The functions of a proper government

[PseuTonym]

A claim that was made in another thread:

“The only functions of a proper government are: the police, to protect us from criminals; the military, to protect us from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect our property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.”

link:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13000039&postcount=60

It is not difficult to think of other government offices or agencies besides those listed above, along with functions performed by those government offices or agencies.

For example: a patent and trademark office, to allow people (among other functions) to search to determine what specific inventions have already been patented, and to apply for patent protection for an invention that is thought, based on the search, to be new

For example: embassies and consulates. The following is not their primary function, but it is an important function: in an emergency, to issue limited validity passports.

One possible response regarding passports is to simply assert that courts should issue passports, or that the police should issue passports. However, that would require at least an amendment to the claim that I quoted at the beginning of this thread. For example, if the courts are to issue passports, then the function of courts is to settle disputes, protect property and contracts, and issue passports.

Another possible response is to deny that passports should exist. However, in the actual world it is not possible to travel without passports. Thus, the question arises: is the claim about the functions of a proper government about designing one good government for one country in the actual world, or is it about fantasizing about redesigning all governments simultaneously?

I will now repeat a couple of things that I wrote elsewhere, because they seem to belong in this thread:

People who propose deregulation do not need to start from scratch. They have the luxury of experimenting with a system that they did not create. It might be actually impossible for a functioning society to come into existence under the framework of law and government that they propose.

The problem of government is not just the problem of what is the ideal system of laws, but also the problem of how to get from here to there. Otherwise, you could claim to be very interested in languages and in practice confine your attention to only one language: Esperanto.

It would be helpful to have other examples of functions of government that seem to be, based on first impressions, potentially proper or legitimate, and that go beyond the courts, the police, and the military. I provided only two examples, and I would be very surprised if those were the only two. This thread could be educational on the subject of government, and I do not imagine that I will be the teacher educating others. Instead, others will educate me.

 

[Giggly_Giraffe]

Major functions of modern government include (1) foreign diplomacy, (2) military defense, (3) maintenance of domestic order, (4) administration of justice, (5) protection of civil liberties, (6) provision for and regulation of the conduct of periodic elections, (7) provision for public goods and services, (8) promotion of economic growth and development, (9) operation of social- insurance programs to prevent future poverty, and (10) operation of social-welfare programs to alleviate existing poverty.\QUOTE]Government, Major Functions, PS201H-1B2

Economics (money supply, currency, valuation)
Commerce (roads, air control, water control, space travel, ect)

 

[unstoppable_II]

Economics (money supply, currency, valuation)
…

The people decide what money is worth. Example: the Susan B. Anthony dollar was removed from circulation because people refused to accept it. The government can put “One Dollar” on them a million times, but that doesn’t make them worth a dollar.

 

[Giggly_Giraffe]

The people decide what money is worth. Example: the Susan B. Anthony dollar was removed from circulation because people refused to accept it. The government can put “One Dollar” on them a million times, but that doesn’t make them worth a dollar.

The government decides how many T-Bills to buy and sell causing tight money or loose money (m3). The government sets interest rates (m2). Yes, printing money will lead to inflation (m1)(Susan Anthony coin)

Idk how, but China is accused of manipulating the vLue of their currency to be lower than the. USa’s in order to have an export surplus to all nations.

 

[Andre1000]

All this points listed above are just details that distract from the point. A proper government is a government people like.

Also I reject any government system that supports copyright or market economy, this is just plain abuse.

 

[Illmatic15]

All government activity must be within the limits of subsidiarity. That being said, the federal government should not be intervening in a neighborhood issue. Also, government should not take it upon themselves to perform a function when it can be done efficiently by private, voluntary means. This is basic Catholic social teaching. Subsidiarity calls for the decentralization of political and economic power, and Catholicism teaches that the state is to be the servant of man (primacy of the person) and that it must help the human person in times of need, rather than making him/her dependent on it. It is these principles as to why I sympathize with libertarians (and even sometimes consider myself one), even though I believe the state has the right, in principle, to intervene in the economy when the common good calls for it. You are right that the government has roles beyond what that one poster said, but the government must also only act when it needs to, and a higher authority must only help in times of need, rather than taking over it’s functions. For example, laissez faire, in PRINCIPLE, would go against Catholic teaching, but we should try to be as laissez faire as possible in PRACTICE, that is we must attempt to use private, voluntary means to solve issues before we hand that power over to the government.

This emphasis on decentralization has inspired Catholics such as Peter Maurin and Servant of God Dorothy Day (and the Catholic Worker Movement) to be anarchists. Anarchism aren’t against government, but rather the modern bureaucratic state, which is something opposed to Catholic teaching. Maurin and Day had views of decentralized government, and so did other great Catholic social activists, such as G. K. Chesterton, Hilarie Belloc, and Vincent McNabb. Peter Maurin’s anarchism was based off personalism, a philosophy that also influenced Pope Saint John Paul II.
If you want more information on the Catholic Church’s social teaching, check out John Paul II’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It’s very long but it comprehensively outlines Catholic social teaching and I think you could find what you need to know from it by reading through certain sections.
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
Peace

 

[Tarquin]

“The only functions of a proper government are: the police, to protect us from criminals; the military, to protect us from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect our property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.”
. . .
It is not difficult to think of other government offices or agencies besides those listed above, along with functions performed by those government offices or agencies.

