That's strange, because I've always thought of the internet as a great example of a diverse, decentralized organization with emergent properties, aka a spontaneous order. The internet is incredibly redundant which could make it frustrating but it does also make it incredibly robust. Connecting many simple, individual things together doesn't make them one centralized entity that is a "made order". If there isn't a way for individuals to connect and communicate (price in a marketplace is a great communication tool, which is why I find it incredibly destructive to try to control it like communist USSR did), then it's a mess.

Just wanted to put my two cents in there. Everything else, I find myself mostly agreeing with Krypsyn. The major issue I have with states' rights is that some supporters don't disagree with laws that the federal government has passed (like the war on drugs), but that the states should be the ones passing those laws instead of the federal government.

edit: added a link

A lot of replies, but I'll just reply to this one as it seems most on point.

Not exactly. I don't have anything against charities, and I have nothing against helping fellow man on moral grounds (as Ayn Rand seems to have). What I have a problem with is being forced to do this by the government. What I don't want is the majority voting my money into their pockets because they feel they deserve or need it more. I want to choose where my money goes, but, failing that, I would like it to at least stay in my neck of the woods.

Oh, heck, I'll answer this one too:

Nah, I'm with Hobbes on this one. Society was made because even the strongest amongst us must sleep, and while sleeping even the weakest amongst us can kill him. Society is only there to keep us safe from willful harm, not to keep us safe from ourselves or our environment.

I would just like the societies involved in these decisions to be more local or regional.

And our current government is so lean and mean?

It all depends on what you want. If you want a Nanny State, then a big centralized government is necessary. I don't want these things, so a leaner local government is what appeals to me most.

And now, totally out of context:

Sink or swim. Seriously. Why is it the job of, say, people in Minnesota to bail out the people in California? California made their problem, now they should be made to fix it. If that requires a lot of lean years, then so be it. Maybe they will think twice about attempting to live beyond their collective means in the future.

As a side note, this is also how I feel about the auto and bank bail-outs. In the case of the banks, the markets in those securities should have been frozen for a few days, perhaps restrictions put on selling short, but the U.S. taxpayer should not have been expected to bail them out. Similarly, the auto companies should have been let go bankrupt, broken up, and sold to the highest bidder. Hopefully the new owners would have been able to make a better go of it. As it is now, the government has created a sort of moral hazard where there are few, if any, true incentives to not take unreasonable risks with investments, pensions, or whatever in business.

The problem is, we're also adding this to government and law. Here's something, an example of a major issue I've pointed out. Parts of this are true, and parts are made up to demonstrate some issues.

Ok, I know 2 males, known each other for years. One lives in Canada. The other in a state that legalized gay marriage. They get married, and by the virtue of all of that, the Canadian is able to gain US citizenship, and does. Now, I'm a cop in a state that doesn't legally allow for gay marriage. We don't recognize it. Can we arrest the former Canadian for being an illegal immigrant? The marriage doesn't exist as far as we're concerned, thus the reasoning he used to become a citizen of this country is gone. How does that work?

I'm not completely against states rights, but I do think we need to sit down and take some issues on a national scale so that we're one voice. That's been my biggest bone of contention. No national education standards (I'd love to see states dictate HIGHER standards, but it would be nice to have at least a national minimum), no

Edit: I'm going to apologize a bit for my example. Now that I look at it, I guess you can argue I was being fairly mean spirited here. But that becomes an issue because of how multiple states deal with things. I do believe in states rights, but issues like this where states can easily butt heads over something like gay marriage, or even legalizations of certain drugs (After a while you do forget what's in your pockets, wallet, or car, and that could easily become an issue if you cross state lines).

The problem is most of our local societies are just as bad, if not worse than our national government. To use Christie as an example again: We're losing our Superintendent of Schools this year, as her contract is up, and our Governor put someone as the state head of education with intent of telling the local districts how much we can pay our Superintendent. We're one of the best districts in the state, and well, admittedly it comes at a price, but you get what you pay for.

Another one is we have a state agency that tells my town where we can build and we have to submit stuff to them. We've had them interfering with us putting a door on a firehouse where it doesn't even affect the area that they were put together to 'preserve'. I've seen worse interference from the State then I have here from the Federal Governments.

