[quote]orion wrote:
Do you have even the slightest clue how humanity has organized over it’s existence?
Monarchs took what was theirs, less than 10% of GDP and left you the fuck alone.
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Why don’t you name the order of titles below King and Queen?
You might find that each of these people was the despotic ruler of chunks of the Kingdom in the Regents name.
You can romanticize it all you like, but it sure as hell did not equate to a great lifestyle for all involved.
[quote]Their job was to enforce law and order and to defend the country and if they were reeeaally generous they built a university or a hospital for the poor.
Funny how banking, medizine, industries all developed on their own, usually in areas were the state was weak or had heavy competition i.e Greek city states, Renaissance city states, the Hanse in Germans “freie Reichst?dte”, and of course England with its notoriously weak monarchs.
Europe is an excellent example because geography alone made sure that governmets had to compete and remained relatively weak compared with China, Japan or any form of oriental despotism where one ruler could kill any innovation he did not like.
HH is constantly arguing for a society, a richer, more complex and ultimately more humane and succesful one than a government could ever hope fo building.
Most companies can only provide ONE good or service, coffee, insurance, cars, etc…
Yet you seem to think that government, the leviathan, the coldest of all monsters, can provide quality policing, health services, schooling, roads, without any competition, real cost analyses, any real incentive to change if things go back and all that with stolen money.[/quote]
You are off your rocker if you think you know what I’m concerned about.
Governments, or at least modern ones, define the rules of the market, and through enforcement of laws, make a fair work and investing environment possible.
Perhaps you should look into economics and the concept that there are policy areas that a market cannot service effectively. However, most modern countries do deregulate when it becomes obvious that the area can later be operated in a competitive way.
Does the government maintain it’s hold on too many things? Sure. Does it tax too much? Sure. Does it have problems? Sure.
[quote]You Vroom, indoctrinated to the bone by the times you live in and the dying myth of the Enlightenment, that a society is something you can rationally build like a machine.
This constructivist attitude is one of the core ideas of collectivism and it is just plain wrong.[/quote]
That was just plain laughable.
[quote]You are obviously deeply convinced that the government equals society at least to a large degree, though a free society can only grow when a government builds and defends a solid frame and gets out of the way.
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Again, there are areas that cannot easily efficiently be served by a market. The frame you speak of, which includes certain rules and rights, is what allows markets to operate efficiently.
Anyway, whether you agree or not, in western societies we do have a lot of freedom to pursue our lives. We have great opportunities, mobility, and purchasing power, especially as compared to earlier civilizations.
I’m all for more freedom and reduced or eliminated income taxation, but I’m not willing to adopt HH’s viewpoint of something approaching anarchy. Despots are always willing to spring up, join forces and gang up on the weak…
It is incredibly naive to think that people, as in everyone, can be trusted, whether as a government or as something approaching anarchy.
