The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAGB (National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with "green bias", and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.

Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "it’s Not Easy Being Green". Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers, or as Bill refers to it,. the "Temperatures of the 80’s".

Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act". Retroactive to the beginning of the summer, the ant was fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant. The case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday’s between 1:30 and 3:00 p.m. when there are no talk shows scheduled. The ant loses the case.

Big Government and How Far is Far

Matt Beland (belandm@enteract.com)

I don’t think there’s any question that the era of big government is on the way, for in fact it is already here. It began with FDR (voted most influential president of the century by a CNN Online poll) with the WPA and continued on to today. It also ties in with your discussion of the United States as Empire; as it is to the outside, so it is on the inside. No matter where in the world you run to, cameras or troops – or both – are not far away. These are the weapons of American Empire. Bombs to entertain the loyal subjects and punish those who would oppose the Emperor and cameras to influence and threaten.

The one thing that makes this Empire different from the empires of the past is that there is no outside, there is no frontier. Every past empire from the Roman to the British collapsed because the borders outran the center’s ability to control it. This led to frontiers where "malcontents" and romantic adventurers could run away from the stifling weight of the nannies and cops. As you said in your preface to Macauley’s Lays, the best and the brightest of the British Empire went off to govern the colonies, while the rest stayed home to rule Britain. Is it any wonder the colonies grew up to overthrow and eventually rule the Empire?

But today, there is no place out of reach of the government. Where is the India and the New World of today? Where can the restless go, for there are those of us who do not care for social security and universal health care. Not everyone believes that "Quality of Life" means a better diet, regular exercise, and a bigger TV set. Some of us want to feel the wind rushing by, the deck surging beneath our feet, to search for the Roc’s egg, and to see how far is far. "…raw red gold in the nuggets the size of your fist and feed that claim jumper to the huskies!"

With respect to your "big government" discussion...

I think that President Clinton in his State of the Union address trying to buffalo you—or, rather, not you but his left-of-center supporters (like me) who actually think that the U.S. would be a better place if its government did a little bit more and was somewhat closer to a western European social democratic-style government.

When President Clinton announced $100 billion in new initiatives, I believe that he is counting the cost of his proposals (which will not be enacted into law) over the next five years. Think of something like $20 billion per year--$70 per person per year—in new spending proposals instead. Compare that $20 billion per year to the $9,182 billion forecast of GDP during the 2000 fiscal year. Total production in this country is something like $33,400 per person per year. Federal government non-interest spending) is some $5,570 per person per year.

Thus the $70 per person per year of which Clinton talked so much in his State of the Union Address is a marginal change—a marginal change that Clinton is trying to trumpet as bigger than it is to try to please his left.

But it won’t mark the return to big government. We have big government--$5,570 per person per year in non-interest federal spending—already. We have had it since the days of FDR—although some carry it back further, and blame Herbert Hoover or TR for bringing the idea that the federal government should be "in charge" of the economy in some sense into the mainstream of America’s political debate.

What is that $5,570 per person per year spent on?

$1,370 Defense, plus veterans benefits, plus military retirement, plus

international aid (the last of these a measly $70 per person

per year—the cost of empire, you might say; or the cost

of the national security state, others might say; or the cost of

the military that allowed our ideas time to win the Cold War, still

others might say.

$1,470 Social Security benefits—there are, I think, good reasons for

having a partly public pension. Social Security is not terribly

generous, and entirely-private systems like Chile seem to burn

up an awful lot of money in marketing and administrative costs.

$1,280 Medicare plus Medicaid—there are, I think, good reasons for

having large public health programs. The most important of them

is what the insurance people call adverse selection: you need

insurance in order to pay for treatment should something

horrible happen to you, but for-profit insurance companies

have every incentive to try to figure out who the bad risks

are, and to refuse to insure them at anything but high cost.

(But I don’t think we get terribly good value for our Medicare

and Medicaid spending for a whole host of reasons.)

$540 Welfare broadly construed (food stamps + temporary assistance

to needy families + child nutrition + earned income tax

credit + foster care + other "income security" programs). A

These four add up to $4,660 per person per year. That is 80% of what the U.S. government does. And by and large I think it is reasonable. I think it is worth spending, and I think it is spent about as well as it could be, given the realities of how bureaucracies work.

If I were suddenly named Czar of the federal budget, I would probably cut 1/3 out of defense (the Cold War *is* over, after all), keep Social Security benefits about where they are, shift some of Medicaid over to public health and try to think hard about how to get better value out of the hospital sector, and boost welfare spending—especially because attempts to do welfare on the cheap in the past have left some horrendous penalties to enterprise and industry in the system, and because a frighteningly-large share of America’s children are poor.

