I like the corollary list, let's look at it a little further.
# Governments with $3 trillion in spending are too unwieldy to manage. The bigger an organization gets, the more dysfunctional it becomes.
I absolutely agree with the concept. The only government I know of that spends that much money in a year is the federal government of the United States. The same is true of private sector corporate bureaucracies. In both cases there are mechanisms that should allow those problems to be remedied. In the private sector there are free markets and in the public sector there are free elections.
The problem is that when you have a system that enforces privilege over individual rights, an oligarchy gets established. Those at the top of the most privileged corporations and those at the top of government become indistinguishable. This can be seen quite clearly in the United States with a top executive at BP becoming a high official in MMS the year before the accident, and the revolving door between executives of Goldman Sachs and the officials in the Treasury Department etc. etc.
The result is that both free markets and free elections are distorted to the point of being ineffective. The LP should be pushing for both free market and free elections.
# When you allow politicians their “dollars for votes” method of running government, then counterproductive programs are seen as necessary for getting re-elected. Constitutional limits are discarded as old school.
This is true for both votes for being elected to office and votes cast for specific pieces of legislation. The more you keep decision-making local, the less likely this will be a significant problem. People know when favoritism is being shown in their community. This is a good argument for decentralized government and against bills like HB 2431, which would eliminate all local government in Pennsylvania except for counties.
# If politicians and bureaucrats were personally liable for the damage done by their actions taken not expressly defined by the Constitution, would we be in the mess we are today? Probably not. (Maybe a different, smaller mess.) Sovereign immunity requires sovereign responsibility, but in lieu of that it requires a limited sovereign scope of powers.
Again I fully agree. For the public-sector government side that limitation should be in the constitution, and for the private-sector corporate side, that limitation should be in the corporate charter, which should also require re-evaluation and renewal periodically.
The US federal constitution is not very clearly defined, nor is it very limiting. I used to think Alexander Hamilton could not have imagined what his vision would become once corporations became considered persons, essentially immortal beings, that can significantly influence government. I now think he may have had a good idea what he was creating.
# No downside for an incompetent risk taking leader. (This should probably be moved to the top of the list!)
As we mentioned, there should be down sides, but the mechanisms to bring about those down sides have been jammed.
# The response from administrations and Congresses to their contributions to any disaster will be more centralized power, fewer individual rights and more regulations on everyone and everything else.
And the response from corporate executives will likely be the same, except the more centralized control will lead to more privilege and less competition through more regulations, and to more governmental subsidies and incentives to develop this resource, which is in the 'national interest'. The effect of that renewed relationship will be the further erosion of individual rights, to be sure.
This is why I think it is important to explore the nature of rights, the nature of property, and the relationship of corporate entities to government. Our problems are not simply government run amok. Nor are our problems simply corporations run amok, as many Greens believe. This is also why I think it is important to look at the Green Party, and others, to see if there are possibly ways we could cooperate to really address the issues we face as citizens and residents of the United States and Pennsylvania.
