All government, or just Federal?
If only there were a system by which individuals could come together and make decisions that affected our lives. Maybe to make it more convenient we could choose people that would represent our interests and they could gather some place and deliberate. That way we wouldn’t have THE GOVERNMENT getting in our way.
If only we could spend less time thinking of ways to control the behavior of others and spend more time paying cash for things instead of financing everything, saving for our own retirement, not having children we can’t afford, recycling, being conscientious consumers, and working our asses off to earn the things we want in life? THAT might actually keep the gov small enough to stay out of our way!
For example… People want certain industries held accountable in the public square for pollution their plants and factories cause. Those same people will protest and vote to pass laws and “rally” behind the EPA as bureaucrats and lobbyist duke it out and pander multi-millionaire style to put on a GREAT show that results in some “real wins” for the environment. Real wins = a bunch of laws and new regulations that require chemical/construction/etc plants to replace 2-3 pages in a regulatory binder every month and pay higher insurance premiums… Alternatively, people could just clean their homes with vinegar and water and green tea and lemon resulting in LESS OF A DEMAND FOR CHEMICALS AND CHEMICAL PLANTS…
Oh noes, not SCARY CHEMICALS!
A small government means a return to barbarism and massive suffering. And plenty of people “work their assess off” and die poor; the work ethic is a joke, a lie told to people in order to make them easily exploited.
:rolleyes: As if cleaning homes was the only reason the EPA exists. No EPA means we go back to rivers catching on fire because they are so badly contaminated.
And it also can’t give people the protections and rights that they want in regards to their spouse. If that was acceptable then there’d be no drive for same sex marriage. People don’t want their legal relationship with their spouse to be no different legally than what they have with any random stranger.
Rights exist because of the government. And giving government a “thump in the face” will just get you crushed like an insect. And to a large degree government properly exists to serve the people so yes, it makes sense to ask it for things; in part, that’s what it’s* for.*
First, rights do not exists because of the gov… We have rights (freedom and such) and the gov’s responsibility is to respect those or get bent…
“Cleaning” is NOT the only reason the EPA exists… Roll your eyes all you want. “Cleaning” was an example … my point must have been completely lost on you… So here it is, plain as day: If people don’t want giant corporations to pollute the environment, they should express that want via consumerism (take your dollars elsewhere) INSTEAD of crying to the gov and allowing them to pass a bunch of laws… The economy is FAR greater than the gov. ERGO, if you don’t want DOW chemicals polluting the environment to produce your household cleaning products, clean with vinegar/water/tea tree oil…
Geesh!
And how does your magic work if a company is selling its products in New York and manufacturing them in New Mexico? The people in New Mexico might be outraged and boycott the products but the customers in New York keep buying the products because it’s not their environment being polluted.
Yes, they do. No government means no rights because there’s no one to enforce them.
That won’t work. Without the government they’ll all be polluting everything. You won’t be able to take your dollars elsewhere, there won’t be any “elsewhere”.
So you have the right to life, correct? If I were to go into your home and murder you, and there was no government, what penalty would there be for me not respecting your right to life? Which, essentially, leads to a de facto non-existence of said rights due to there being no body to enforce them.
Your pie-in-the-sky idealism is nice. We tried it once. You know what happened? Shit went so far south that we made the EPA! Yeah, that’s right - your “free market solution” to pollution failed so miserably that the public outcry demanded a non-market solution. You see, there’s a slight problem with your proposition. In order to, say, prevent Company X from polluting in spot Y, there needs to be a large public outcry and a large drop in company sales, so that it is no longer profitable for the company to pollute in spot Y. And believe it or not, not everyone is that market-conscious. In fact, most people aren’t. This is why after the “free market solution” crashed and burned in a spectacular manner in the 70s, the EPA was called into being. Want another example? Check out the smog clouds over industrialized cities in China and India. Some “free market” at work there, huh? :rolleyes:
It’s straight-up irresponsible and stupid to leave the protection of our environment up to the free market, because the free market has two parties that simply will not care: the producers who turn a profit short-term and can’t really afford to look at the long term, and a very large portion of people who are just that uninformed or unable to tell how it affects them. What we should do is leave resources that are that important to our every-day well-being up to people who understand the impact and have the power to take care of it. Because when it comes to pollution, the free market fails miserably, it has always failed, and by every reasonable estimation, it will continue to fail.