But I’m a social democrat...

$196 Civil service retirement.

$84 Unemployment insurance.

$149 Federal transportation expenditures.

$185 Federal education expenditures (including student loans).

$65 Science and space

$95 Health research and public health.

$81 Natural resources and environment.

$135 Justice and general government.

$100 "Other" domestic discretionary.

$25 Farm price supports.

I respectfully disagree with Mr. DeLong’s contention that the Era of Big Government in the United States began with FDR’s New Deal. I believe it began with the Civil War.

While I’m not one of the revisionists who downplay the (based upon my reading) integral motivating factor of the moral debate over slavery in the decision of the Southern states to attempt succession, I feel that the so-called states’ rights issue was of equal importance. Calhoun, et. al., made this very clear in the Senate debates of the 1850s.

During the conflict, Mr. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, instituted varying degrees of Federal control over certain sectors of the economy, and in general did the sorts of things one must do in order to consolidate one’s efforts to fight a war. Afterwards, during Reconstruction, the Congress repeatedly exceeded their authority in regulating everyday activities in the conquered states, and thus became addicted to that sort of power. The Radical Republicans greatly upset the balance of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches - the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was simply the most visible manifestation of the phenomena.

Federal income tax followed in the early part of this century, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As to Mr. DeLong’s self-identification of himself as a Social Democrat, I would urge him to read two books - von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and P.J. O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich. Every person of Mr. DeLong’s persuasion I’ve ever encountered (including myself, when I was younger) has had a very poor grasp of the inextricable link between economic freedom and political freedom. They also have a stunningly naive, sunny view of human nature, assuming that all the equally fervored SDs like themselves, once they obtain access to the levers of power, will constantly work for the common good without thought of personal gain. Unfortunately, basic human psychology gives the lie to this proposition.

How does a bureaucrat evaluate his own self-worth? Well, he can’t make very much money (unless he’s on the take), so the most important criteria he can use to measure success in his career are a) how much of the public purse he controls, and b) how much influence he has over the lives of other people via the good offices of his position. Being a sincere person, and we humans being the great rationalizers that we are, he will naturally conflate the expansion of his own sphere of influence with the common good. After all, he’s only trying to help, right?

Such is the stuff of which overweening bureacratic empires are made. And it’s the horrifying sincerity of the bureaucrats in question which best illustrates the insidious nature of this phenomena. We all want to think the best of ourselves, and it is this misdirected pride (or, less charitably, intellectual vanity) which allows us to decide that we are better equipped to run the lives of our fellow citizens than are they themselves. This is what Lord Acton was on about, and, as fallible human beings, we are all susceptible.

Those on the Left, in their belief that humanity is perfectible (i.e., we can indeed construct New Soviet Man) - and their natural belief that they themselves are on the side of the angels - ignore the lessons of history and deny the basic tenet of humanity, that we all tend to act in what we at least -perceive- to be our own self-interest, regardless of the intrinsic altruism contained in our actions.

Assuming that all monies sent to the public purse were used with complete efficiency, it is the non-economic impact of state interference in the economy which has the most serious consequences, in my opinion. Once you’ve established the principle that the money people earn doesn’t really belong to them, but that you, the bureaucrat, will reward the little people by selectively doling back out some of the monies which were generated by the citizenry to begin with, you’re set for life.

This is the true nature of the so-called ‘entitlements’ which everyone is so keen on. This is, at core, a rationalization of what would otherwise be known as highway robbery - rather than pointing a gun at you and demanding you hand over a percentage of the money in your wallet, instead we legitimize the mugging under the color of law, and then those who benefit from the earnings of others can rationalize away taking the money, having first ensured that it is washed by the sanctifying hand of government.

To me, this is the equivalent of assuaging one’s guilt by purchasing stolen property through a fence, rather than directly from the thieves themselves. The hypocrisy is stunning. The morally corrosive effect of the wholesale adoption of this stance should be self-evident. It’s reflected in the depravity and moral poverty of our popular culture.

Leftism is, at its root, a disturbingly attractive admixture of the rationalization of thievery coupled with intellectual vanity. Such a philosophy allows one to take from all and sundry without admitting that one is profiting from the work of others, while at the same time consoling oneself that it is really all to the benefit of the poor plebes, who otherwise wouldn’t know any better. It also allows us to cloak the natural human impulse to exert power over others in the guise that it’s really for the good of the common people that we control their lives for them, rather than simply assuaging our own need for self-importance and stroking our own egos on the public stage. Donning the armor of self-righteousness, we can do no wrong, you see.

