Plumbing by Legislation

[LC475]

Work to what end?  What is your definition of something "working?"

In this case: accomplishing desired ends of human beings in the most ideal way possible.

Every single successful economy in the world has a very involved government.

  That is true.  Every unsuccessful one, too, as far as I can see.

So two short, oft-repeated but intellectually vacuous statements really aren't "all that needs to be said."  Not by a long shot.

I disagree that they are intellectually vacuous, and I disagree that there is more that needs to be said by me.

Though, perhaps I continue to contradict myself by doing just that (saying more).

There is a lot behind both of the statements.  Simple (seemingly too simple) statements often condense reams of books, years of intense thought, and centuries of experience.  Their simplicity doesn't make them wrong.

[Benko]

Government doesn't work.

Markets, do.

That's really all that should need to be said.  There's lots of things that seems like maybe they should work or could work.  But we have more than enough data, more than enough experience, more than enough real-world testing to reach a very solid conclusion that government laws, government programs, government permits, and indeed all other activities undertaken by governments with forcibly-enforced monopolies simply do not lead to the sought-after desirable results for which they are advertised.  This is the conclusion Harry Browne reached by the end of his long life of examining and pondering reality.  I have reached the same conclusion.

Right.  So when people want the gov't to intervene you have to ask yourself, if they know that gov't intervening will not improve things (in many/most cases) what is their real motivation? 

[moda0306]

Every single successful economy in the world has a very involved government.

This is basic confusion of correlation and causation.

The bigger a child's shoe size, the better the child's handwriting. Does having big feet make it easier to write ? No, it means the child is older.

If governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others then it's only natural they will develop and organize more prominently where economies are more successful.

If governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others, then 95%+ of the population would not be in favor of some role of government.

If governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others, then productive, resourceful, intelligent people wouldn't mostly be in favor of some role of government.

If "free economies" are more robust, productive, and desirable by many than "mixed economies," we'd see less of the latter and more of the former, by natural logical extension of how people would congregate.

[Libertarian666]

Every single successful economy in the world has a very involved government.

This is basic confusion of correlation and causation.

The bigger a child's shoe size, the better the child's handwriting. Does having big feet make it easier to write ? No, it means the child is older.

If governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others then it's only natural they will develop and organize more prominently where economies are more successful.

If people understood that governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others, then 95%+ of the population would not be in favor of some role of government.

If people understood that governments are just a group of humans feeding off the productivity of others, then productive, resourceful, intelligent people wouldn't mostly be in favor of some role of government.

If "free economies" are more robust, productive, and desirable by many than "mixed economies," we'd see less of the latter and more of the former, by natural logical extension of how people would congregate.

Fixed that for you.
Of course, most people don't understand that. So they still believe that governments are at worst a necessary evil. That doesn't mean they are correct.