size of government and the competence of government

[InvisibleJim]

They absolutely shouldn't forced to do it, there are ways of promoting jobs in a constructive fashion. Also it's important an individual can pick what they do for this service. Also it can be rolled into unemployment insurance where when people are laid off they can fulfill some of this time during those periods.

Healthcare benefits can also be rolled into this so that retirement healthcare may not be available for free post-retirement if service is not complete. Nothing should be done at gunpoint or thru force when incentives and choice are applicable. If someone really hates government service they shouldn't have too, but perhaps some government benefits will not be available to these individuals.

If the Western Government wasn't a job creation vehicle, what do you propose to be done with the dross? They will not go away to die quietly, do you put a gun up against their head as well or coerce them with the threat of law. Do you establish ghettos and slums? These were the solutions of the past, and these solutions didn't make the world a better place either.

As far as I'm concerned a concerted effort to increase the average IQ of society by 1 pt would likely have a great effect than any of these grand ideological fantasies people want to promote, but nobody wants to pay for education.

I think you can only get productivity out of the non-productive with a transparent policy of carrots and sticks.

[Jimbean]

@hkkmr

I think you are looking at government as a hypothetical system, rather than looking at the historical nature of government.

I think this leads to the next question of what direction of approach and political philosophy is either correct or optimal.

[mu4]

@hkkmr

I think you are looking at government as a hypothetical system, rather than looking at the historical nature of government.

I think this leads to the next question of what direction of approach and political philosophy is either correct or optimal.

The historical nature of government is that it arises in some form and collapses in some form. There is no ideal or hypothetical, it either lives or it dies in the environment that it exists in. Governments are just social organism that live, achieves what it achieves and dies, no more no less. Correct and optimal is something for the historians to decide, and they generally don't agree on.

By even having the pretense to "correct" and "optimal" you're the one dealing in hypothetical. As a scientist, I deal in approximations, probability, measurement and analysis, beyond that I don't know what's correct and optimal, that's a shifting target.

[Jimbean]

The historical nature of government is that it arises in some form and collapses in some form. There is no ideal or hypothetical, it either lives or it dies in the environment that it exists in. Governments are just social organism that live, achieves what it achieves and dies, no more no less. Correct and optimal is something for the historians to decide, and they generally don't agree on.

By even having the pretense to "correct" and "optimal" you're the one dealing in hypothetical. As a scientist, I deal in approximations, probability, measurement and analysis, beyond that I don't know what's correct and optimal, that's a shifting target.

If you are not talking about hypothetical or optimization, then what are talking about? I was talking about what governments generally do, and that is they get too big, become inefficient, and a burden on the productive class of citizens.

[mu4]

If you are not talking about hypothetical or optimization, then what are talking about? I was talking about what governments generally do, and that is they get too big, become inefficient, and a burden on the productive class of citizens.

"Real" approximations. Optimization is possible with real approximation, but not "optimal", optimal is a temporary theoretical state. Also by optimizing too close to the edge of efficiency in a system, it's generally to the detriment of reliability, scalability and/or flexibility.

As I said before, government scales efficiently until it doesn't based on its design, also when it is too small it is also inefficient due to overhead of simple establishment. So based on the system there is a sweet spot for size. Optimization can improve this sweet spot. A mouse is efficient at a certain size, a elephant is efficient at another.

Yes getting too big or too small will be inefficient, but it's not the only factor that causes collapse. There are other factors such as energy prices, natural disasters, external influences, complacency in the population, aging population, demographic shifts, environmental crisis and plenty of other things lurking in the unknown.

Wanting a really efficient optimized system generally leads to other pitfalls, like reliability, scalability, flexibility, and other issues. Naive notions of big and small as some how the sole determinant of good and bad is just rhetoric and sophistry, the US government is small compared to many first world countries but it also happens to be greatly inefficient in areas such as healthcare, education, military expenditures despite these other countries having a great deal more public expenditures in healthcare and education while having much smaller military expenditures.