Questions And Answers
Rather than presenting a dry, impersonal file of frequently asked questions, I have created a fictional question and answer session, based on various conversations I have had. The questioner is in bold and the answers are in regular type.
So, what's wrong with the government?
How do you mean that?
You don't like government, isn't that right?
Hold on a moment. I do want to talk with you and explain, but your first question seems to indicate that you have already judged me and I have to wonder if everything I say is going to be filtered through your assumptions of my motives.
Well, I know that we can't have companies running everything. We need government to maintain a common order.
I'm really not sure how to begin here. This isn't about companies running everything or government being bad.
But that's what you think, isn't it?
Are you asking me, or telling me what I think?
Okay, asking.
Then I just told you. It is not about companies running everything or government being bad.
So what is it about. What don't you like about the way things are now?
Look, I hate to keep questioning your questions, but you have some very serious misunderstanding about all this. This has nothing to do with me being against anything. My beliefs do not grow from anger, or selfishness, or any other emotion you want to pretend that I have.
Aren't you being a little dishonest here? I'm not the one suggesting that we need to tear down government.
"Here's what you believe and I'll tell you why you're wrong." That's what you're doing to me. Instead of asking me what I really believe and why, you are preoccupied with what you think I think and with all the ways you can punish me for daring to think such silly things. If there's going to be any progress here, you need to accept the idea that perhaps everything you think you know about me is wrong.
Okay, perhaps I got off on the wrong foot, but you've got to admit that some of your ideas are pretty radical.
I don't have to admit anything of the kind, especially when I haven't even said anything about my ideas yet. I'll accept that I may be wrong. Maybe I'm missing something in the big picture, but if I'm to be damned, then damn me for who I really am, and not for the demon you think me to be.
I understand that some of the conclusions you're thinking of, when viewed within the standard political framework, seem out of balance, but that's because you have such deeply ingrained assumptions about, not only what's right and wrong, but also what will work and what won't work.
Let's take your idea about my wanting to tear down government. Government is not bad, and the people in it are not bad. When people who are like you and me go to Washington or to the state capitol and pass laws to fund schools and roads, they are doing what they think is the best they can do.
Sometimes this is exactly the best thing, but there are many times when that way of doing things, taxing and redistribution under a federal or state run system, is simply less effective than alternatives. It's not about placing a value on whether or not one thing or another -- schools or parks or roads -- is good or worthy. It is this: given that you want to accomplish something, like having smart, healthy kids, a nice place to live, what is the most effective, honest, and moral way of achieving that?
But if we don't, as a society, choose to pay for schools and roads and good neighborhoods, then who will?
There are a couple assumptions hidden in your question. The first is that we have only two choices: forced confiscation of people's money (taxes) or dumb luck. But let me start with your second assumption, because it's the more pernicious. You are assuming that the collection and spending of tax money actually enables and supports the goals of the legislation which authorizes that spending.
Let's say that you want more funding for maintaining the infrastructure of your local schools. You call your state legislator and find out that he's a member of a political party with an agenda of its own, and to secure the appropriations for your school reinvestment program he needs to gain political support, trade favors and perhaps votes for some other project. If it gets that far, and then someone actually writes the new law, and it gets amended and reworded, and actually passes, then someone needs to administer it, bureaucrats who again have their own priorities. Then there's the process of government bids and contracts, a system replete with more political priorities totally unrelated to the end goal. There will be money collected, but which schools get it? Who decides? You might end up with the money going to landscaping instead of plumbing, or a new radio studio instead of decent computers. It's not beyond reason to fear that the money might end up paying for a new swimming pool at the school attended by the children of one of the bill's co-sponsors.
Your first assumption, all or nothing, shows how little faith you have in people. How can you on one hand say that these things are so important and on the other hand suggest that nobody else will join you to recognize that importance?
Who pays? Parents should pay for sending their children to school, just as they pay for any other service. Drivers, through gas or license tax should pay for the roads they use - or there should me more electronic toll systems.
And how you pay for something as ephemeral as good neighborhoods is beyond me.
Your answer is kind of a dodge. Sure, it takes time and effort to run a school system, and I'd like to see it run better...
Maybe you'd like to spend tax money to examine the inefficiencies of government spending?
...well, but how can we make sure that there will be schools? Are you suggesting that if nobody wants schools we shouldn't have any? Aren't schools important?
Of course they're important. But let me ask you this: how do you make sure that you've got good restaurants in your town? What if the service in question is supper instead of schools? We could hold votes on the type of restaurant we should have, take government bids on the construction of the restaurants, staff them with political friends, and we'd all end up eating the same type of stuff they serve in school cafeterias.
