I'll tell you right now, that anyone who uses that phrase is more of a "mindless sheep" than those he criticizes.

> What I am saying is that you want a small non-intrusive government at all levels, from local to federal.

Not particularly. There is no intrinsic reason to want a "small government" over a large one (or vice versa). What you want is an effective government, that best matches your interests. Of course, everyone has their own interests, so the best rough metric that we've come up for maximizing the effectiveness of the government across the whole population, and minimizing its harm, are democratic institutions with various protections in place to prevent various types of abuses.

Likewise, you don't necessarily want small corporations or large ones. A large corporation has more power and is able to abuse that power more; but it is also frequently more efficient than having lots of small actors, as lots of transactions between independent actors can add friction and cost.

Distributed systems have problems, as they can exhibit lots of complex behaviors that can cause destabilizing feedback, and they can be inefficient. Centralized systems have problems, because they provide single points of failure or points of corruption that can be exploited for gain. Some balance between the two of them is necessary, and it's also necessary to spend effort on simply fixing problems that come up rather than thinking that every problem can be solved by adhering to some philosophy of "big government" vs. "small government".

> mindless sheep ... wake up and see what is really going on.

Did you really just write a long winded "wake up sheeple" post? Are you trying to be a self-parody?

>I'll tell you right now, that anyone who uses that phrase is more of a "mindless sheep" than those he criticizes.

Does accusing someone of being a mindless sheep because they call others mindless sheep make you a mindless sheep? For that matter, sheep aren't mindless but if they were then if I described them as mindless sheep then how could I then be a mindless sheep? By the very nature of describing their mindlessness I show that I have a mind. Plus, I am a human and cannot be shorn, so I'm clearly not a sheep.

Ponder on that.

Why?

> There is no intrinsic reason to want a "small government" over a large one (or vice versa). What you want is an effective government, that best matches your interests.

You would have a point there if "big government" was used to convey the literal meaning of the phrase by Libertarians. It is not. In proper context "big government" refers to size, reach, complexity, all of the above and sometimes even more. It is generally about government that has grown beyond some boundary.

This is just like saying "big brother is watching". This doesn't literally mean that your eldest brother or a some kind of a giant person is watching you.

You do get that, right?

Big government: wants to touch, manipulate and regulate everything and wants to have a say in everything in your life, from how much soda you can drink to which doctors you can see and more. It spends money inefficiently and with damaging results. It thinks it has power over people and that our rights are granted by government and their laws.

Small government: stays out of the way and lets market forces act. It enacts and enforces just enough regulations to create protections from extremes and to protect and support those in need. It certainly stays the hell out of your diet, home, sex life and medical choices. It operates within a strict balanced budget framework that ensures our financial stability and well being as a nation. It knows that they derive their ability to act from the will of the people and that our rights cannot be trampled.

In this context, yes, you do want small government.

Medical care is not subject to normal market forces, nobody shops around in an emergency. And by the way, nobody tells you which practitioner you can see in the UK where we have had socialised medicine for decades. You're free to move between practitioners in the state system, and you're free to go private if you wish.

Your posts are just right wing and libertarian talking points, your description of 'Big government' hopelessly biased and 'Small government' a whitewash.

I also notice that in none of your posts are you in any way opposed to massive defence spending, only healthcare. And you call others 'sheep'!!

Oh, please! In an emergency you are going to go to the closest available hospital. As simple as that.

> nobody tells you which practitioner you can see in the UK where we have had socialised medicine for decades.

Well, that's not how Obamacare works. What's the point of making the comparison of two approaches that are so different.

Let's just look at cost.

How much would a healthy family of four pay for the NHS? Is there a deductible?

Before Obamacare my family paid $600 per month with a $5,000 annual deductible. We got great care and got to choose where to go and which doctors we see. With Obamacare our monthly premium increases to $1,400 per month and our deductible to $10,000. Also, our choices at nearly every level in the process of receiving care have become limited. There are questions about which of the local hospitals we will, effectively, be "assigned" to by attrition and which doctors we might not be able to see. The premium + deductible structure pretty much means that we stand to spend over $26,000 per year on medical care. And, BTW, this isn't a catastrophic plan.

With Obamacare the government is effectively, at a minimum, taking an extra $800 per month from us and in the worst case an extra $14,600. And this is for worst care and choices than we had with our prior system.

Taking $15,000 a year from a family's budget, when multiplied by potentially millions of families across the nation will have serious consequences. That's a lot of money that will not be available for purchasing. That extra computer, uprgading the old car, intalling wood flooring in the house or taking a vacation simply will not happen. And this will be the case with millions of families and individuals across the nation.

You see, you can call me whaever you want. Extreme right wing libertarian moron. That's fine. Shoot the messenger until you are happy. Now let's discuss facts and numbers and real world effects. When we look at facts what i am saying isn't theatrics from a moron but rather a screams from someone saying "the emperor has no clothes!".

Besides, there's also this:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-dalrym...

> none of your posts are you in any way opposed to massive defence spending, only healthcare. And you call others 'sheep'!!

