Help Wanted: Government Actions Throughout History

Artful Dilettante ^ | March 15, 2018 | Artful Dilettante

[huckfillary]

Some scholar, whose name I cannot recall, did a seriously in-depth study to identify all of the government "success stories" throughout recorded history. He could not find a single, solitary example. Every action the government has taken throughout history has either resulted in a zero-sum outcome or an abject failure. An example of zero-sum outcomes would include income-redistribution schemes where you rob Peter to pay Paul. Abject failures would include Obamacare, the Iraq War, and public education.

If anyone can identify the author of this study or book, or provide additional information that could help me identify the study/book, please post it here or www.artfuldilettante.com

Thank you.

[huckfillary]

Thank you for any assistance you have to offer.

[WayneS]

United States - Interstate highway system.

That’s all I’ve got...

[marktwain]

I suggest you read “War Before Civilization”.

It shows that areas with government have much lower rates of violent death.

Even NAZI Germany and Soviet Russia under Stalin did not have the percentage of violent death that exists with most hunter-gatherer groups.

Tribal and lower level organizations tend to be in a constant state of war, blood feuds, and homicides.

[PeterPrinciple]

TVA, and the power dams built. But I attribute the successes more to individuals working within govt?

[huckfillary]

As I recall, this book was a microscopic study of all known government “programs” or actions throughout recorded history, including the Marshall Plan, social security, Roman bread and circuses, et al. I heard about it on a conservative talk-show like perhaps Andrew Wilkow or some Patriot Radio host.

[marktwain]

To be useful, they would have to study the effectiveness of a court system and the rule of law.

Those are the most effective government programs ever developed. They go back to the beginning of civilization.

[IndispensableDestiny]

WWII.

[yarddog]

Many here will disagree but I think Social Security was a good thing. It was started by Otto Von Bismarck and Winston Churchill saw it in Germany and thought it a good idea.

Now don’t get me wrong. I do not like our welfare system.

[thoughtomator]

I suppose landing men on the moon has to count if we’re being fair.

[wjcsux]

If you could put your SS money in a good investment account, you will retire a millionaire and be able to pass the remaining money to your heirs.

[wjcsux]

Social Security is an un-sustainable multi-generation Ponzi scheme run by the government.

[jdege]

We had courts before we had government. Just as a had law before we had government.

[FirstFlaBn]

Patents and copyrights protect intellectual property.

[TheNext]

That would be a great book if it exists.

Call your congressman about a book on government success.
He should fail and provide a book on government failure.

[Nifster]

I consider the defeat of the axis powers a great success

[marktwain]

We had courts before we had government. Just as a had law before we had government.

---

Perhaps we had best define terms, then. What do you define government as?

[Lurking Libertarian]

...that, and the pyramids, the Panama Canal...

[DoughtyOne]

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[Axenolith]

At the time, maybe, because people then were seriously uneducated and usually you just worked until you were worn out or broken and just disposed of for a new worker.

The pool for that quality of labor was immense and there was literally 0 or negative wage pressure as a result. It resulted, and probably couldn’t have ended up any other way, in the rise of unions and progressivism among other things.

Now that everybody excepting the care-nots can conceive of and act in the interest of a period in their later years of not working and also have at least the basic understanding of saving it’s far less necessary. Technological society should at some point cut the newest generations free of it and honor the obligations to the older.

[beejaa]

I’d add the Marshall Plan.