Your arrogance amazes me! Do you really think that you and your political friends are the only ones to have discovered the advantages of a well-educated society? Do you really think that without your help parents are not going to figure out that their children need to read?
I can't believe you're serious. Don't you agree that a community has an interest in having an educated electorate?
Of course I believe we need an educated electorate. That's exactly why I prefer private, non-government schools. The reason I say this is because any government has a different set of priorities than the people. The government's interest in its schools is a mix of social engineering, interpreting history in whatever way suits the prevalent perspective, and in exercising fundamental control over the citizens by training them when they are young.
Another thing: schools are a focal point. Everyone with an opinion only has to convince a few legislators instead of an entire population. Wouldn't it be better for the people of a community to decide for themselves what priorities they want in a school, and then let competition in schools, as we have in restaurants, satisfy those priorities?
Let me ask you this: Do you think we actually have an educated electorate now? Do you think parents are getting everything they, and everyone else, are paying for with taxes?
The restaurant comparison sounds good, but a meal costs, at most, twenty or thirty dollars. How can everyone afford to spend an extra five thousand dollars a year, every year, for every child in the family?
By cutting their taxes. An average American will pay between five and ten thousand dollars in federal income taxes, a couple thousand in state income taxes, and, if he has a home, several hundred to a few thousand dollars in personal proptery tax. That doesn't even count FICA, personal business taxes, and all the other hidden taxes, which would come to another few thousand dollars and change. That's one person paying somehere around ten to fifeen thousand dollars every year.
If education cost what it should, what it would with competition and modernization, that's more than enough to send four children to school and still have money left over.
So they should pay out of their own pocket?
How do they pay for cars, for baby seats, for sitters, and formula? Children are expensive. Are you suggesting that someone can have ten kids and send them to school on my paycheck just so a few people can set the agenda for every student? Remember, schools don't have to be as expensive as they are; that's a feature of how they're run.
Of course they should pay out of their own pockets. That's what they're pockets are for. But, and this is important, we can't ask everyone to pay their own way and not slash their tax burden. But, if we do both, then more people will be much better off than they are now.
What about people who just can't afford to pay? Even with those lower prices you promise?
Two things. If they can't afford to have children, they shouldn't be having them. That's fundamental common sense, and I don't mind reminding people of that. Your kids are not my responsibility, they're yours. Second, let me put it back on you. If you think education for the masses is so important, but you're not willing to donate your own money to support that idea, then you're being a hypocrite. You're saying that it's important only as long as it's other people's money.
The truth is there would be all kinds of free education opportunities. There would be programs in churches, the YMCA. The United Way would very likely offer scholarships and outreach programs. Companies might even offer some kind of education benefit for their employees.
But what kind of schools would they be? Who would monitor them?
I'm glad you asked that. There would be all kinds of schools. There would be religious schools, back to basics, schools with uniforms, computer schools, trade and special study schools, Montessori, home schools. We would have as much diversity and incentive toward excellence that we have with everything else from furniture to lawn mowers.
The parents would monitor them. There would be bad schools, of course. But if the parents have the freedom to choose, then they will choose the best school they can afford.
Do you know how school districts really decide which child goes to what school? They hire people to look at demographics -- income, race, marital status -- and create an allotment that will maximize federal funding, wasting who knows how many millions of dollars in fuel and busing charges, all to force parents into a take it or take deal that sends their son or daughter across town instead of the school down the street. That happens all the time.
So, all I'm suggesting is that we let teachers teach and students learn in a neighborhood school, and that parents should be able to find the best school for their kids that they can afford. Somehow when I suggest this, you hear that we should let poor children grow up ignorant. It amuses me, really.
How can you, if you really care about the education of children, refuse to allow them the greatest potential? Is this really the best we can do?
Okay. Let's get off schools. You don't deny, do you, that you think all drugs should be legalized?
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Isn't it?
This one is easy. Can you demonstrate to me that the current drug policy has done anything to help junkies get off the stuff, keep kids away, and reduce the number of users?
I'm not really in favor of the following idea, but can you imagine where we would be if all the money spent on interdiction and prosecution for the past ten years had instead been spent on rehabilitation and medical programs?
All the crimes we think of as being drug crimes are actually drug prohibition crimes. The core crime - turning on, shooting up, whatever - is a sad thing, but it's not a gun pointed at me.
Just think of the price. If the prices were somehow reduced to half the current street price, then that's half the number of crimes that are committed to support some junkie's habit, or fewer severe crimes. Turf wars, drive by shootings, pushing drugs on school grounds, are all drug prohibition crimes, not drug crimes.
