Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:40:35 AM
While I was writing
my last post, I realized I never laid out my vision of government. I have said many times what I think government should do, but never explained why. So, in the interest of laying out my beliefs as plainly as possible, so that when we argue at least you know the basis for my beliefs, here are my six principles for government:
1. Privacy - Unless there is a good reason for government to be involved, it shouldn't be
2. Universality - Unless there is a very good reason to distinguish one person, one product or one transaction from another, all must be treated the same.
3. Delegation - The government has rights only because citizens delegate it to act on their behalf. It has no rights an individual does not.
4. Inalienability - Deputizing the government does not strip an individual of any rights, he still retain his rights even while the government acts as deputy.
5. Narrowness - All government should be as narrowly empowered as possible. The government should have no more power than necessary, and that power should be granted to as small a division of government as necessary.
6. Proximity - This really is just an elaboration on narrowness. Government should operate as close to the citizens as possible. A decision should be on a town or locality basis, unless it must be on a state level. And on a state level unless it must be national.
I will elaborate on these tomorrow in greater detail, as it is late right now, but for the moment let me just give a few examples that aren't immediately obvious.
One interesting thought I had was universality. Most conservatives agree to this principle with individuals, saying the government should see citizens as citizens, without race, ethnicity, religion, etc. I apply it farther. I see problems arising whenever government makes arbitrary distinctions. For example, why do guns have special laws? They are dangerous, but so are gasoline, fertilizer, matches, knives, cars, a whole host of things. But by convincing citizens that guns are a special class of things needing special laws, the government manged to deprive us of rights they could not deprive us of were they forced to apply them to all potentially lethal goods. A needless distinction leads to bad laws.
Similarly, by making rules applying to, for example, the purchase of stocks, the government creates yet another regulatory morass. However, why do stocks differ from any other commercial transaction? I can buy an interest in a friend's business without going through all of the rules the SEC imposes, but if I do essentially the same thing for a publicly traded company I do. Why? I can lose just as much money in either case. I can be just as easily defrauded. The only difference is that the government has told us one is different from the other. Without that irrelevant distinction, the government would not intervene half as much, as they could not impose, for example, the SOX reporting rules on every small business looking for investors.
Well, as I said, it is late, and I need more time to elaborate on my view of government. I just thought it may be useful to explain how I look at all matters political. I admit my vision is unlikely to dominate politics any time soon, but I can hope that at least some small part of it, or a viewpoint similar to it, comes to influence the course of events, even slightly.
Even if it doesn't, it does provide an interesting alternative to the way people tend to look at government today.