Quote:
Originally Posted by BobbyStrawberry
This is a totally fair question. History is indeed full of reasons to distrust government. In many ways, the post-New Deal America and the level of prosperity attained by the masses during that time was unparalleled in human history. The way I look at it, assuming one has a basic level of trust in say, elections, we the people have the ability to decide (with many caveats, of course) who is in charge of things. While all people are imperfect (and thus are the systems they devise and work within), I think America has put together and sustained something pretty remarkable, and I'd hate to see it all fall apart. History has shown that once people stop believing in government altogether, things tend not to go well.
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The number of things the government does where we trust them is way too large to really try to mention it all.
"We" trust the government to assure a more or less safe food supply. What's "safe" or "clean is debatable, but the odds of getting say some bad beef is much lower than it would be if it was unregulated.
"We" trust them to ensure our air is sort of clean. And compared to say 1970 its WAY better. One of the particulate regs in the 80's was fought by industry until they realized the equipment to comply made their stuff more efficient with some very interesting cost reductions.
"we" trust them to operate a fairly safe highway system
"we" trust them to ensure that airlines are safe.. (Baggage being lost and flights cancelled is much less regulated)
IS everything the government does a benefit to me? Of course not. Do they do some really bad things? Again, of course.
But overall, I'd trust them over PSA..
