A lot of good comments here. I mainly agree with Art's original position, and yes, we ARE all part of a social contract...unless we decide to be thieves, lawbreakers, rapists, or whatever....in which case we have violated a part of the social contract which all of us take for granted most of the time.

Of the 5 main political parties in Canada, 4 of them offer people a tax cut every time they run for office. This is nothing more than cynical political opportunism, appealling to people's selfishness and short-sightedness.

A friend of mine is presently running for city Council in Orillia, Ontario. We're having municipal elections right now. (And a federal one too, which really adds to the confusion and hoopla).

He sarcastically remarked that a national party should launch a platform saying this: "WE PROMISE TO CUT ALL TAXES TO ABSOLUTE ZERO! NEVER AGAIN PAY A SINGLE CENT OF TAX TO THE GOVERNMENT! ZERO TAXES NOW!!!"

And then in very, very tiny print down below...*(of course you will not have any roads to drive on, any schools, any hospitals, any police, any civil defense, any 911 to call, any fire department, any national monetary system, any courts to regulate the laws and secure justice, any government to represent you in any way whatsoever, any national identity, any diplomats, any...got the picture? If you're rich you will hire a small private army from the desperate starving masses around you, and when you run short of vital necessities (or just get bored) you can loot, pillage and rape the general region in which you live...but watch out for your rich neighbour who may have a bigger army than you do.)

The Dark Ages, in other words.

There are a whole bunch of areas of human life that the private sector has neither the will, the morality, or the ability to deal with. Those are the areas that naturally fall under government jurisdiction.

Where private enterprise is tremendously valuable is in all the other areas...farming, small business, restaurants and other service industries, manufacturing, entertainment, and so on.

I believe the finest system possible at this juncture is one that combines an equal measure of socialism and goverment on various levels with an equal measure of capitalism.

Thank God that in Canada we have a government-funded national radio station, for example. It provides an alternative to commercial radio that is a breath of fresh air. This in no way has imperilled the healthy growth of privately owned commercial radio in Canada...there's just as much of it, and it's just as obnoxious and riddled with commercial advertising as it is in the USA. I would gladly pay MORE taxes to continue having the CBC, which has no ads and plays folk music, ethnic music, and all kinds of music you will virtually NEVER hear on commercial radio.

Thank God that we have a universal medical plan. What the hell is private enterprise doing playing games with people's lives by denying them medical care, because they're poor, and driving them into bankruptcy when they get sick? It's so corrupt what you have in the States in this respect that people from western Europe or Canada can hardly believe it!

If you combine equal measures of socialism, capitalism, and human rights with a democraticly elected system...you can hardly do better than that.

Small government, by the way, is more responsive than big government to a local problem, so I would encourage more funding to LOCAL governments very much. Save the BIG government for the areas that small government can't really handle too well...like a national currency, a justice system, and so on...

As for huge corporate capitalism...it ends up being just as oppressive and monolithic as Communism, just as centralized, and for even more ignoble motives. Your Communist bureaucrat is replaced by a group of CEO's, and like the Communist bureacrat they are in it strictly to feather their own nests.

Corporatism (which presently rules America) IS centralized Communism under another name, falsely posing as free enterprise, without benefit of a specific political party or philosophy...or indeed of any moral position whatsoever...all that matters to the corporation is money, money, money.

"Money doesn't talk, it swears" - Dylan