Virgil

What works better, government or people?

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=35215

Aulus Plautius

You would not have a government without people to run it; people without government is anarchy. Anarchy equals chaos.

Government run by competent people runs well. Fill those offices with incompetents and government runs badly.

The question is rather difficult to answer. It depends on the government and the people.

Virgil

I don't think it is a choice between anarchy and stability. I think it has more to do with the culture of a particular city or town. Apparently the people in this video are much better at managing traffic than any government workers. The drivers have a stake in the outcome, government workers breed incompetence I think.

Aulus Plautius

I don't buy the premise. I was in NYC before the storm hit, and NYC without traffic lights would be total chaos. I don't think you can draw the conclusion from one video that no government is better than government.

RoryOMore

I think you have to start with the presumption that any activity will be carried out by individuals, and that it will only be picked up by government if it proves to be impractical for individuals.

Virgil

I really do not argue for no government. I just argue for less. What may work in a small UK town may not work in New York. That doesn't mean that one size fits all and that the right solution in one place has to be the solution in another. I may be biased, but I really do feel that the ideas that fuel our government officials can be very wrong consistently in some places. I argue that stopping government when it is wrong is very difficult, and that they will ignore every disagreement with them.

Aulus Plautius

I agree with you about small government and there are clearly situations where government should not be intruding on people's rights. As in the traffic video, if the traffic ran better without the traffic lights then by all means do away with traffic lights. But my experience has been, at least in Florida, whenever there are traffic accidents on cross-roads without traffic lights, the cry goes out to install traffic lights on that intersection.

Virgil

I wonder about a larger issue. Don't get me wrong, I believe that global warming is very possible. I just don't know how real it is. Many a "green" company building solar panels or electric cars has gone bankrupt recently. I wonder why they stopped calling it global warming and started calling it climate change? Haven't we always had climate change? Do they really know whether we are warming or cooling? Do we really want to allow government officials to make these decisions for us?

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/14317...true-or-false/

Aulus Plautius

I had posted on another thread that oil companies that have been funding the anti-climate change science are preparing for a world with a warmer climate. For instance, these oil companies are already making plans to tap into oil reserves under retreating glaciers.

But honestly Virgil, you have to ask yourself if global climate change is not real, why have these large oil companies been lobbying Congress for immunity from global warming lawsuits. I personally think global climate change is real, it is man-made, and should be dealt with.

Remember in the 80s with the hole in the ozone. It was Republicans and Democrates who took the efforts to ban CFCs. It worked and the ozone hole has been reduced.

We should not cover our heads and do as many recommend and just adapt. Why not be proactive for future generations?

Virgil

I remember the Ozone Layer scare. It went away, but does that mean we as human beings fixed it? I doubt that very much. I wonder whether or not there ever was a valid reason to be afraid. Seeing how politics, and even scientific work, knowing that to get funding as a scientist you must come up with numbers that support a particular theory (climate change), well I find that disheartening to say the least.