Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, December 27, 2010 6:43:57 PM
It will be easier to get your
liberal friends than your
Leftist friends to see why we oppose big government, but it will still be difficult either way.
This will have more chance of working if your friend has just complained about a large corporation.
Here is the mental exercise to give your friend:
Imagine the biggest, most powerful corporation you can think of.
Imagine that it has exclusive control over vast land holdings, and the power to grab more.
Imagine that it spends and buys, seemingly with no concern about being shut down.
Imagine that even employees who are very poor at customer service are rarely fired for being bad the job.
Imagine a history of dysfunction and botches.
Now, give that company a monopoly in several lines of business.
Give it taxation power, policing powers, the power to detain people for years.
That is big government.
Now, your friend might cite the ability to vote out legislators and executives and even some judges. But is that really easier than 1) not buying any given company's products or services; 2) not investing in any given company? Your friend might say that government agencies are there to help us and the people in them really care about us, while the company is there to make a profit. But the government agency often runs on funds forcibly collected from other people, while a company must please customers enough that customers voluntarily buy its goods or services.
(This is a repost.)