Up until a couple of years ago, I followed a mostly Objectivist philosophy, derived from my reading of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as well as the Randian Fantasy series, A Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind. I thought it was a good philosophy to follow, as I was searching for something during my early 20s.
A balance needs to be maintained via government and private enterprise. Can't have too much of either. I always hear that government is us, but so is private enterprise. Private companies exist in order to supply a service/product to meet consumer demand. If you fall into the category of not needing that particular service/product, than you do not need to shed your dollars to purchase it. Instead, you can go to a different company that offers a service/product that is good for you. With government, via taxes, my paycheck gets extracted(I've never paid taxes in my life, btw) so government can spend on what it deems to be necessary, even if it is contradictory to my wishes and doesn't serve any of my needs or wants. Besides, I thought this nation was built to be somewhat contradicting to total "mob rule?"
Ron Paul wants to dump the FDA, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, Homeland Security, the CIA, the FAA, FEMA, and the IRS. All of these have shown to only compound problems, not solve them. Well, what has the FDA done but contradict what it was intended to do? Corruption, increased food poisoning incidents, and a recent rash of Ecoli among others. With the Department of Education and Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, public education has worsened. Why treat the problem with more and more bureaucracies? The old saying goes: "What happens when you stack a group of Geniuses together? You get a collective IQ of about 80."
