The Reagan Legacy

[Larry]

So you can debate the role government should play as long as part of your belief isn't that government tends to be incompetent?

Wouldn't that be silencing an important voice in the debate?

I can see some logic in appointing a contrarian to head an agency. Especially if his mandate is to take an ax to the agency. If he's appointed for the purpose of getting rid of as much fat as possible, I can see some good coming out of that.

OTOH, I see a problem with appointing people to head things like the EPA or the FDIC, when their primary qualification is their belief that the laws that these agencies enforce simply shouldn't be enforced.

[alexey]

So you can debate the role government should play as long as part of your belief isn't that government tends to be incompetent?

Wouldn't that be silencing an important voice in the debate?

It seems that you are intentionally discounting an extremely important difference between "tends to be" and "fundamentally is."

[PeterMP]

I can see some logic in appointing a contrarian to head an agency. Especially if his mandate is to take an ax to the agency. If he's appointed for the purpose of getting rid of as much fat as possible, I can see some good coming out of that.

OTOH, I see a problem with appointing people to head things like the EPA or the FDIC, when their primary qualification is their belief that the laws that these agencies enforce simply shouldn't be enforced.

Well, you need to find somebody that can balance things. Essentially, I don't like X, but it is the law (or rule) and that is more important than the fact that I don't like X.

Lot's of people do it on a regular basis in their jobs.

[PeterMP]

It seems that you are intentionally discounting an extremely important difference between "tends to be" and "fundamentally is."

I don't know anybody that believes government is completely useless. Even the Ron Paul fans believe in SOME government.

[alexey]

I don't know anybody that believes government is completely useless. Even the Ron Paul fans believe in SOME government.

Beliefs about the role government ought to play are different from beliefs about whether the government is fundamentally capable of acting in competent ways.

Yes "bigger" government may tend to be less competent. In some cases these beliefs may be related, but they are not the same thing.

[PeterMP]

Beliefs about the role government ought to play are different from beliefs about whether the government is fundamentally capable of acting in competent ways.

Yes "bigger" government may tend to be less competent. In some cases these beliefs may be related, but they are not the same thing.

Well, I think government is fundamentally incompetent. Of course, I think all human organized activities are incompetent because humans are fundamentally incompetent. We do a poor job of calculating long term risk and of assessing new information in the context of our situation. I think government is even more so flawed than other human orgainzed activities due to its appearant organization. It is always about the next election or crisis. There seems to be very little means or desire to track long term success (or failure) (I actually like Biden, but I'll pick on him. He's considered a foreign policy, but you can make the arguement that he's been wrong on the two biggest foreign policy decisions in the last 20 years (voted agains the first Gulf War and for the Resolution of force for the second). Is there any effort to take that into account?

I'm shocked at the conversations that congress can have without anybody mentioning Bayesian statistics (I'm surprised at the number of times somebody says something and nobody says 'Hey slow down and repeat that.'.

With that said, there are still things that government is better suited to do than any other organization. The question becomes is the government MORE fundamentally flawed than other organizations w/ resepct to achieving certain goals. Even with Bush and something like his faith-based initiatives that were an effort to move things from government to other organizations, there is still an implicit statement that the government does have an important role in helping to mantain a safety net/establish a lower level care for all people.

I'll also say that I know some people that object to the government doing things because the simply don't think it is fair irregardless of any competency level of the government.