Seen in an AP story:
As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy. [...]
It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.
The National Guard’s C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They’ve yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.
With Ron Paul having garnered some measure of mainstream media attention, I’ve had some old discussions about libertarianism running through my head…in particular depictions of what an “ideal government” would look like.
I tend to fall somewhere in the libertarian range of the political spectrum due to my preference of seeing government interfere as little as possible in the “real lives” of individuals and their businesses. However, some extreme descriptions of “libertopia” - where government is as small as possible, and most things considered today to be governmental functions are privatized—smells dangerously close to anarchy when you start considering what exactly that means.
Such thoughts lead me to my belief that I don’t necessarily prefer small government. Instead, I prefer “invisible government”—that is, a government that either doesn’t impact my day-to-day life, or (for those functions best handled by government authority) it operates so smoothly and transparently that one doesn’t need to think about it.
Having tools that my tax dollars are helping to pay for sit unused due either to poor planning or due to excessive red tape (or at least red tape that can’t be waivered in a crisis) seems rather the opposite of governmental invisibility, doesn’t it?