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Comment by jpwagner | Hacker News Reader

I, for one, appreciate that you've logically outlined some counterargument.

There are certainly immature, naive libertarians out there (probably down-voting your comment right now,) but the places where you have been immature and naive here are in thinking that anti-gov't/every-man-for-himself is the cornerstone of the opposing argument.

When I read Carmack's post I think of anti-inefficient-gov't not anti-gov't. You may attempt to say those are the same, but I disagree.

The "imagine a privatized [gov't agency]" argument is a thought-experiment to show the idealism behind the anti-efficient-gov't movement. It should not be taken literally.

By the way, work earned that dollar; it did even when there was unsafe work, discrimination, and abuse.

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I think the color of Carmack's statements are much more anti-gov't than anti-ineffcient-gov't. The way I read it, he's saying lets make government more efficient by cutting out services, not by making all services operate more efficiently. To me, that is only anti-inefficient-gov't by way of anti-gov't. He effectively states that gov't can't be efficient :

"Sure, there is room for improvement everywhere, but there are important fundamental limits."

"So, the federal government is essentially doomed to inefficiency, no matter who is in charge or what policies they want it to implement."

"I would ask that it stop doing the majority of the things that it is currently doing"

Note that he is also glad that the government is doomed to inefficiency : "Even if you could snap your fingers and get it, do you really want a razor sharp federal apparatus ready to efficiently carry out the mandates of whoever is the supreme central planner at the moment? The US government was explicitly designed to make that difficult, and I think that was wise."

An efficient government would be dangerous, and an inefficient government is draining. If relying on government is a compromise between those two, then why not go with the better option (free markets)? Markets are fast and efficient, a concept foreign to governments everywhere.

It read to me as "government performs most tasks inefficiently, and that's ok; but let's have it perform fewer tasks inefficiently so we can perform them more efficiently ourselves and have a little less fiscal drag on our lives.

In general, I think government waste is a red herring. It's such a vanishingly small percentage of the overall budget that it often is a stalking horse for a desire to have the government deregulate industries, for example.

Now let's talk about waste in military spending. I would also count the off-the-books (as in, not part of the official budget) spending as wasteful military spending, almost by definition. So now we're talking a very large fraction of the federal budget. Note, however, that arguments to "get the government out" of various affairs rarely include the military.

People who complain about "pork" in government spending: if you were really serious about cutting spending, you'd include the military (like the UK government recently did). But they never do.

That's just it, though: why advocate an anti-inefficient-government position? Who, precisely, advocates a pro-inefficient-government position? Right, nobody. So, instead of advocating anti-inefficient-government, it makes a lot more sense to advocate specific measures that will improve efficiency. That might be cutting programs, but advocate cutting of specific programs, because of that program's inefficiency. Give a concrete reason for it, such as number of dollars spent by the average taxpayer, or an alternative use for that money. Pick a specific measure, not something general like "social security" or "TARP".

I sympathize with many libertarian goals, but this generic "anti-inefficient-government" rhetoric doesn't help any of them. Rhetoric is a luxury of mainstream parties. Ross Perot got a significant portion of the votes in many states by hammering on a single issue: the budget deficit. After that, the Clinton administration mysteriously decided that shrinking the deficit was a priority. Which of course didn't exactly last long, but imagine if someone continued to hammer on that with the same fervor throughout Bush's presidency, and into the current administration?

Since I've NEVER seen the government do anything efficiently, anyone who argues for more government is by my definition arguing for inefficiency.

In this case (when they're arguing for more government), however, you could oppose it by arguing anti-government. That sort of puts us back where we started.

Oddly enough, though, nobody seems to argue for just "More government" in general either. People instead argue for specific programs they want.

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