What should a community/nation/state (government) provide for citizens?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

It is in everyone's interest for the forest to be healthy, but it's in each individual's interest to exploit it in their preferred way.

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"It's in each individual's interest for the forest to be healthy and used wisely."
Yep.

Those are not equivalent in the real world. Immediate individual interests beat out everyone's long-term interest frequently. The landslide is in the future, cash in hand is now.


Even if an individual does value the long-term well-being of them and their children over a quick buck, if they see their neighbors making quick bucks, and making the landslide inevitable anyway, they may find it rational to make their own quick bucks, in hopes of minimizing the pain. To actually prevent the landslide, an agreement has to be made across the mountain. That agreement and its enforcement mechanism is, writ large across the countless similar situations in the world, government.


But that's really just a restatement of the tragedy of the commons. My point is that it doesn't just apply to stuff that nobody owns.

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind" -Frederic Bastiat

It is indisputable that it is not safe to permit EVERYBODY to be free to do whatever they want. If the organizer sets up a dictatorship, or caste or feudal system, then they think themselves made of a finer clay. If they set up a democracy, they hope that people as a whole are of fine clay, and are able to use the tools that only government can provide to deal with the individuals who aren't, even if they are a member of the government itself.