4 ms·
Not at all. The people who work in some government jobs benefit me, while others harm me. Ironically, whenever anyone tries to defend government the first thi
by grandalf 15y ago
Not at all. The people who work in some government jobs benefit me, while others harm me.
Ironically, whenever anyone tries to defend government the first thing they mention is the roads, which are less than 1% of the budget and an even smaller percentage of personnel, and toward which the actual work is done by locally contracted private firms.
Sure, there are a lot of coordination problems that government tries (with varying degrees of success) to solve, but this doesn't put it beyond reproach. And it's certainly the case that even the US government has a fairly high degree of corruption, much of which diverts resources away from those in need toward those with political connections.
So in my view, governments derive legitimacy from their ability to solve coordination problems, adapt to changing circumstances, and stave off policies that incentivize corruption or put human rights at risk.
In the case of figurehead monarchies and the hereditary titles they grant, I think the best that could be said is that they offer nostalgia for a past era when such things mattered. In reality, vane humans strive to show status by meeting with royalty, since in spite of the monarchy's utter backwardness and absurdity, is still not something everyone gets to do, so the scarcity of the opportunity creates social value.
The reality of knighthoods past is that they were titles awarded to warlords in exchange for tributes (aka voluntary taxes) paid to a more powerful warlord (aka king) who granted privileges, land, etc., in exchange for those tributes.
This still happens today only w/o the pageantry: Imagine a US military truck with crates full of cash paying Afghan warlords for intel and mercenary troops. This is ugly business and there is no honor whatsoever in it.
- sliverstorm 15y agoYou may need to brush up on your use of "Ironically".
- Tycho 15y agoWhat? He used it correctly...
- sliverstorm 15y agothe use of words expressing something other than their literal intention Nope, doesn't qualify A statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of what is written literally Don't see how this works either. I'll skip over Socratic irony and Dramatic irony- hopefully it is obvious this is neither. I could be wrong, of course. The colloquial & popular use is so different from the actual meaning of the word, I am never quite sure I have the right of it.
- grandalf 15y agoSee explanation. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony
- vacri 15y agoNo he didn't. Simplified, his statement reads "Ironically, those who defend government start by listing a thing provided by government that is a small facet of what they do". There's no irony there, no juxtaposition, no opposite. He's trying to get across the gist of "why the hell is it always roads!?", but it's frustration, not irony.
- Tycho 15y agoIt is ironic that the chief reason trumpeted by proponents of government action turns out to be a relatively part of their operations. It does the opposite of support their intention and presents a juxtaposition of what they think is a really good argument and what it actually amounts to. It would be like if I claimed male authors were better than female authors, then cited George Eliot as my first example of a great male author. That would be ironic.
- grandalf 15y agoprecisely!
- vacri 15y agoYour analogy doesn't work - because George Elliot is a woman. George Elliot isn't "a small part of the whole" of male authors, she's an exact counterexample. Roads-by-government are "a small part of the whole" - they're not contradictory in any way to the idea that services are supplied by government. They're not a counterexample. It would only be ironic (and would also fit your example) if the roads in question were actually provided by private enterprise.
- Tycho 15y agoWell the roads are usually provided by private enterprise, though paid for by the state. But it is still ironic because the argument is not no government vs. big government, it's small government vs big government. Citing the roads is not a point in support of getting the government more involved in public life, because if maintaining the roads and other things like that were the only actions required by government, then the government would be miniscule. What would not be ironic would be something like 'ironically, the defenders of government always mention the military as their first example - I mean come on people, have some imagination at least!' That would just be frustration. Put simply, if there's a range of possible examples people can pick to support a given stance, and they always seem to pick one of the weakest/least-appropriate ones, then yeah, that's ironic. It's a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects.