Government isn't successful

Post Reply New Topic

Do you think that since some time ago, leaders and politicians, and advocating for change has been less successful. I personally don't like the current status quo of the major world governments. But is there anything I can do to get out of this or end the nightmare? It's overwhelming that I am prevented from legally doing things or having an easy time paying bills all because of government.

I want all governments to be reset again over a fresh slate and balance sheet.

There's never been a non-evil government in all of human history, and it's not possible to create one.

Let me ask you this: Was there ever a time when most governments were more better off than today?

Well, consider the constant revolutions, uprisings, and the general barbarity going back to the Bronze Age and beyond. "The good old days" exist only in the imaginations of people seeking to deceive themselves or others.

Not as far as I know.

Perhaps its never been done, but not sure its entirely impossible....unlikely but not impossible, though humans might not survive as a species long enough for that to happen, A system with no government is not something I am supposed to but unlikely that sort of society would be created any time soon.

The closest any nation comes is near it's birth.

For all the "faults" of the USA when it was first founded, it most closely abided by the principles upon which it was created.

Every government attracts people more interested in personal gain than the public good. Most of these people know nothing about addressing social ills, but they think they know what the solution is. They draft laws and rules based on ignorance and pressuring from special interests.

It doesn't take long for things to get messed up from this.

You don't ask someone who's never managed a business (successfully) about how's the best way to stimulate economic growth. Studying others doing it is not the same as having done it yourself. It's the same way rules governing welfare programs are created by those who don't actually have to administer the program on a daily basis...they have no clue what works and doesn't work. Rather they blame the workers for messing up a good program rather than say the program is inherently defective and misguided in its goals and methods.

Indeed it did. Assuming, of course, that slavery and mass murder of the indigenous US population were the principles upon it was created.

The US government did not achieve anything even resembling a status of a non-evil government until after the passing of the Reconstruction Amendments. Even then, one probably needs to go even further - to 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment - to consider it even remotely civilized. And even then, widespread State-sanctioned racism persisted predominantly in the US Southern states until the rise of the civil rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s.

Governments will go only as far as it's citizen's allow them. This principle holds for any type of government-- even in a dictatorship if the government goes too far the citizens will revolt. If the government is corrupt one must first look at the society that allows such government to exist. That being said, even in the most well ran institution there's always going to be a small amount of waste and corruption, this goes for business as well as government.

False reasoning.

Those issues were accepted norms...disputed, but accepted. It's not as if when they made the US Constitution the Founding Fathers said, "Let's have these evil practices because we like doing evil."

No society is perfect. We are talking to adherence to the principles upon which a nation is founded. The longer it exists, the farther it tends to drift from its founding principles because of government's lust for more power and control.

Who *cares* if those issues were accepted norms?

Your claim of "false reasoning" does nothing to refute the fact that - if the US had not drifted from its founding principles - slavery would still exist and women wouldn't be allowed to vote.

Not to mention an long list of oppressive policies that would still exist if it hadn't been for (1) Marbury v. Madison, (2) The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and (3) incorporation... None of these were part of the "founding principles" of the United States.

And even by contemporary standards, the pre-civil war US was a tyrannical state. Slavery was de facto abolished in Britain in 1772, 4 years before the Declaration of Independence.

Another example: Slavery was outlawed in Texas in 1829 under Mexican rule, but reinstated in 1836 when Texas became an independent republic and finally re-affirmed when Texas joined the United States in 1845.

The US held on to slavery until a point where most other Western countries had abandoned. The Pre Civil-War United States was a bad guy country, even by the standards of the time.

Samuel Johnson said it best in 1775: How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Again, false reasoning. The Founding Fathers created a constitution that was subject to revision (with much work to ensure it didn't just change on political whimsy). Hence, we were able to end slavery and extend voting rights rather than be stuck to an utterly inflexible political dogma.

In contrast, see how government keeps eroding legal protections by rationalizing it away (the downside of "Madison" is that the SCOTUS granted itself a power not expressly granted in the US Constitution, and some would contend it has been abused as a way to enact political change outside the proscribed means set forth in the Constitution).

Go over the US Constitution and marvel at how many "rights" are essentially gutted by executive action, laws, or rulings by courts...none of which have the authority to rewrite the Constitution. It gets worse with each passing decade because government and politicians lust for more power and control over the populace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

WAR ended slavery. Seriously, did you major in historical revisionism? The constitutional framework prior to the reconstruction amendments completely deadlocked the United States with regards to slavery. Both the Missouri Compromise and the above-mentioned Scott v. Sandford decision made it impossible to abolish slavery within the existing constitutional framework. And the reconstruction amendments were only passed because the North beat the crap out of the South.


You are 100 percent correct. Citizens of the US can now rely upon The Bill of Rights as actual rights due to Marbury v. Madison. Had the constitutional interpretation prior to Marbury been in effect, the Bill of Rights would have been crippled and reduced to little more than a piece of paper.

A contemporary example: The only reason why several components of the PATRIOT Act violating the 4th and 5th amendments were struck down is because of Marbury. Without it, no one could challenge the PATRIOT Act itself in court.

Without Marbury, all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights would be unenforceable against the government you distrust so much.


The US has progressed tremendously when it comes to the rights embedded in the Constitution. The 1st, 4th, 5th and 14th amendments in particular have placed severe restraints upon the federal government due to SCOTUS decisions. The scope for government despotism has been greatly reduced as a result.

And how can you reconcile your claim that "government and politicians lust for more power and control over the populace" with the fact that the Supreme Court created a constitutional right to privacy through Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe V. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas? Shouldn't you be jumping for joy by the fact that an institution of government uses power to drastically limit the power of government?

Isn't that basically a non-statement?

Scandinavia seems to have some pretty great governments, that take care of their people and help them succeed or at least have all they need. That, to me, is all a government should be, beyond providing infrastructure, keeping the peace, and defending against attack.

The problem with what we think of as "success" in the US is there is too much emphasis on growth of the economy, which isn't measured in a way that accounts for how the average person is doing, but more how big business is doing. A government shouldn't be there just for big business, and that's what's become of ours. It is now an oligarchic plutocracy, and that's it's biggest problem.

How about medieval Iceland?

David Friedmen on the Icelandic Commonwealth.

A Left-Libertarian response.

Replace the Althing with a cyberdemocracy that strives for consensus... not entirely stateless, it sounds like hreppr implemented a kind of Geolibertarianism. Still, it sounds a lot better than the existing systems we have, and it shows that the existing systems aren't inevitable.