Washington instinctively understood this all-too-common characteristic of humanity, and discussed it in his Farewell Address:

They serve to Organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprizing minority of the Community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public Administration the Mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the Organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modefied by mutual interests. However combinations or Associations of the above description may now &; then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, &; to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

He was speaking of political parties here, in their 18^th-Century form - merely substitute ‘interest groups’ for ‘party’ and the relevance to our current situation, in particular the modus operandi of the modern Left, is made apparent. He continues:

It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded Jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot &; insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence &; corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

The ‘it’ being what in modern parlance we would call interest-group politics, the hallmark of the Left throughout history, from the Catalinian Conspiracy through the Terror of Robiespierre on to the identity politics and social engineering of the present day.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a thought of Abraham Lincoln’s, taken from his Second Inaugural address; to me, this is the most concise and powerful argument against the forcible redistribution of wealth - the foundation of Leftist public policy - yet made:

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I don’t like seeing somebody like Bradford De Long, who has served his country by honorable work both in government and academia, patronized gratuitously.

So if you read this, and agree with me that Mr. Dobbins’ comments are inappropriate, please post this e-mail.

Mr. Roland Dobbins writes, in your Big Government discussion:

"As to Mr. DeLong’s self-identification of himself as a Social Democrat, I would urge him to read two books - von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and P.J. O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich."

I don’t really think that Prof. De Long needs to read O’Rourke, though he may have.

"Every person of Mr. DeLong’s persuasion I’ve ever encountered ..."

This sentence screams out the bigotry of its writer. Suppose that Dobbins has actually met a statistically significant number of social democrats (say, at a minimum, 30). Suppose further that that set of 30 or more was a representative sample. In that case, if Dobbins claims to have met *none* of them whose maturity and cogency he respected, it is far more intrinsically probable that his own built-in mental blinders prevented him from fairly assessing them, than that over *ninety-seven percent* of all adult non-insane reasonably-educated social democrats are puerile and naive.

"... (including myself, when I was younger) ..."

De Long is 38 years old. How much bloody older does he have to be before he’s considered a grown man by the no-doubt-venerable Mr. Dobbins?

More generally: if Dobbins’ judgement was poor at age 38, why is it likely that it improved as his youthful vigor atrophied? It seems to me that most of us are roughly as intelligent by young adulthood as we will ever be, and that what age brings is not better judgement but, *with effort*, more patience and broader sympathy. (Without effort, it seems, age merely brings self-congratulatory sourness and intellectual shrinkage.)

"... has had a very poor grasp of the inextricable link between economic freedom and political freedom."

For those who can’t bother to click their Web browsers: DeLong not only knows full well about the trade-off between economic and political freedom, he spends a large portion of his writings on economics discussing the difficulties of constructing a society that will be politically viable in the short run yet economically dynamic in the long run.

"They also have a stunningly naive, sunny view of human nature, assuming that all the equally fervored SDs like themselves, once they obtain access to the levers of power, will constantly work for the common good without thought of personal gain. Unfortunately, basic human psychology gives the lie to this proposition."

Again, Dobbins is so totally entranced with battling strawmen that he apparently doesn’t realize that his gibes aren’t merely rude but grotesquely easy to factually refute by the counterexample of the very person he’s deriding.

Yours for quality control on the Web,

A few points of clarification ---

First of all, Professor DeLong didn’t identify himself as such; I certainly would’ve used his title had I known who he was.

And I wouldn’tve suggested he read von Hayek, I’d instead have asked him -why-, if he’s studied the Austrian school seriously, he’s still a Social Democrat?

Thirdly, I stand by my assertion that to adopt Social Democracy as one’s political credo, one must be either naive or a cynical power-grabber. I chose the more generous interpretation.

Fourthly, as I read over Professor DeLong’s on-line resume in detail, he strikes me as being one of those bureaucrats who means well, but whose sense of duty lies in meddling in people’s lives because he knows better than they how their money should be spent. Look at the so-called ‘achievements’ he cites from his time with the Clinton Administration:

‘Cut the federal deficit by more than half.’ - an outright falsehood, based upon the sort of two-bit accounting tricks and misleading language which have persuaded a majority of Americans that there is such a thing as a "Social Security Trust Fund’. Arrant nonsense, of course.

‘Expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit.’ - a program which is probably the single most abused loophole in the tax code, as Professor DeLong should know. It’s a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle, and ought to be repealed.

