If we get rid of government today, many people will be out of work. Since this causes a lot of suffering, we should not be extreme and get rid of government today.
What is a good counter to my dad’s argument?
To transform your dad’s statement a little bit along statist lines:
“Why yes, sure the mafia robs and threatens a lot of people, and without the mob people would have much more capital at their disposal, but what about the beating squads, the message boys and the smugglers? If we really did crack down on the mob, they all would be out of work. Since this causes a lot of suffering, we should not be extreme.”
Then, when I say that to my dad, he would probably say, “You are making an inflammitory statement, like the statement that 7-11 is a drug dealer.”
Anytime I accuse the state as criminal, he says that.
Well, if your dad doesn’t consider state actions to be criminal, ask him why it’s bad to steal for you when it’s not bad to arbitrarily take the property of others for the state. If he comes up with some bogus reason like a social contract or the Constitution, ask him if he has even signed that contract and if not, why it’s fine for the state to set up such contracts but not for random individuals.
Should he respond that we need a government to guard against the bad guys who wouldn’t sign such a social contract anyway, ask him how we keep said bad guys from taking over the monopoly on force. If he says by voting, ask him about President Bush. If he thinks President Bush is a great fella, you probably need to repeat the procedure. 
Well, what dad comes up with is that the government, in effect, is actually the community, and that everyone has to participate.
He says it is wrong that liberterians demand “special privleges” to be exempt, and that if they were allowed to be exempt, it would cause these projects to fail.
Against this argument, he would probably say it is right because a community of people should be able to get together and impose demands forcibly, even if not everyone agrees to it.
But yeah, my parents are definitely anti-Bush.
How about this approach: The government is like a tumor that keeps growing and growing until it reaches vital organs. Would a physician advise you to only have part of a tumor removed? No, any competent physician would tell you to remove the wole thing before it grows any larger. Remove it before it reaches vital organs like the lungs, the heart or - even the brain.
If we brushed and flossed better, fewer people would have need of dentists. Therefore, we should not brush and floss well so that dentists have jobs.
I should expand it to this:
If we consumed less, fewer people would have need of workers. Therefore, we should consume more so that more people can have jobs.
I think I am on to something…
If we got rid of government, it would free up tremendous amounts of capital and there would be more business investment and activity, hence, jobs. Also, no minimum wage and no workplace regulations choking the labor market.
We do not get rid of the government, we make the government rid itself. If it can manage to become a legitimate business enterprise, there will not be job losses.
Well… there are many valid counters to that argument, such as the suffering government causes to others. Wars, taxes, etc… they will all result in suffering for someone.
While these counters are certainly true, it will implicitly fall in line with your father’s system of ethics. While it is a “noble” goal to desire minimal suffering for people, its making that happen that is difficult. Read up on arguments against utilitarianism, because this is just a variation of it.
In my experience, most of these kinds of arguments break down into differing ethical stances.
Argument for the state by appealing to protectionism… don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.
Well, first of all you don’t need to appeal to any ethical (i.e. anarchist) counter-arguments, just plain anti-protectionist ones. If that doesn’t work, just explain how, when government is reduced, more opporunities are created in the market; the bureaucrats would be out of a job one day and have a new one the next, as it were (the main difference being that they might actually have to work in the new one).
Getting rid of the government spending money on things will create a private market for it. If we eliminate government spending on education there will be firms that spring up to offer private education everywhere, and as opposed to your money being forced from you, you will have a choice in how much you pay and where you go to school. These firms will end up being able to afford to employ more people than the government currently can, and will be able to pay them more. Wherever there is a demand for something, there will be a market for the sale of it.
Well, getting rid of the government would certainly be counterproductive to what we instituted it for. It does serve a very limited legitimate purpose of securing justice for it’s citizens *(“to secure these Rights governments are instituted among men…”).
However, if we eliminated all of the aspects our government has taken on itself that create injustice(i.e. redistribution of wealth, violating people’s liberties through regulations, forced health care, forced education, etc.) then it is no different from us detaining the criminal who steals people’s property and preventing him from repeating this *(“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,…”). It is certainly not beneficial for the criminal, at least until he finds a productive way to contribute to society, but to society as a whole it is exponentially vital and will raise the standard of living for all. There will be a period of readjustment but when you are keeping the 60-75% of the fruits of your labor that are siphoned by our government, then your purchasing power will increase and the demand for labor will rise drastically in retail, services, and production.
