I think this is where I roll my eyes at libertarians. I'd respect them a lot more if they were concerned about centralized power in general (government, corporations, religion, etc.)

From an efficiency standpoint, I think there's likely a maximum size an entity can be before you get diminishing returns and perhaps even reduced productivity. It's not limited to just government.

Objectively speaking it is a parasite that gives smaller portion back to what it provides.

We need to update the oath and allegence and better accountability for their actions

Nawh. Can't be that bad, can it? It's not like the federal government, which produces nothing, is spending more than 20% of our GDP per year or anythi--

See, what is an oath. When you've managed to create a federal military, every state military is beholden to the federal military, states don't actually have their own forces beyond civil authorities (police) who have also been demonized to the point where people are attempting to murder them...

Bah @ your oath. Bah @ your superstitions. If you believe we don't have kings and queens in the US, you've not yet experienced the federal government realizing you exist.

For corporations specifically, we literally shield them from legal and criminal liability through the definition of a corporation and it allows them to accrue absurd amounts of power.

Plus they have the resources to hold ordinary citizens in court for literal decades when they feel slighted.

And they bribe politicians, so there isn't much chance to reverse it in the USA.

Meanwhile China just executed several Pharmaceutical CEO's for selling improper product.

At the bottom line, the job of the government is to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.

So, how do you get rid of the parasite then?

Ideally congress would just defund 80% of the government with their power of the purse.

where would you start tho. most people would say military, but that seems fraught

The central problem is that the average voter isn't smart enough to understand the system anymore. Welfare and other things are dysgenic and have reduced the quality of the average citizen. Voting itself has become suspect.

Because of this congress does stupid things like "troop pay raise bills". Where congressmen are forced to vote for pork bills and if they don't vote, the donors pull the congressman's funding and accuse them of "not paying for raises for the troops". Meanwhile the bill just gives raytheon and northrop billions of dollars with a few spare pennies for the troops. Even Rand Paul is forced to vote for these bills because of sheer swamp peer pressure.

The military funding is appropriate at like 10% of total spending, the waste can be culled though. Social security and medicaid serve our children no purpose and should be culled by about 50%. Welfare works as long as you enforce the requirements. Probably 50% of foreign aid is extraneous too.

How do you catalyze that though? As you said, voting is suspect.

There's definitely lots of tasks that are better tackled by a public entity rather than by individuals or corporations. Defense, police, firefighters, first responders, roads, rural electrification, schools - all of these things are collective goods which must be organized by an entity that operates for the common cause. The problem is not the existence of a centralized government, the problem is the corruption of government by special or particular interests as well as the self-interest of the government (and the people behind it) to preserve its funding and expand its scope.

Still, claiming that the government does not produce or provide anything of value is absurd.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 14 2021 05:27pm