James Leroy Wilson's one-man magazine.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Case For Unlimited Government

Found here. The cause here is global warming, and because the "worst that can happen" is catastrophic, we MUST TAKE ACTION NOW.

But you can plug any issue into the grid. For instance, what of the possibility of some jihadist getting hold of a weapon of mass destruction? Plug into the grid, and one concludes that we must GIVE UP OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES RIGHT NOW to prevent terrorism. If the leader of a Middle Eastern state might possibly hand over WMD's to terrorists, we must GO TO WAR RIGHT NOW.

Fear, of course, is behind every excuse for expanding government. But government coercion isn't the only way to solve a problem. Most of the time, it's not even the best way. A lot of the time, it's the worst way.

In any case, the best thing government can do to stop global warming, if it exists, is to tax bads instead of goods, and we should be doing that anyway.

2 comments:

  1. James, double check your link on "tax bads instead of goods."

    ReplyDelete