1. Suck my C***
2. Kill themselves
2. Kill themselves
May 18, 2013, 07:41:56 AM
What ever services they monopolized they would turn to shit, so what ever are the 2 least important things you can think of would be my answer. We could keep on some regulators to make sure that toothpick manufacturers are not manufacturing their toothpicks too sharp and maybe those guys who decide what shaped bottles are legal for wine producers to put wine in and what shaped bottles are illegal for wine producers to put wine in. (yes you can go to jail for putting wine in an incorrectly shaped bottle in the US 
)
)I agree with you that government is inefficient and largly ineffective, but (noting your response was tongue in cheek) I still think there is a role for government in coordinating activities that are not in any one person's interest and are not profitable enough to attract private enterprise.
Right i believe this is the strongest argument that can be made in favor of government (its sill wrong but it is the best wrong argument imo). What you are saying is that it can be used to solve problems of market failure. These are situations where individual rationality does not translate to group rationality. So imagine a soldier in a battle who calculates that if he abandons the battle it will only reduce his armies chance of victory by 0.1% but will increase his chance of survival from 50% to 99.9%. So he rationally calculates that he should leave the battle. However if everyone makes this same rational calculation than there is a 100% chance that every single one of them will die as the opposing army rampages across the land committing genocide. Supposedly government can be used to solve these sorts of problems.
unfortunately the problem with this idea is that government is even more effected by market failure problems than markets are. check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5maguX5x8c for a deeper explanation of how government is effected by market failure problems.
also remember that in a free market there would be incentives for entrepreneurs to solve market failure problems, there would potentially be a great amount of profit to be earned in doing so but so long as government is monopolizing the job of solving market failure problems entrepreneurs are crowded out of the market in solving market failure. So it isnt fair to say that just because an entrepreneur isnt solving x now that it wouldn't be solved by an entrepreneur in the free market.
May 18, 2013, 06:19:33 AM
To establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
May 18, 2013, 05:29:55 AM
I still think there is a role for government in coordinating activities that are not in any one person's interest and are not profitable enough to attract private enterprise.
In other words, to waste money?Well...
I think we agree government is wasteful and inefficient. No argument there.
But if we're going to have an honest conversation I don't think a society can exist without some kind of coordinating body.
One example of what I was talking about is roads. No one person or enterprise can justify spending money maintaining urban roads. Highways, yes. You could build a toll road, but in the city many people use them and there has to be easy access on and off. No room for toll booths, etc. It's a public good. But no one person or business gets enough benefit from them to be willing to pay for their maintenance.
That's what I was thinking of.
May 18, 2013, 12:13:13 AM
Hmm...2 is a lot.
May 18, 2013, 12:05:23 AM
I still think there is a role for government in coordinating activities that are not in any one person's interest and are not profitable enough to attract private enterprise.
In other words, to waste money? May 18, 2013, 12:02:11 AM
What ever services they monopolized they would turn to shit, so what ever are the 2 least important things you can think of would be my answer. We could keep on some regulators to make sure that toothpick manufacturers are not manufacturing their toothpicks too sharp and maybe those guys who decide what shaped bottles are legal for wine producers to put wine in and what shaped bottles are illegal for wine producers to put wine in. (yes you can go to jail for putting wine in an incorrectly shaped bottle in the US )
)I agree with you that government is inefficient and largly ineffective, but (noting your response was tongue in cheek) I still think there is a role for government in coordinating activities that are not in any one person's interest and are not profitable enough to attract private enterprise.
May 17, 2013, 06:23:41 PM
What ever services they monopolized they would turn to shit, so what ever are the 2 least important things you can think of would be my answer. We could keep on some regulators to make sure that toothpick manufacturers are not manufacturing their toothpicks too sharp and maybe those guys who decide what shaped bottles are legal for wine producers to put wine in and what shaped bottles are illegal for wine producers to put wine in. (yes you can go to jail for putting wine in an incorrectly shaped bottle in the US )
) May 17, 2013, 06:18:41 PM
If your neighbour pollutes the hell out of his chunk, quite a bit of it will go your way (depending on wind direction etc.)
And then you sue the shit out of him for damages.BTW: Another scenario would be something that dissipates very well in small quantities, but the effect is quite bad. Like some sort of poison leaking out.
It could be traced. Just walk toward the higher concentrations.OR... Some kind of pollution that is hard to detect where it comes from, and most neighbours are polluting small amounts that add up and does damage.
Damage to whom? If most of them are doing it, and suffering damages from it, then they are suffering the damages from their own actions. If you're not doing it, and suffering damages from their actions, sue 'em.Or maybe some kind of pollution where it's hard to detect the source unless you are close, but someone far away does a lot of it, and his neighbours does not care or his land plot is large and the sources placed in a way that makes it hard to pinpoint the pollution without being at the private property. Not to mention that the pollutant is a part of unpolluted air, only in far less quantity.
