I am a libertarian free market amateur economist, which will become clear either now, or within future blogs. I call myself an amateur in the sense that I have not yet attained a Bachelors, Masters or PhD in economics, although I am in pursuit of all three. One thing that bothers me about politics in general, is the use of the term government to mean the federal government, and only the federal government. Many people view the federal government as the end-all, be-all for any problems they may have. Any reason that they feel theyve been shorted, or any excuse they can think up for needing money they direct to the federal government. When our Founding Fathers created the democracy which we have chipped away at, they intended the Federal government to be a last resort or sorts. The national government was not intended to carry a heavy caseload, but had a specific set of duties. These duties ideally included the minting of money and the oversight of troops, things that otherwise individual states would have had a hard time coordinating. They set up this government with the knowledge that every state and municipality had their own government to govern their people. I believe that the ultimate intent set forth by these men was to have a small federal government that helped the states with the things that would be hard to organize, with larger state governments to take care of their people. Larger state governments would serve quite a few purposes.
1) Namely, large state governments would help keep the federal government from getting to large and creating the problems that have plagued all other countries. A number of larger state governments could act as a buffer between the people and their federal ruler, and would protect them from the problems that ultimately befall all Federal governments.
2.) If the states were allowed to have a larger government while the Federal version was small, the states could be more efficient. The state could therefore census all of its people, and use the things they know about their state to better serve their people.
3.) Much the same as the last point, if states were the preferred form, any program that the people wanted would be much closer to them. My point being, if most residents of a state wanted Welfare, that state could enact legislation to make it a reality for those people. If I did not want to live in a state with welfare it would be much easier and more viable for me to move to a different state than it would ever be to move to a different country.
Ultimately the government libertarians dream of would allow for a more efficient system, better set up to serve the people, and keeping egos in check as long as allowing for a checks and balances of every government on their own power. It saddens me that socialism has creeped into our government, inflating not only taxes and spending, but the egos of the people in charge who get to spend our money. Hopefully this system starts to revert and we can see our government run and appreciated the way any government should....with a sense of pleasure and a watchful eye by the citizens who it is meant to serve.
