re limiting govt was re employment was re why not concentrate in article apr venus tamu edu gmw venus tamu edu mr grinch writes in article apr isc br isc br com steveh thor isc br com steve hendricks writes okay let me try to explain this when one votes for such a creature as a senator or worse yet a president one votes not for specific policies but for a general package which must cover all issues for or years as such one s influence is highly diluted i might add that even if one were free to vote on individual regulations the vast amount of time required for considering a particular regulation combined with the very small chance of one s vote making a difference would make it unreasonable to expect the voter to make an intelligent decision with respect to specific regulations i m afraid that i ve lost the thread here i didn t suggest that all government regulations be subject to referenda so i don t follow the comments above sorry but it strikes me that it is the only feasible approach what is not feasible is a wholesale attack on all government regulation and licensing that treats cutting hair and practicing medicine as equivalent tasks i m not sure what you mean by feasible in this case do you mean that are impossible in priciple or merely that it would be undesirable in fact i mean that an ideology that treats all government regulation as equally undesirable and seeks to abolish all regulations is unlikely to draw support among more than a miniscule portion of the electorate furthermore i am suggesting that such a plan is not feasible in an industrial society because the weight of litigation and or misery it would produce would effectively crush productive effort actually the only areas of public spending above that strike me as generating substantial support among libertarians are police and defense it is an interesting aside that as committed as libertarians claim to be to a principle of non coercion the only areas of public spending that they frequently support involve hiring people with guns hmmm you say this as if it were surprising yet in fact a necessary consequence of libertarian philosophy all non coersive functions should be dealt with privately therefore it follows that the only functions remaining to the state are the coersive ones no i m not surprised i just think it s interesting that on one hand libertarians assume a limited government can be decreed yet on the other posit an entire government made up of people who carry guns i realize that many libertarians assume that such a government will be counterbalanced by a fully armed citizenry but it is worth noting that widespread civilian ownership of guns does not necessarily prevent the establishment of totalitarian government e g iraq perhaps you have may i suggest that you consider that revolutionaries frequently generate support by acting as protectors of geezers mothers and children governments that ignore such people on the grounds that we don t have much to fear from them do so at their own peril much more likely it s drunken teenagers the groups in questionare more likely to be worse off during and after a revolution than before in the unlikely event that you missed my earlier sarcasm let me say this directly the idea that such programs as social security or afdc should be considered defense an idea which has been advanced in ths and other newsgroups is so absurd a lie as to be unworthy of consideration do you seriously dispute this yup sure do but since i also support the constitutional requirement that the government provide for the general welfare article i section i m willing to justify such programs on that basis i don t want to seem patronizing but you still seem to be laboring under the delusion that under a socialized economic system it is reasonably intelligent and honest persons like yourself who make the decisions i feel any third party added to a transaction is every bit as likely to be ignorant or corrupt as the buyer or seller i don t expect you to agree with me but you explain why you feel i m wrong well in the first place i don t support a socialized economic system i think within limits that capitalism is a fine idea but it is not the case that any third party is as likely to be ignorant or corrupt as the buyer or seller there are multitudes of examples where such a statement is demonstrably false regulation of stock market transactions that provide a reasonable basis for buyers to avoid fraud is only one example jsh mr grinch steve hendricks domain steveh thor isc br com one thing about data it sure does cut uucp uunet isc br thor steveh the bulls t r hofferbert ma bell