Again, it could be traced. Just walk toward the higher concentrations. 
May 17, 2013, 06:06:34 PM
People love to talk about market forces solving all problems, but protecting the environment is something that market forces do a very poor job at protecting. See global warming on a global scale, or overfishing, it's the economic principle of externalities - also referred to as "the tragedy of the commons".
You know how to fix the tragedy of the commons, right?Well, my memory of economics tells me that the way of fixing the tragedy of the commons would be to build the externalities into the price of whatever is being sold. In other words, if you were to use gasoline as an example, put a large tax on it to account for the fact that it contributes to global warming. Over the long run, this will result in a situation where people will drive less, and use smaller cars, thus use less gas.
So, in this case, the solution is government intervention. The same idea would apply for many other cases of tragedy of the commons, ie: some species is being overfished? Declare an area off limits for fishing for a set period of time. So on and so forth. I like minimalism in government, but environmental protections like these are regulations that I fully support.
That's a common approach, halfawake, but not the textbook solution. The simple sollution to a "tragedy of the commons" is to privatize the common. That is, give it to someone. This will result in the resource being allocated to its most efficient use (see Coase Theorem).
Lol - so who should own the whole atmosphere?
Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos.
Not sure if you get my point. The problem is not in splitting up the atmosphere into ownable chunks, it is to keep whatever you put into the atmosphere inside your dedicated chunk.
If your neighbour pollutes the hell out of his chunk, quite a bit of it will go your way (depending on wind direction etc.)
If you know exactly which neighbour it is.
BTW: Another scenario would be something that dissipates very well in small quantities, but the effect is quite bad. Like some sort of poison leaking out.
OR... Some kind of pollution that is hard to detect where it comes from, and most neighbours are polluting small amounts that add up and does damage.
Or maybe some kind of pollution where it's hard to detect the source unless you are close, but someone far away does a lot of it, and his neighbours does not care or his land plot is large and the sources placed in a way that makes it hard to pinpoint the pollution without being at the private property. Not to mention that the pollutant is a part of unpolluted air, only in far less quantity.
May 17, 2013, 05:39:44 PM
People love to talk about market forces solving all problems, but protecting the environment is something that market forces do a very poor job at protecting. See global warming on a global scale, or overfishing, it's the economic principle of externalities - also referred to as "the tragedy of the commons".
You know how to fix the tragedy of the commons, right?Well, my memory of economics tells me that the way of fixing the tragedy of the commons would be to build the externalities into the price of whatever is being sold. In other words, if you were to use gasoline as an example, put a large tax on it to account for the fact that it contributes to global warming. Over the long run, this will result in a situation where people will drive less, and use smaller cars, thus use less gas.
So, in this case, the solution is government intervention. The same idea would apply for many other cases of tragedy of the commons, ie: some species is being overfished? Declare an area off limits for fishing for a set period of time. So on and so forth. I like minimalism in government, but environmental protections like these are regulations that I fully support.
That's a common approach, halfawake, but not the textbook solution. The simple sollution to a "tragedy of the commons" is to privatize the common. That is, give it to someone. This will result in the resource being allocated to its most efficient use (see Coase Theorem).
Lol - so who should own the whole atmosphere?
Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos.
Not sure if you get my point. The problem is not in splitting up the atmosphere into ownable chunks, it is to keep whatever you put into the atmosphere inside your dedicated chunk.
If your neighbour pollutes the hell out of his chunk, quite a bit of it will go your way (depending on wind direction etc.)
May 17, 2013, 05:33:50 PM
People love to talk about market forces solving all problems, but protecting the environment is something that market forces do a very poor job at protecting. See global warming on a global scale, or overfishing, it's the economic principle of externalities - also referred to as "the tragedy of the commons".
You know how to fix the tragedy of the commons, right?Well, my memory of economics tells me that the way of fixing the tragedy of the commons would be to build the externalities into the price of whatever is being sold. In other words, if you were to use gasoline as an example, put a large tax on it to account for the fact that it contributes to global warming. Over the long run, this will result in a situation where people will drive less, and use smaller cars, thus use less gas.
So, in this case, the solution is government intervention. The same idea would apply for many other cases of tragedy of the commons, ie: some species is being overfished? Declare an area off limits for fishing for a set period of time. So on and so forth. I like minimalism in government, but environmental protections like these are regulations that I fully support.
That's a common approach, halfawake, but not the textbook solution. The simple sollution to a "tragedy of the commons" is to privatize the common. That is, give it to someone. This will result in the resource being allocated to its most efficient use (see Coase Theorem).
Lol - so who should own the whole atmosphere?
Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos.
Not sure if you get my point. The problem is not in splitting up the atmosphere into ownable chunks, it is to keep whatever you put into the atmosphere inside your dedicated chunk.
If your neighbour pollutes the hell out of his chunk, quite a bit of it will go your way (depending on wind direction etc.)
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