Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Fundamentals of Government II
The laws of the Federal Government must be equally applicable to all citizens. Therefore they must be kept simple and only deal with those issues that are common to all citizens. However, State and local governments are of a different nature. Because they are smaller in scope, they have a greater homogeneity of population and environment. Therefore they can morally create laws and actions that are different in scope from the Federal government.
However, the same principle of equal opportunity and application of the law applies. The laws of a state must apply equally to all citizens, again a special group cannot be singled out. The same holds true for the laws of a community, township, or county. For example, it may be appropriate for a community to provide education for its citizens--as long as everyone pays the same for it, and all children are treated equally. However, this is a dangerous issue, because it is very easy to politicize education. That is the source of many of the evils in our education system today--it is politicized all the way to Washington, DC. More appropriate is police, perhaps fire fighting (this could be provided privately by insurance companies), and roads. In theory, one can easily justify local government providing some common roads. However, outside of the community it becomes more debatable whether a state government or private entity should provide the roads. Again this becomes politicized because the money austensibly collected for roads can be used elsewhere and often is.
Though my theories of government are not new or original, this helps me to organize them for further discussion in the future.
However, the same principle of equal opportunity and application of the law applies. The laws of a state must apply equally to all citizens, again a special group cannot be singled out. The same holds true for the laws of a community, township, or county. For example, it may be appropriate for a community to provide education for its citizens--as long as everyone pays the same for it, and all children are treated equally. However, this is a dangerous issue, because it is very easy to politicize education. That is the source of many of the evils in our education system today--it is politicized all the way to Washington, DC. More appropriate is police, perhaps fire fighting (this could be provided privately by insurance companies), and roads. In theory, one can easily justify local government providing some common roads. However, outside of the community it becomes more debatable whether a state government or private entity should provide the roads. Again this becomes politicized because the money austensibly collected for roads can be used elsewhere and often is.
Though my theories of government are not new or original, this helps me to organize them for further discussion in the future.
// posted by Bill @ 7:28 PM 
