If you are a politician you have not only to tell the truth, but also you must have a good and realistic plan to make things better.
I like Ron Paul for his manner of life and he seems to be very sympathetic, but his ideas about economy and government are disastrous and that is obvious enough to withhold people to vote for him. He should have been a writer to work out his romantic fantasies in fiction stories and than he should soon recover that public life according to Ron Paul brings more than half of the population in the Teutonic Limbo. The most cruel idea is losing regular education. He does not know what that means. Think about it. Quote:
Paul has stated: "I agree on getting rid of the IRS, but I want to replace it with nothing, not another tax. But let's not forget the inflation tax." In other statements, he has permitted consideration of a national sales tax as a compromise if the tax need cannot be reduced enough. He has advocated that the reduction of government will make an income tax unnecessary. Paul would substantially reduce the government's role in individual lives and in the functions of foreign and domestic states; he says Republicans have lost their commitment to limited government and have become the party of big government. He would eliminate many federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, calling them "unnecessary bureaucracies".
Paul would severely reduce the role of the CIA; reducing its functions to intelligence-gathering. He would eliminate operations like overthrowing foreign governments and assassinations. He says this activity is kept secret even from Congress and "leads to trouble." He also commented, "We have every right in the world to know something about intelligence gathering, but we have to have intelligent people interpreting this information."
End quote
All right, at last he writes some fine words about the CIA, showing he is very human. I don’t want to demonize the man as others were calling him a racist, he is not. With the best intentions he is terrible naïve and, of course, hyper-conservative.
About taxes I can say, that it does not matter how high taxes are if you can see by control or transparency that the benefits come back to the people and that the government is effective, affective en efficient and the rules don't restrict private life.
The business of collective facilities is best managed by a democratic government structure to supply
justice and order,
clean water,
domestic and industrial energy,
safety and infrastructure,
education,
health care,
basic science and scientific development,
cultural maintenance and development and also
pensions and assurances.
That's a lot less and a lot more than by now and by improving the government's efficiency at all levels you don't need more people to manage all the tasks in the row above because efficiency is the second weakest point in the apparatus of government. The first weakest point (or in worst case the defensive shield) is the non-transparency. You pay taxes and you don't know exactly where the money flows, how and to who. The answer is the internet but even the use of broadband transmissions is behind in the USA.
We in Europe have the same problems after two decades when we followed the USA until the beginning of the new century. Large collective facilities became privatized in the expectation that the profits would become cheap when the corporate businesses are in charge. That is the logic of the free market, but it doesn't work. Look at the railway traffic to see how the concurrence on the free market works:
Business one owns the rails
Business two/a/b owns the trains used countrywide
Business three/a/b/c owns the trains used local
Business four/a/b/c owns the trains used in subways
Business five does maintenance on trains
Business six/a/b/c/d supplies electric energy
Business seven manages the passengers schedules
Business eight manages the freight schedules
The passengers union ROVER became the largest of all unions. Safety, personal and technical, is in sharp decline and does not meet the European rules. Prices are fast inclining for years, two times doubled in 12 years, but wages of engineers are dropped down, fare dodging and related violence is exploded resulting in fewer personnel in control on the trains (typical kind of Ron Paul idea).
You understand that it drove me and a large amount of fellow train travellers back to the overcrowded road traffic.
All this trouble is called freedom by Ron Paul.
In Belgium there are some successful experiments with free public transport. It works and is also safer by social control, but you need taxes and public management to finance and regulate the system and in the end it is cheaper too voluntarily freeing the traffic lanes from much private transport.
Yes, it is big government and conservatives cry that such is very, very, very bad, near criminal. But reality shows convincing the opposite.
If the public wants freedom, let the public rule and the government has to serve the public.
Look what the corporate society has done to you!
The concept of Ron Paul is to minimize ruling and control, partly because he doesn't trust the servants of the corporate businesses who are their hired core of the government. We all understand that.
The solution is not to crack the government but to strengthen and clean the government, dropping out that servants of corporate business and defending the public interests. Taking back the privileges of corporate businesses is enough to crack them and the government can buy them out and nationalize the tasks of public interests and cut down the multi-million dollar wages of no-care but dividend managers. What is a sovereign nation while half of the country is owned by Arab princes and other foreign multi-billionaires like the family Bin Laden to decide for instance what you will eat today and tomorrow?
One of the better ideas of libertarians is that the economy has to be consumer-driven instead of supply-driven. The public has to get what they ask, buying a product that meets their needs. But the libertarian Ron Paul does not meet that idea in his concept.
I am not against small scale thinking. As an ocean sailor I bake every day's bread myself and I eat a lot of fish, which keeps me very healthy and with my length of 183 cm on a weight of 75 kg. Out on the sea I purify seawater and most of the energy I need comes from the sun/daylight. I need to take some diesel oil about enough for a daily ride of 30 miles, 0.5 kg flour a day and dry-frozen vegetables with me, while curious fresh fishes form a queue in the stern wave. That’s all to survive comfortable without seeing any coast for months. I don't ask you to adopt my ascetic way of life, but I give it as an example how less your needs can be without any suffering. So, you have a lot of freedom in your choices, when all the sham-needs are removed from the market and it will be amazing how the costs of health-care will drop.
By now you are almost liable to punishment if you withhold your kids from obesity and violent computer-games and that makes me thinking there is something rotten in the whole western world, also in Europe.
Psychologists blame this to overacted individualism. Societies seem to have lost the feeling for collectivity. How come?
When our world is ruled by the corporate society, the anonymous rulers, living in multi-million estates paid by tax cuts and the profits of decisive power, you are left behind by the governments, who serve those bosses. When the government shows no responsibility as parents of the country's household, then you get what your choice has been on the ballot, because democracy is a self-help organisation and as Michelle Obama stated: you have to take your own seat at the table of democracy.
Crack down the rulings, like Ron Paul wants to do? That's something else. Living alone in a toilet is no democracy, left alone in a toilet is the Pauline democracy. That left is too far left.
The difference with a conservative libertarian for a progressive liberal is the solidarity of the community and common responsibility and the chosen transparent government has to go ahead as an enlightened example, like parents in a national's household.
Therefore you need a capable community builder as your next President of the United States of America.
