We take it for granted that we do. But should we? All the administrative organisation and financial institutions are already in place. Society wouldn't cease to exist if Parliament were abolished tomorrow. We would still all go to work, the shops would still be open. Aren't MP's and the like merely the elected placemen of the powers that be. Just how many Education and Law and Order Bills has the current Labour Government passed in the last ten years. Yet still nothing has changed. They seem to spend most of their time interfering in our lives unecessarily simply to be seen to be doing good, to justify their existence. They tax us at every turn and squander our money where we don't want it spent. They tell us what to do and we are expected to obey simply because it is the law. Do we really need them? Is there truly no better way?

Is porscha going all Ron Paul Libertarian on us?

I will make a short case for government.

I would say industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a good reason for government. We need certain corporate forces to be regulated because they are mostly driven by profits. This does not apply to all corporations mind you but some are mainly greed driven. When the latter corporation exists without regulations then the people will suffer.

Look at the plight of Italian, Irish, Chinese etc. immigrants in the late 19th and 20th. And also look at the condition of the cities around that time.

Oh yeah briefly, what about infrastructure, pollution and crime? How are those issues dealt with, without government organizations?

Summer Sunshine

Sorry Proscha but we do need some form of government. I know government can be a real pain in the butt but we do need some entity to control law enforcement ie gangs, criminals and of course domestic violence. If we left it up to corporations you in jolley old UK would be back in work houses and here across the pond would be working 16 hour days 6 days a week in factory towns.
My question would be "do we need borders in our country?"
Think about it?
love
Gracie

Oh if we could only do away with government. However, I feel we do need some type
of government. However, the smaller the better. We do not need government intruding into our personal lives. Government is for infrastructure upkeep and defense. As far as the borders.... a country without borders is not a country.

I agree with Sandi that government is for infrastructure and defense, add to that Q's point about regulating industries so the people are not taken advantage of or harmed. The government should not be used to subsidize industry or run businesses, ie. schools. Nor should government be used to create a class of people, ie. welfare, however gov't should be use to help truly disabled citizens.

I think whether you are very liberal or very conservative we all have reasonable wants or needs from our governments. Where the problem starts is most governments only add new programs without removing old ones that do little for the people, thereby only increasing the size.

The view expressed isn't necessarily my own. Should anyone think I am some wild-eyed, anything goes libertarian or limp utopian fantasist, which may actually be true, but not in the context of this particular thread. History teaches us how dreams can fast become nightmares well beyond our imagination and entirely out of our control. Anarchism is of the heart. It's physical manifestation is nihilism. I'm no Fourier or Saint-Simon. My politics have been expressed here often enough. What I may wish for and what I believed can be achieved are two entirely different things. Government is a necessary evil, democratic Government exists to prevent a greater evil from emerging. What form that Government should take, its structure and how it operates however, is another matter. The top down authoritarianism, its hierarchy, the rule of its elites. In a democratic country as vast as the United States I can mention just a few names Kennedy, Roosevelt, Bush and now Clinton. Political family dynasties. In a true democracy this shouldn't be able to occur. But politics is dominated by party political machines bankrolled by vast corporations. If the political is machine is run in slavish devotion to these people then so to ultimately will be the Government. This is not what democracy is about, to quote, I hope correctly, Government of the people, for the people, by the people. If the Government fails in this its raison d'etre then its structures should be torn down and new ones created.
The question of boundaries is an interesting one because in the 'new' global economy with its rapidly evolving technology it is possible that the concept of the sovereign national state as we understand it could soon become if not unviable then certainly anachronistic. We already have a number of vast trading blocks. The European Union has already effectively imposed a constitution on its members. And a Federal Europe, despite all the wailing to the opposite, is an inevithability. Though they will probably call it something else.

Here in the states, there is ample evidence they are working on a North American Union with Canada, Mexico and the United States. Even a common monetary unit called the Amero. This scares me because you think you have huge government now, just wait till this proposal starts to happen. There is a move afoot for a gobal governement and this is just the beginning. Not one for giving up my sovereignty. The further away the top layer of government is, the less say you have in it.

interesting very interesting

for my two pennorth - it is not whether we need government per se but whether we need political parties

as they currently exist....hence porshas point about what has the labour govt done in ten years to fundementally alter peoples lives (with possible exception of the civil parntership act)nothing

it is precisely because there is in fact no idealism any more and that they(political parties)
are all in hock to big business dodgy donation and merely espouse what the latest focus group tells them rather than speak with any idealism or conviction that makes political parties and goverment in that sense seem increasingly redundant.

vikki climbs off soapbox

vikki xxx