Regardless of your geographic location, religion, heritage, party affiliation, or your firmness on historical texts; what is it that you believe government’s role to be - or should be?
If you’d like to elaborate, what is it you think your local or national government gets right and gets wrong?
I pose the question because I believe this fundamental belief is through which we observe and react to politics. There are things we want or don’t want government to do but often legislation or special interests or geographic or political threats get in the way. Our reactions to politics are often, but not wrongly, short-sighted and emotional without context or wisdom. I don’t see much dialog around this topic and I wonder if people subscribe to political parties without really considering if the party aligns with what they genuinely believe government’s responsibility is or should be.
You might as well ask me what I believe the role of lizard or a bird to be. The measures of its success is how long it lives and how well it did at copying its uniqueness. The state doesn’t exist for humans, it exists because we are capable of getting that particular meme-infection.
This isn’t a value judgement. I could argue all the points of why having a government is better for us vs not having one but I won’t bother because even if I am right it is a post hoc justification that would apply to modern governments not what we have typically had in history.
Now a very good strategy for a state to survive is to make its territory such a nice place it has productive humans and is able to attract more. Given that the pragmatic solution is the highly democratic welfare state.