‘Contained the winter 1994-1995 Mexican peso crisis.’ This was a stop-gap measure which has done nothing to resolve the fundamental problems of Mexico; namely, unbelieveable corruption &; cronyism, poor monetary policy, and the hugely distorting effects of public-sector meddling in the Mexican economy.

‘Made the federal income tax more progressive.’ Class politics at its finest. Taxation as a means of social engineering, rather than revenue generation - more bureaucratic meddling.

‘Signed the Family and Medical Leave Act.’ Which has put a huge burden on private businesses, and is yet another example of how bureaucrats think they know best to run your business for you.

‘Established a voluntary national service program.’ Which is a joke, and a resevoir of patronage for various leftish supporters of the President. Staffed with lots of ACTION types and other Leftish undesirables.

‘Increased Head Start funding by 20 percent.’ An expensive program with no provable benefit whatsoever - another political sacred cow which mustn’t be criticized because it’s "for the children".

‘Accelerated compliance with Montreal Protocols on global warming.’ Social engineering masquerading as science. We have no idea if global warming is occurring - 25 years ago, the same people were on about global -cooling-. See _Falling Angels_ by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, &; Steven Barnes for a good general synopsis of the argument for the nonspecialist.

So Professor DeLong seems to be someone who has wreaked considerable

havoc in his career, and who is now in a position to commit further

mischief by warping the minds of young, impressionable college

students. You know, I think that I shall

Also, I’d like to point out that I am no libertarian, though I used to be one of those, too - I don’t think all taxation is slavery, only about 50% of it.

And as far as my patronizing Professor DeLong, what’s wrong with that? After all, his stated policy aims and the so-called ‘achievements’ in public service of which he is so proud are the direct result of a patronizing attitude towards the citizenry, intellectual vanity at its worst - and he’s had real power to make his views law. Yes, I tend to be a bit sharp towards people who insist they know how to spend my money more wisely than do I myself, and who actively work to implement policies which limit freedom and empower bureaucracies at the expense of the citizenry.

I guess I’m just crazy like that.

Dear Mr. Pournelle:

You had despaired finding a "general ‘solution’ to the problems of coercion in the name of social cohesion vs. leaving people the fruits of their labors. After a lot of thought I have come to the conclusion that there must be mechanisms for requiring people not only to refrain from crime, but in fact to contribute something to the general good; but every such mechanism scares me because it is so easily subject to abuse..."

But you do know the solution, probably better than I do: people-power—but power to the people that is then exercised in a manner that makes the people free, rather than a manner that makes them Equals or that makes them Patrons and Clients.

As was said long ago:

"...Our system of government favors the many instead of the few. That is why it is called "people-power." Our laws afford equal justice to all. Advancement in public life follows from a reputation for capacity rather than social standing. Social class is not allowed to interfere with merit.

Nor does poverty bar the way: a man able to serve the state is not hobbled by obscurity.

"The freedom we enjoy in our government extends also to ordinary life. Far from exercising jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbors for doing what they like—or even to indulge in offensive and injurious looks which inflict no positive penalty. But this tolerance in our private life does not make us lawless citizens. Fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws—particularly those that protect the injured—whether they are on the statute book or belong to that code of unwritten laws that cannot be broken without disgrace...

"We trust less in system and policy than in the native spirit of our citizens. In education—where our rivals from their very cradles seek "manliness" by painful discipline—here at Athens we live as we please, and yet are just as ready as our antagonists to encounter every danger.... [w]ith habits not of labor but of ease, and with courage not artificial but natural... We have the double advantage of escaping hardships in anticipation of danger, and yet of facing hardships in the hour of need as fearlessly as those always suffer them.

"Nor are these the only points to admire in our city. We cultivate refinement without extravagance. We cultivate knowledge without effeminacy. We employ wealth for use, not for show. We place the real disgrace not in the fact of poverty but in the declining of the struggle against it.

"Our public men have their private affairs to attend to in addition to politics. Our ordinary citizens—occupied with the pursuits of industry—are still good judges of public matters. Unlike any other nation, we regard those who take no part in these public duties not as lacking ambition but as useless.... Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think debate an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.

"Thus in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons. The prize of courage goes most justly to those who know best both hardship and pleasure, and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger..."

Two quick points...

First, to assume—stronger than that, to *know* beyond a shadow of a doubt—that all those with whom one disagrees are either utter fools or complete knaves is almost always a mistake. There are utter fools and complete knaves in the world. But most of those with whom one disagrees are not—they see the world differently, and hold their views for what seem to them to be good reason.

To know that all with whom one disagrees are utter fools or complete knaves means that one has foreclosed the chance of learning anything: (a) they will soon stop talking (for they will not be learning anything from the exchange either), and (b) what they have to say will simply pass unhead.

