Quote from: Alonzo Ewing on November 09, 2014, 07:15:44 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on November 09, 2014, 04:02:03 PM

Sounds like you have been watching too much fox news and the like to be so detached from reality.

What is your definition of "government"?

I'm not asking for what governments should be or should do, but rather, what they are. If an alien was watching the Earth from above, how would he describe this thing humans call "government"?

This thread of the discussion began with Rptiela asserting that taxes needed to be abolished b/c there were NO societal benefits brought from such and inferring that some how voluntary institutions would take care of these issues, once government is removed.

In this regard, it is NOT my burden to establish what the parameters of this discussion are. I am merely asserting that such broad and sweeping statements in that direction are baloney and meaningless b/c they fail to involve any plan about how supposedly we would transition from the current state of affairs to some pie in the sky governmentless (taxless) society.

Generally speaking, though, government does seem to encompass a large variety of community institutions to potentially address public infrastructure and health and welfare issues that would be difficult to address individually.. and in any event government has become very complex b/c it functions on so many levels and services overlap and are intertwined in many aspects of society.... .