On: Mission Creep: When Everything Is Terrorism

[jbooth]

The most minimal government possible is reduced to just the scary parts. That's the thing. A smaller government is no less scary in a police/military sense, unless you actually make the military and police smaller.

The irony is that everyone who goes on about a marginal tax increase, social security or some land-use regulations being tyranny, all of those same exact people are the biggest cheerleaders for a less restrained military.

[guard-of-terra → jbooth]

You can downsize military as well. It's easier with smaller government because there is one person responsible, if they say we downsize military, we downsize it.

Compare it with having a dozen of committees with everyone in it being mediocre and fearing change, fearing initiative, fearing that something will happen after the downsize.

Committees are good at reacting (one loud incident -> wham you've got new regulations) and bad at acting (runaway project will run forever with nobody having balls to shut it down).

[jbooth → guard-of-terra]

Woah, woah, so by smaller government, you mean dictatorship? How is that less threatening?

Committees are what happens when you have a legislature.

[guard-of-terra → jbooth]

It doesn't have to be a dictatorship. The more direct or trusted your democracy is, the less layers you need.

You don't need committees to make decisions, you may use them to approve people who then make decisions. That's how presidents work.