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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35077 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Are you talking about supporters of "limited or small governments" or just anarchists? There isn't any sort of unified state over all of Somalia, small or otherwise.

Also, I don't think that someone like David Friedman wants a transition like Somalia in the early 1990s. I think he'd say that, under those circumstances, a small but effective government would be better.

I have my issues with limited government types (namely that they're frequently hypocritical or at least self-deluding), but this is really only a critique of the far end of the spectrum. Most people who want limited government don't want a government that limited - they still want publicly funded police and fire departments, infrastructure they use, courts, schools, etc... When they object to "big government", they're generally objecting to the welfare and regulatory state (or at least parts of it) and infrastructure they don't use.

Reductions to the welfare and regulatory state might increase social disorder to some degree, but there's clear historical example that it's not enough to render states nonviable.

I would describe the Soviet Union as a much more central example of "communism" than Somalia of "limited government", but I suppose the problems we'll bump into are the exact definitions of things like "communism" and "limited government". I would be more than satisfied with a United States federal government that took approximately the fiscal role of 100 years ago, and I don't buy that this involves a swift descent to total anarchic collapse.

Well yes, because the federal government could disappear outright and most of the population is not looking at a total anarchic collapse, although interstate conflict might mean some people are in for a bad time and the poorer states would probably have a declining standard of living.

I'm not sure if this is intended as argument or addendum. Yes, part of the reason that I think the federal government is excessive is because American states are already large, powerful entities that can handle the vast majority of governing problems themselves. The federal government should handle external-facing issues and internal coordination problems between states, but generally take a hands-off approach to policies and spending that are intrastate matters (in my view, of course).

Maybe I'm misreading others, but I think this is much closer to the median position of American people that would describe themselves as favoring limited government than Somalia or Ancapistan or something.

A little of column a, a little of column b. The patchwork that replaces a disappeared federal government is unlikely to be predominantly libertarian(major land powers usually aren’t), and the federal government retrenching wouldn’t cause the same issue but as California shows, states are perfectly capable of overregulating, overtaxing, and overspending all on their lonesome.

Most states aren’t Florida or Utah. Federal regulations will just get replaced with state regulations that are more obviously one sided if anything.

Well except there are countless examples of very limited government and places succeeding. I’m very unfamiliar with communist countries not be totalitarian hellholes.

Warlordism might be a fair critique of David Friedman but…not of classic liberals who see a vital role for the state but one that is heavily limited.

What are the best examples of very limited governments succeeding?

I certainly agree that there have been governments which didn’t provide much in terms of social welfare but grew the economy quickly. But AFAIK most of the examples of libertarian success stories were not actually libertarian, they were just pro-business.

United Kingdom, United States, Swiss, Hong Kong, Netherlands, etc.

They might not all be that way today but they they all at different times experienced significant growth under a classically liberal framework.

I interpreted "stronger sorts of libertarian" to basically mean right-anarchists.

"Warlordism" is another term for "autocratic government that isn't internationally recognized". It's not as if warlords can't take your money and call it taxes.

It's a frequent critique of anarchocapitalism (anarchocommunism, too, for that matter) is that their systems just reinvent the government expect with some different characteristics (enough to allow ideologues to term it "not government) and in a worse format.

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