That is utterly false. I have not brought up the military in his thread but I have in the past. Our military spending is sickening. Our wars are disgusting. And a good deal of our foreign aid is simply wrong and ought to be discontinued. Not only do I want our government to leave us alone, i want them to leave everyone else alone.

Our military spending has distorted our economy in ways that are hard to describe and probably even quantify. This is why I love Obamacare as the example that pulled the curtains back to let everyone see how government really works. Pick a number for how much was spent on the website. It's ridiculous. And they are still spending untold millions to fix it. Now imagine all military spending being equally bloated, wasteful and inefficient and ineffective.

Add it all up and it is easy to conclude that our government is causing us damage at every level and at a monumental scale. And don't get me started on patents. Care to quantify how much damage just one government agency, the US Patent and Trademark Office, has done to our economy, industry and progress?

Call me a moron if you must. You still have to face the facts behind my arguments.

And yes, people go to the nearest hospital in times of need. Need being the key word. Free markets don't really deal well here IMHO.

Obamacare may be a great example of why the US government doesn't work so well, but to an outside observer that seems to be because the market-worshippers seem to need to be placated at every turn, when their requirements are contrary to efficiency, fairness or good sense.

You did not. The self-deprecating bit is more about the fact that liberal lore requires that anyone not on the left be characterized as a religious idiot missing one or more teeth. Well, I am not any of that. I am also trying to highlight the fact that someone can actually be a moron and his or her argument can still stand on its own merits (or fall because of the lack thereof).

If I must be a moron to be heard, fine. I'll be a moron. I am not, but that's OK. Believe it or not, I am trying to be constructive here. HN is dominated by younger people who are obviously indoctrinated to the left. The tech industry actually went out of their way to help Obama get elected. This is nothing less than religious, mindless indoctrination. All of these people are very smart. They simply didn't want to stop and do a little thinking. And, of course, the young ones simply don't have enough life and business experience to actually get it. It takes effort and the ability to see the world from a very different level to leave religious belief behind, political or theological.

> "Obamacare is bad therefore socialised healthcare is wrong"

Nursie, you are the only person saying that in this thread. Please do not read past what I actually say. I did not say that.

> Obamacare may be a great example of why the US government doesn't work so well

It is. In fact, it is the best example money can buy. And it is fantastic because everyone now sees it and everyone cares because it touches them directly. Nothing sadder than talking on an extreme left-winger who just got the news that he and his family are going to have to pay through their teeth for healthcare that before Obamacare was pretty good and cost them less than half what it will with the new program. I have a number of ideologically leftist friends who work in Hollywood that simply don't want to talk about it. They got so royally screwed by Obamacare that it has rocked their entire belief system.

If we got any value out of this experiment is that we paid hundreds of millions of dollars to demonstrate what NOT to do.

> to an outside observer that seems to be because the market-worshipers seem to need to be placated at every turn, when their requirements are contrary to efficiency, fairness or good sense.

And that's the problem with being an outside observer. Although, in this day an age you have access to just about as much information as I do.

No, Obamacare isn't a failure because of the need to accomodate market-worshipers. To the contrary. Obamacare was brewed and passed into law with EVERYONE from the right and Libertarian parties either being explicitly excluded from the process and/or speaking and voting against it. Democrats used parliamentary twists and turns I couldn't possibly recite to get it through Congress. It is fair to say, if we assume our representatives, well, represent us, that half the country or more was against the entire thing.

Obamacare was passed with virtually nobody having read the law. It was passed with the President publicly committing fraud by making promises dozens of times, promises that are now well established to have been lies. It was also passed with Senators making such false promises. And, of course, who can forget our beloved Nancy Pelosi's "We have to pass the law to see what's in it". In other words, it was, for all intents and purposes shoved down our throats, falsely represented from the President on down and deemed into law by parliamentary force. There was no learned debate of the issues and the solutions. The thing is an ugly mess that was brewed behind closed doors. Now the doors are open and we can see they were brewing poison rather than a healthy concoction.

Perhaps that's what you missed as an outsider. Not because you didn't have access to the information, but, let's face it, we are all too busy to be concerned with the minutiae of things that, at the end of the day, don't affect us personally. I have no clue what's going on in France or Spain. The information is all out there. I'm just really busy with matters that concern me and my family to really have the time to understand about issues from far away that hardly touch me. In that sense, yes, you are absolutely correct, as an outsider you are only seeing one aspect of reality. And, frankly, if your information comes from liberal or right-wing outlets such as CNN and Fox you will only be exposed to the ideological extremes. The sad reality is that getting to the truth requires work and if it isn't going to affect you there really is no incentive to do the work and really understand what's going on.

I can't criticize you for not understanding what is really going on here. All I can say is that you should consider the possibility that you really don't get it because you are not personally and emotionally invested enough to expend the effort necessary to understand it.

Love the UK. Every time I go to Europe, London is my "base of operations". I keep it low key and stay at the Holiday Inn @ Kings Cross. Fantastic little Greek restaurant within walking distance.