Well, I don't want to see a Nanny state. But that's an issue for both parties, as they're both responsible for this. The problem is that we have a joke of a national government (I said in another topic, I've seen Kindergarten students who learn to at least work with people they might not get along with better than our Congress.), and states that are willing to do whatever they want.

Ehhhh, yeah, I'm in agreement. The car industry should have been allowed to bankrupt. But at the same time, so should the bank industry. We subsidized way too much in that regard. But we were also stupid as a nation. Sending out our army into the Middle East and then cutting taxes...no. Our Defense spending is huge, and that is a great place to start the spending cuts.

Actually...that's my biggest bone of contention with government spending. They're ALL idiots about it. There's no protection for things like Social Security, Our defense budget is over a Trillion for this year (I just looked it up <.<). This isn't difficult work! But it's so f'n political that it's a wonder they can do everything right. We don't need to spend a Trillion on troops, we don't need so many active and reserve troops...unfortunately I can't go too far without being a snarky joker so I'll leave it at that. Smart people can trim the fat and make things lean if they wanted to, but everyone's so scared of the political implications (And they weave stories to scare people into believing what they want, I can rant about the stories of government death panels that came up in the healthcare debate, the welfare queens, and if I tried I could spin a few about the size of our armed forces).

But also what I mean is that some states get more back from the federal government then send out in taxes. I had found a list, but this is the most recent thing I can dig up that gave actual numbers, it's actually pretty interesting. Can't really use Political Parties as weapons with that, since it runs both ways.

Anthropology most likely disagrees with this, it appears the development of our brains is entirely thanks to our social structures (brain development took a massive source of protein): before we had tools to bring down prey, we did it as a group, literally by running it to death. Humans are rather unique in being able to run and keep cool over extreme distances. But it took more than one human, and since you probably ran your prey down 30-45 miles from where you started, you needed everyone to be there to eat it, this means children too. The healthiest and strongest likely carried those to small to cover that much ground.

That was several hundred thousand years ago. People think we're far more independent than we actually are, it doesn't even appear that we're wired cognitively to "fly solo". It appears highly unlikely that society is simply the result of a base need to keep us from killing each other.

Ahh, I guess it depends on what you call 'society'. Of course humans have been forming tacit groups for millennia; we are social animals. I was talking about a system of laws. I think laws are what make a group or a tribe into an actual society. In my opinion, laws should be used to protect people from willful harm by others (such as theft, not just physical harm), not used for social engineering. That was their first use; protection of people and their property.

And how do you go about protecting them? Laws are, regardless of whatever position you personally hold, methods of engineering acceptable behaviors in that group of people. Every society on the face of the planet has used laws as such. We put laws in place that punish transgressions so that people are encouraged not to make such transgressions. That is, at it's very core, social engineering.

Your position is so untenable that it has no place in an advanced society. You, IMO, sound exactly like a college student who just discovered philosophy and thinks they have something "new" that hasn't already been thought of, tried, and discarded many times over because it just doesn't work.

Maybe if we go back to not moving more than 10 miles from our homes in our entire lives, it could have a chance. But not in a world where I can be on the other side of the planet in under a day.

This is the core conservative attitude that people rejected last Tuesday. It matters because we are one country, one people, and what happens in Minnesota effects all of is. This "I got mine, screw off" individualistic attitude is not being accepted by the blocks of "new voters" that are taking more power, i.e. Asian, Latino and Black immigrants plus single women and youth raised in a time where technology allows us to see and know the plights and thoughts of others.

I'm not attacking you, for the record. I respect your beliefs. I just cannot agree with them and don't see demographics allowing them for much longer.


And where foreign people are no longer the enemy, distant and shrouded in secrecy, but people you joke with online.

Has it yet been suggested that the incoming Mayan apocalypse is now going to be Obama's fault? :p

Don't give the publicans any ideas.

Your ad hominem attack hardly helps your case. I will never understand why some folks always find it necessary to attack the person rather than actually debate the topic. For the record, I graduated college 15 years ago. Also, for the record, through hard work and a fair bit of skill, I was able to semi-retire at age 30 from an investment bank. I do have a decent clue of what works fiscally; in fact, guessing secondary effects of economic policies correctly is what made me so successful.