Also, schools and teachers will be expected to actually produce good quality education or our dollars will be taken elsewhere. As for all the comfy office jobs, the free market has plenty of room for these paper filers to actually do something productive for a change instead of sitting around and meeting the lax demands of inefficient bureaucrats.
*All quotes are self-evident truths as worded in the Declaration of Independence.
W**e didn’t institute the government. A bunch of dead rich white guys instituted the government, forced it upon three of the colonies, and almost immediately disregarded the document from which the government supposedly got its power.
That’s a nice dream, but it has since become apparent that the government is incapable of serving that purpose. In fact, it violates it by its very existence - in order to (allegedly) protect property rights, it commits theft, and imprisons or kills those who resist that theft. The legitimate purpose of securing justice cannot be served by an organization which itself commits far more crimes in the course of its daily activities than even the most capable “private” criminals.
The problem is not that the government has gone bad, or does bad things. The whole concept is rotten to the core, because a government is a compulsory monopoly on force. The only difference between a government and a gang of common thugs is that the government has a better PR department. Only a free and competitive system of voluntarily-funded protectors and courts could possibly be the protector that the government claims to be.
I appreciate your reply. I certainly share your bitter distaste for what our government is under the guise of securing rights, etc.
What government rightfully is(not talking about what the USA currently is), is the voluntary combining of our right of self-defense while still maintaining our right of self-defense. It should only come into existence on an as needed basis for the sake of securing justice(quelling injustice). We have our local governance which also secures everyone to a right of a trial by jury in the process of punishing crime. Then we have combined this with each state to form a union of states to unify in protecting from foreign attacks on any single state. The premise is that a nation, such as England, could conquer one colony, but all the colonies combined could fend off it’s attacks and secure the rights of each sovereign citizen in those states from being put back under subjection to a monarch. For the sake of defense against attack on our rights, from either foreign or domestic aggressors, we have instituted a common defense. It is no different then the legitimate combined force of a village to defend from foreign aggressors or from someone within the village who would harm those less able to defend themselves in the village.
This is the legitimate purpose of government. It is voluntary. You don’t need to enforce a draft to get me to pick up arms and defend a fellow citizen from an aggressor. Iraqi insurgents need no such mechanism to pick up arms and with all their might try to rid US forces from their country. It is what naturally occurs.
At one time I wondered the same thing like you. Why do we even have government if all it does is plunder, corrupt, destroy, and ruin? But then I ran across The Declaration of Independence and saw it very simply describe the only legitimate purpose of government. It described a completely different government then the one we’ve been used to.
Also, if you read “The Law” by Bastiat(1850), he really does an excellent job of simplifying the legitimate use of government as I stated above. Also, he describes three types of government, two of which are corrupt:
1)Plunder of the many for the few
2)Plunder of the many for the many(collectivism; universal plunder)
3)No one plunders anyone
The third is the only form of legitimate government. It is where the only funding for internal government (judicial) comes from those who violate the person, property, or liberties of it’s citizens. And the providing of common defense comes entirely from the natural voluntary unification of the right of self-defense of each citizen.
So I certainly share your sentiments and believe we are talking two sides of the same coin. You are referring to “THE government”. I am referring to “government”. The only king of the kind of government I am referring to is the law. That is the common law. The only and highest authority in such a country is the individual citizen. His authority is only over himself, his property, and his liberties. His rights are all secured by his right to self-defense which he has voluntarily agreed to utilize if a fellow citizen comes under attack.
Very well. It is very common for those who oppose the state to conflate generic government and the state. I tend normally to make the distinction, but the OP seemed to refer to the government qua the state, and so I used the term “government” thusly.
I mentioned something to this effect, that jobs will spring up, but my dad wants to know how long it will take.
No one can know. He’s asking the same type of question as “what will you have for breakfast on May 10, 2014?” You can’t answer with anything other than “I don’t know”.
I answer, I don’t know (or equivelent), then my dad replies, “If jobs are not instantly provided for these people, they will suffer, hence, getting rid of government is bad.”