Now, I'd really like to understand. What does a top-of-the-line plan through the NHS (if such a thing exists) cost a typical family of four with no major healthcare issues?

At this point internet libertarianism is a form of performance art, I'm sure of it!

The Americans seem to bang on about small government constantly, and I cant imagine that in actual reality, the US government can't be proportionally as big as say the German or , I dunno, Japanese government, where they don't particularly bang on about small government in anything like the same way. If it is, as big or bigger, I suspect that is largely down to the insane huge military the same people who bang on about small government totally adore and idolise.

Interesting too that for some bizarre reason, you have managed to get in some Obama and health care stuff in too. Sorry, but most of the rest of the civilised planet has some form of universal health care. I dont see what that has to do with anything in this debate. If Americans don't want to look after their poorest, weakest and most vulnerable, then fine. Its not my country. But its got nothing to do with industrial spying.

Oh, I note you have not placed any blame on any republicans who were just a responsible for all this. I dont remember GWB being all liberal about freedoms.

Sorry, but from what I can see, the subtext in your post is basically a poorly cloaked attempt at a right wing agenda. And frankly I don't see that as any sort of credible answer.

A little nit: Republicans and George W. Bush? They're either irrelevant and/or gone for years. You need to update your hate list; your being outside the states is no excuse for ignorance. The current demons are "tea-baggers" and "Ted Cruz".

Exactly right. Some people don't seem to want to understand the genius in that simple idea. Not sure why.

This has nothing to do with a right wing agenda. Call it a moderate libertarian agenda if you want to be closer to reality. Both major parties have blood on their hands, it's just different for each group. It just so happens that we've wasted five valuable years chasing after a somewhat extreme left-wing agenda...and here we are. We are walking into national debt that will exceed twenty trillion dollars and, if economic damage wasn't enough we are undermining our tech industry in ways that could shift technology out of the US in so many ways it is hard to imagine.

OK, call me a moron and a zealot. Please explain a few things to me then:

First, if over twenty trillion dollars in national debt isn't a problem, how much would be? Is there a limit or we get to go like this forever with no consequences whatsoever?

Once you explain that, please elaborate on what could happen to our tech industry if the world turns against us for such things as the brutal intrusion into everyone's lives by the NSA and other yet-to-be-identified players? Are there consequences to this if we change nothing? Ever?

Finally, we are continuing to see the disaster that the ACA/Obamacare is proving to be. The other day an article came out, I believe in Forbes, explaining how MILLIONS of Americans are --without realizing it-- assigning their property --their homes-- to the government when they sign up for the ACA and end-up going for Medicare. It is one thing to want healthcare for everyone. For reason's sake, let's do it right! This is nonsense. Can you please explain how the ACA is a good thing when premiums double --or worst--, deductibles skyrocket, access to doctors, facilities and drugs is limited and, on top of that, you might have signed your estate over to the state without even knowing it?

I don't know. I could be a moron. Still, I think the above issues stand on their own, having nothing to do with the messenger or the political alignment of anyone involved.

The fact is that the tech industry is under attack by our own government in more ways than one. Never mind me. Mind reality.

When I saw alan_cx put criticisms of the huge US military alongside arguments for socialized healthcare, I detected possible weakness. I thought something like, "growing the government makes it grow!"

It's like there's this odd static thinking some statists exhibit - like "we can vastly increase the government's power, but only just in this one corner with health care." But that's willful ignorance, that's not how things work. When you get a big expansion, budgets and authority swell for the whole thing including in the nasty bits like military and intelligence and through data mining/sharing between agencies.

You won't make headway trying to out-wonk someone on the ACA who is so clearly sold on the idea of socialized medicine. On that issue, the guy is a belieber. :)

Now I feel we are at an inflection point. There's a need to have some passion because our government has gone insane and seems to be on a mission to destroy us from the inside. No, this isn't some grand plan. They are too stupid for that. This is simply a natural side effect of what the political "species" does for survival. This is like bacteria "concerned" about maximizing their local results yet, if without resistance, will easily consume and kill the entire organism. The bacteria don't plan on killing the entire organism, it just happens. That's what our government is doing. If people would only pull back far enough to see it...

I have personally come to the conclusion that US politicians today are just limo drivers for the banksters and the business elites who get to dictate where the limo goes from the comfy (and safe) back seat.

I interpret messages from ultra rich/powerful types (like Mort Zuckerman) to mean that they have a worry about a race/class war against the rich that could wipe them out in a NY minute. It's a rational concern, things do seem to be slowly turning against the power elites.

If class riots truly are the big worry of the rich, then gov't entitlements aren't altruism or charity, they're gifts intended to placate the masses. Mass riot worries could also explain why local police departments are getting armored vehicles and military training from the feds. And it could explain why the IRS/surveillance state seems so preoccupied with weekend/holiday dissenters like those in the "tea party".

I don't have any answers for our social problems; I think we're screwed because of all the corruption. That doesn't stop me from questioning the motives of those that claim to have the answers.