You say my stance is untenable, I totally disagree. I have nothing against government programs, per se, I just find government programs that intrinsically, and by design, redistribute wealth as immoral. There must be a way to make 'modern' society work without needing to steal from one person to support another. I would also rather that power and control of government programs not be centralized, but rather spread evenly across the country.

I agree with you here. This is why I earlier state that Republicans just need to give in and stop being obstructionists. I don't think Democrat policies will help the country; in fact, I think they will collapse in on themselves and set the country back years. However, as you say, demographics are not with me, so I think people must be shown.

Agreed. In fact, Obama's stance on military operations mitigates my disappointment in the election results a great deal. I was not a fan on Romney's hawkish attitude. Not one bit. I would be all for just sending out a letter to each enlisted on foreign soil (Korea, Asscrackistan, wherever) and tell them to thermite everything and board the next plane out. I don't think it will happen, nor do I think it is logistically feasible, but I wouldn't object if it happened tomorrow. ;)

You know, I have to turn around and ask. What programs qualify as Wealth Redistribution? I can minorly understand people using the 'Welfare Queen' as an example of how it could be Wealth Redistribution, but honestly at this point I'm curious as to what does with some actual information instead of that story.

It's not an attack when I am expressing my opinion on what you sound like.

There is no debate with you because your position is pretty much unworkable and can't work in anything other than an 17th-esque society. You've already admitted that there are programs and things that the government should do. It's only that you apparently don't believe others should have a hand at times or apparently understanding that you could easily be in the same position as those you claim are recipients of "stealing" (nevermind that you are using loaded terms to support your position).

Centralized power is the natural evolution of pretty much all human governments. You aren't going to be able to get away from it, if only because of the nature of humanity itself.

I've already wasted too much of my life trying to talk to you. Good day to you.

I respect that. Maybe we would end up a social democracy like Sweden and be better off, or maybe we would collapse like Greece is. Whatever the outcome it would be more educational than the middle-ground nothing we are going to get from opposites in Washington that can't compromise.

Yeah, Romney's foreign policy was a little scary. Obama is far from a hands-off foreign policy man himself though, as any liberal protesting drone bombing will tell you.

I'm not sure where the balanced middle-ground is there to be honest, but I know Reagan and Bush inspired a lot of solidarity by creating an enemy to hate and I know the internet and global media are working their asses off to make that something politicians can no longer do.

In economic terms, they are any program that results in a 'transfer payment'. Examples include: Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veteran's Benefits. I see Veteran's Benefits as more like a pension from an employer (the government in this case), thus it is not really that objectionable to me, but it is, technically, a redistribution of wealth.
No, I actually believe people do need a hand at times! I just don't believe it is the job of government, and certainly not a non-local one, to try to handle this. I believe this is best left for charities, churches, and/or other local non-profits to handle. I believe it is a very dangerous and destructive thing when people begin to vote themselves money from other people's pockets (I have no other term than 'theft' or 'stealing' to describe this, loaded or not); I wish to avoid it at all costs.

You have said this numerous times, yet have not shown one shred of proof that this is how a modern society must be. You, and others, may believe this to be the case, but I do not. I believe it is the natural order of government to collect power more and more among fewer and fewer people. Not for the betterment of the populace, but to benefit this select group. This is a big reason why I want to decentralize; to spread the power around.

Sounds like a plan. :)

Ehhhhh, honestly, I feel like you're reaching. Social Security is for everyone, and considering the age you really can't expect a 65 year old to be a productive member of the work force. My grandmother for instance is in her 80s, she's old, frail, and she's worked all her life. She's put into Social Security and honestly deserves it. She doesn't make enough to live in the lap of luxury, and honestly I'd say she barely makes enough to stay afloat without pinching pennies. Hardly what comes to mind when you use that phrase.

The phrase is a scare tactic. What comes to mind when I hear it is Robin Hood outright robbing from the rich to give to the poor to such a degree that the poor become rich and the rich become poor. The reality of it is much, much different. The fact that you say Veteran's Benefits technically qualifies show how overly broad such a term is used for, and how it's hardly viable because you're just looking at the numbers and not the human factor. People who have busted their asses, or are busting their asses and are barely hitting the poverty line, for whatever reason.