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To: billbears; kjvail; sheltonmac
Democratic government inherently has a short term time preference and will inevitably lead to socialism, whether the country in question wants to call it socialism or not. Democracy presents the worst combination because it is a territorial monopolist while being publicly owned. The temporary caretakers of government have no incentive to consider the long term ramifications of their policies. Warfare tends to be worse when fought by democracies - they are ideological and lead to total warfare in which innocent populations are considered legitimate targets.

Monarchy, while still a monopolistic system, is better in that it has an inherent long term time preference because it is privately owned. Taxes tend to be lower. Wars tend to be more constrained because they are essentially disputes of property ownership.

The ideal system would be that of non-monopolistic privately owned protective services competing with each other for citizen-subscribers. How a society gets to that point I do not know. But perhaps that will be the next phase of the evolution of Western civilization.

19 posted on 05/09/2005 9:28:21 AM PDT by ValenB4 (Viva il Papa, Benedict XVI)
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To: ValenB4
Wow! Disagree, agree, disagree, agree sentence by sentence, round and round, until I'm dizzy. For example:

Democratic government inherently has a short term time preference and will inevitably lead to socialism...

I disagree. Such generality is hardly supportable. It might be worth noting that the monarchies of Europe have kept pace with democrats in embracing socialism.

Democracy presents the worst combination because it is a territorial monopolist while being publicly owned.

I agree that it "presents the worst combination." Setting aside exactly what that combination is, I disagree that it is because it is both a territorial monopolist and publicly owned. I agree however that "temporary caretakers of government have no incentive to consider the long term ramifications of their policies." But disagree that "warfare tends to be worse when fought by democracies."

With a few variations, I find myself switching back and forth throughout your entire posted reply, until the last paragraph. There you say:

The ideal system would be that of non-monopolistic privately owned protective services competing with each other for citizen-subscribers. How a society gets to that point I do not know. But perhaps that will be the next phase of the evolution of Western civilization.

On this we are in complete agreement. This was one of many considerations under serious consideration with in the Libertarian Party when it still had education as one of its primary purposes. That of course ended when the out of touch with reality dreamers took over in 1984. They moved the LP away from education to focus on their silly notion of winning elections and focusing on recruiting rightwing conservatives to the Party. Today, the LP is fast becoming as much a part of the problem as are the Republican and Democratic Parties. Though not quite yet.

21 posted on 05/09/2005 10:31:03 AM PDT by jackbob
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