Second, let me pick one point at random to answer...

The only response that I can think to make is "So what?"

Lending money to Mexico so that it would not default on its obligations—and send the country spiraling into the same chain of bankruptcies and shutdowns that we experienced in the Great Depression—did not make the lion lie down with the lamb, or allow us to beat all our spears into pruning hooks either.

What it did do was to keep the length of Mexico’s 1995 recession short, at one year. And it did allow those politicians in Mexico who want to deregulate and democratize to continue their work. Whether their reforms will succeed or not is anyone’s guess, but it is surely in their interest—and our interest—to give them the opportunity to try.

As the French sociologist Raymond Aron once wrote, in politics the choice is always between the preferable and the detestable. To reject a move toward the preferable—like containing the 1994-5 Mexican financial crisis—on the grounds that it doesn’t carry us immediately to Utopia is to doom us to something detestable.

And now I’m out of time...

"Now ‘in the long run’ this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again."

Jerry,

Here’s my two cents on the Big Government issue.

First of all, I want to comment on the issue of "each man is the best judge of his own interest". The problem, as I see it, is that while most people are very good at making decisions about their local interests, they are often very poor about making decisions that concern the collective group to which they belong. A classic example of this is the NIMBY ("Not in my backyard") syndrome. It benefits society to have some place to put criminals or mentally disturbed people, but in building a prison or a mental hospital, someone’s individual interest is going to have to suffer for the good of all the other individuals. When the needs of the collective and the needs of individuals come into conflict, you have a dilemma.

It also seems to me that an individual’s long-term interest is more closely aligned with the collective interest than an individual’s short-term interest. This is partly because of the "what goes around, comes around" principle - the idea that whatever you, as an individual, input to the collective will probably eventually impact your life in the future.

Unfortunately, it seems that humans aren’t very good at long-term projections either.

In my experience, the kinds of decisions which are produced by a group of people will depend strongly on how those people are organized. A committee which is organized based on consensus will produce different decisions than one which is based on majority rule. A bureaucracy will make different decisions, given the same inputs, as a legislature.

It seems to me, then, that as decision makers, the public, the bureaucrats, and the legislature, each have various blind spots, and moreso each has _different_ blind spots. The public, for the most part, has the blind spots that I mentioned in the first paragraph. The bureaucrat has the blind spots described in Mr. Dobbin’s posting. And so on.

My own personal "myth of legitimacy" is that each of these bodies, in intercourse with one another, will to a certain extent compensate for the blind spots of the others. One hopes that there won’t be any blind spots that are shared by all, but then there’s no way to tell that is there?

Now I want to bring up the specific issue of welfare.

It seems to me that there are a lot of broken individuals out there. By this I mean individuals who are incapable of competing or functioning in what we consider normal ways, i.e. getting a job, buying a house, owning a car, etc. This may be through lack of education, birth defects, sickness, malnutrition, drug addiction, old age, whatever. It seems to me that some of these problems could have been prevented, had they been diagnosed and treated early enough, and it would have been to society’s benefit to do so, even in purely economic terms (one more productive worker in the workplace).

Of course, there are also a lot of just plain "bums" or "slackers", but in my opinion this is an overstated problem. Yes, there’s a lot of bums in Berkeley and downtown SF. But most of the people I’ve known who’ve been "on welfare" only did it because they were in dire economic distress, and got off it as soon as they could. One close friend of mine had an unwanted pregnancy when she was younger, but did not wish to have an abortion; she now owns her own massage business and her intelligent, hard-working son just graduated from high school.

Putting aside the notion of bureaucratic inefficiency for a moment, I believe that there is a certain merit to "investing" in the well-being of the population. I’m especially in favor of investments that are targeted towards early diagnosis and treatment of conditions which debilitate an individual later in life, and cause him or her to become a drag on society.

It seems to me that in order to maintain a certain level of economic well-being for the country, there is a particular optimal spending level that is needed to be spent in the public interest, and this level is not zero. That is to say, the "harm" done to society by taxation must be balanced against the "harm" done to society by having broken people running around dying on the streets (some of them perhaps committing crimes as well), and that a middle ground should be found between these two extremes.

Of course, if one is truly rich, one can isolate one’s self from all of this. One can buy an estate in the country, drink only filtered water and breathe only filtered air, and live in an iron fortress, being careful to never let one’s children play outside for fear they will be kidnapped. One can in fact create the illusion that the world is a fine place, that poor people don’t exist, and that the rest of society’s problems are of no concern.

For myself, however, I’d never be happy in Heaven, knowing that others were burning in Hell.

--