Greece has not dismantled every entitlement program and regulatory function of government. They have made major cutbacks. I'm on board with major cutbacks; even with abrupt ones when necessary.
I am not on board with dismantling the vast majority of state and federal government overnight. You think if you did that your biggest problem would be welfare rabble, easily dispersed by effective home defense? Departments of Natural Resources or similar and the National Park Service are regulatory agencies. You think none of those employees are armed? Ditto the DEA. Ditto the FDA.
You seriously don't see any difference between the LA race riots and the prospect of disenfranchising as once hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, many middle class, many armed, throughout the country?
The argument that this should be done anyway, regardless of consequences, to prevent other (less bad) things from happening is blatantly irrational. I am not going to burn my house down because it has some faulty wiring and HVAC problems that will inevitably continue to get worse until the house is uninhabitable. This kind of anarcho-libertarinism *is* progressive, in the same that Marxism is a particularly progressive form of socialism. The Russian Revolution could be described as an attempt to bring about a better future by throwing what one believes to be the inevitable end result of decades of progress into the present, regardless of human or infrastructure of economic cost. So could this proposed "solution."
And the Greeks riot, nonetheless. Too many riot cops, not enough interested & armed shop keepers, too great a sense of entitlement.
Feds get fired, their issue guns get taken back by the remaining federales. Unless they want to be go-to-fed-prison sorts of felons from the get-go for stealing federale firearms. That's one heckuva hole to start in. Those firearms go back to the gov't, even the ones with "da switch." Heck, even
with their issue weapons, I am likely better armed & trained in their use. Uncle Sam spent lots of money on me & my buddies(1). Some of my buddies went into some of those agencies. They were not impressed with the training or their fellow feds.
Also, they (or most/any others) are not likely to go all feral like you posit. The rioters in LA rioted becasue they were mostly scum and entitlement-dependent for generations. This country has been in the dumps, before, as in "Great Depression" dumps, with a very
small uptick in crime. My grandparents did not turn into Bonnie and Clyde when their bank deposits went "poof." The USA has a different culture than Greece or the other Euros. Over
there, they riot if transfer payments are curbed. Over
here, we develop the Tea Party.
Sorry, comparing stopping transfer payments butt-cold to marxism is laughable, for all reasonable definitions of marxism. Also, it is not even anarcho-libertarianism(2). It was the natural state of things in the USA up to FDR, and the USA was neither marxist nor anarcho-capitalist before then. Heck, even MB is wrong/melodramatic by calling it
radical. Our country managed 100+ years without entitlements without being radical. It can do so again.
Stopping transfer payments is not disenfranchisement, it is
disentitlement. BIG difference.
It would have been nice to wean dependent folks off the dole over time. It would have been do-able and would have been my preference. We may not have that luxury. If our bond ratings drop, the cost to finance the debt could double, triple, quadruple. A bond trader could better quantify the difference. That would mean,
assuming not another borrowed dollar is spent [hold your laughter], the percentage of federal revenues going to finance the debt goes from a current 5+% to 10-20-30% of federal revenues(3). At that point, the wheels come off the entitlement cart. Buh-
bye, half our Navy & armed forces. Buh-
bye transfer payments. The welfare state is a failure and unsustainable.
Maybe the GOP in Congress will steer us away from the cliff and gain us some time, God willing. It is something
I pray for.
Of course, the gov't could flood the market with dollars and devalue the dollar to keep the same dollar number of transfer payments, while the dollar value inflates to worthlessness. Those consequences are also grave.
But thank you for clarifying what a liberal friend of mine was saying when she called certain "conservative" groups fascists. I owe her an apology; I thought she was wrong.
You owe her a slap to the face, as she is a nitwit who doesn't know thing one about
American conservatism, if that is the sort of nonsense dribbling out of her mouth.
American conservatism has long had a strong classical liberal streak, tempered by a respect for culture and tradition. Euro conservatism is a different critter, but it is also incorrect to label it fascism.
(1) My neighbor behind me was a sniper in SE Asia, got tired of that & learned to fly helos, got shot down, spent time as a POW, and is "the world's best educated redneck" with the EE PhD he earned after coming home from VN. We have made plans for mutual assistance. I am not so full of myself to think I or my neighbor are particularly unique.
(2) That is the sort of analysis that defines interstate commerce as including intrastate commerce. It may pass muster in our courts, but reality has a harsher judge.
(3) Medicaid by itself (just the state-financed portion, to be precise), if unchecked, will grow to consume the entirety of the Texas state gov't's revenue by roughly 2025. This is not sustainable.