What do you say to the suggestion that if drugs were legal there would be more people trying them, that we'd have even more people with drug problems than we have now?
Even if that were true, which I don't believe, there would be a strong positive net gain.
Are you saying you don't believe we would have more people using drugs?
I am, because changing the law doesn't suddenly make people turn their brains off. Most people who are going to use drugs are going to do it no matter what. Maybe recreational cocaine use would rise for a while, but we might see a concurrent trend away from the harder street stuff. If someone starts, he might not start out with a hit off a crack pipe, and might have a better chance of rehabilitation.
But there's a philosophical argument too. You think people should be allowed to make that choice and to endanger others through being impaired?
I have to laugh at that one. You and I right now are enabled with all sorts of deadly force should we choose to use it. All you need to do is cross over the double yellow line. We all have the ability to do really stupid things. I dare you to try to legislate all the ways in which my stupidity, carelessness, or ignorance might hurt someone.
Of course everyone has to make choices about drugs. If not they, then who? You? Me? The libertarian perspective comes in here to say that they should be left to make those decisions, but that to make the best choice they need to have a full disclosure regarding the effects and dangers.
This goes to the basic principle that the government's primary role is to punish the use of force and fraud. If tobacco companies lie about the addictive nature of cigarettes, then they should be penalized. However, if I have been told that I have a twenty to thirty five percent chance of contracting a major disease after so many years of smoking, and I go ahead and do it anyway, well, shame on me. I can drink bleach or eat dirt, but we don't need laws to tell me not to.
But don't you think, on principle alone, we should not allow something so deadly, so destructive to be legal?
Absolutely not. Just because something is legal does not mean it is good for you. It's perfectly legal to contract AIDS, or to eat nothing but raw meat. It's legal to become an alcoholic or to smoke yourself into emphysema. It's legal to make bad investments or gamble away your paycheck at the casino. We have other social pressures, expectations, and support groups for these things, and drug use and addiction should be handled the same way.
Ask yourself this: Who benefits from the current situation? Do the drug infested neighborhoods benefit? Are the current policies helping there? Overall drug use? Are we seeing any substantial gains? No.
The current situation empowers police forces through additional funding and powers. You can imagine that for people whose job it is to keep the cities safe, this is something they are quite happy to hold on to, even at the expense of your personal or property rights.
The irony is that, even with the deep pockets of federal drug enforcement initiatives, and even with harsher sentencing, expanded civil forfeiture laws, and no knock raids, everything they do only cause the drugs to become more entrenched.
How so?
It's just plain economics. Illegal drugs cost more. Illegal drugs enable and encourage exactly the types of problems that are most destructive, from gangs to stronger drugs to pushers specifically trying to hook kids.
When was the last time you saw a representative from Budweiser handing out samples on a playground?
I'm not saying that drugs remain illegal specifically to enable a larger police state. It's simply that the legislators and police believe that to legalize means to give up and admit defeat. They want to put the bad guys in jail and keep the kids safe, but, with the best of intentions, they're doing exactly the opposite. They're also encroaching on some very fundamental freedoms by confiscating property without due process, searching without proper warrants, and treating marijuana users more like political prisoners than petty criminals. In their eyes, this is all justified in the name of saving their communities. They just can't see it any other way because they're in the middle of the fight.
The only way to win this war is to change the rules, and that means legalization.
Even the hardest drugs?
If only the hardest drugs are illegal, what are they going to try pushing on your kids? The cheap, legal pot or the heroine? Right now the wrong people have the power. Legalization cuts into the very source of this power, the money and control. When publicly traded companies make the drugs and are required by the government to provide full disclosure, the control will shift from secret drug lords to share holders and consumers. When we can stop spending billions of dollars feeding and clothing half of the urban youth in prisons, and can instead invest in effective rehabilitation, education, and support groups, then we will be in a position to make some real progress.
The policies in place now can only ensure more of the same. That's good for congress, which has a constant social agenda to justify their spending; it's good for police, who get more money and more power; and it's certainly good for the makers and sellers of drugs, but it's not good for anyone else.
Legalization removes power from all three: congress, police, and the gangs, which is exactly why these three groups have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. To solve the problems which drugs present, we need to shift this balance of control, and as long as the current system is self supporting then we won't move any closer to any real solutions.
Remember, this is not about liking drugs: it's all about what's the most effective means to deal with this problem. What we're doing now is not only ineffective, it is doing more harm than good. It's a sad irony.