For example: a patent and trademark office, to allow people (among other functions) to search to determine what specific inventions have already been patented, and to apply for patent protection for an invention that is thought, based on the search, to be new

I’m not sure what the concept of police was, in the aforementioned thread. Local police handle local issues. But the U.S. government has, in a sense, a greater “police” force – the Executive – to enforce laws. Courts function in the framework of established law. It is the Legislature that makes laws, presumably to do the protecting of our property and contracts. The Legislature legislates; the Executive executes; the Judiciary adjudicates. What they do not cover on the national level, States manage on the state level.

The Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the Department of Commerce. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution is an enumerated power of Congress: Congress has the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Citizens are thereby protected in their property (inventions and creations), contracts, and commerce (interstate use of patents). The government does not need to have original responsibility to perform searches. The applicant for a patent could be required to do the search. Because there are patents, there are patent libraries. One can now search for patents online. The patent office can do the very minimum: keep records of patents issued.

For example: embassies and consulates. The following is not their primary function, but it is an important function: in an emergency, to issue limited validity passports.

It took a while to track down the authority for issuing “emergency” passports. There may be better citations, but the one I found that applies is 22 U.S. Code § 2714(d), which states that the Secretary of State may issue a (regular?) passport “in emergency circumstances or for humanitarian reasons.” The Executive Branch is responsible for negotiating international treaties. The State Department (of the Executive Branch) issues passports for international travel. Embassies are extensions of the State Department. Embassies, under the State Department, under the Executive Branch, are proper agents for issuing passports.

Thus, the question arises: is the claim about the functions of a proper government about designing one good government for one country in the actual world, or is it about fantasizing about redesigning all governments simultaneously?

That would depend on the author. I did not read the original source from which the quote was taken. Setting aside the author’s original intention, in my mind it is possible to describe a hypothetically good government and it is possible to establish a good government.

“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

Besides the three branches the world has inherited from the 18th century, Norway has a fourth – the Ombudsman. That might be a productive safeguard for a government – I mean for the people who are living under a government.

 

[PseuTonym]

A completely different approach to this thread is to begin with an imaginary scenario that could be based on real events in real places and see what happens.

Let us say that a child is not just mauled but killed by some kind of animal such as a wolf, bear, or dog. The child’s body is discovered.

Now, the key words that come to mind are: animal control and coroner. However, what is animal control, and what is a coroner? We are imagining an institutional framework that includes police, courts, and the military, and no other governmental institutions.

The police protect citizens from crime, assuming that there is such a thing as citizenship. Actually, one would expect police in the USA to protect the CEO of a corporation that has branch offices in the USA, even if the CEO happens to not be a citizen of the USA, and happens to be physically present in the USA for some short-term business purpose. However, why do I say “short-term”?

I am familiar with the notion that a government controls points of entry, such as borders and airports, that one enters the USA for some reason and some specified length of time, that a random tourist is not permitted to compete on the labor market or stay in the USA indefinitely without authorization. However, the institutional framework that we are discussing says nothing about a government controlling points of entry, limiting the length of stay in the USA, or distinguishing between those who are born in the USA and those who are immigrants. That framework gives the government no authority to assign a special status to people who are born in the USA, or for the government to provide an official process for somebody to become a legal immigrant.

Let us return to the scenario. A child’s mauled body has been discovered, the child seems to have been killed by an animal such as a dog, wolf, or bear, and the people in that neighborhood are to be protected, even those in the neighborhood who might be visiting CEOs and not US citizens.

Well, the police protect people from crime, and it remains unknown whether or not a crime has been committed. Animals do not commit crimes any more than germs of a contagious disease commit crimes. It is possible that the animal is owned by some person or organization, and that the person or organization has been criminally negligent. However, if the escape of the animal was unforeseeable, then it is possible that a child was killed by the animal, but no crime was committed.

Without more information, we cannot determine whether or not a crime was committed. For example, if the neighborhood is a subdivision that was built within the past ten years, then it is possible that civilization is encroaching upon territory where wild animals have lived for a long time, and that a wild animal (such as a wolf or bear) killed the child. In that case, no crime was committed, and the police have no responsibility for dealing with the matter. Perhaps a for-profit company with expertise in dealing with dangerous animals could be contacted by a wealthy “good Samaritan” who has heard about the unfortunate situation.

Should the next of kin of the child be contacted? Does somebody own the body of the child? These are strange legal concepts that seem to have no application here. What is next of kin? The child’s body was the child’s property, but the child is now dead. The concept of next of kin seems to be that the government has records of people, including their names and relationships. Would it? Would it be the police, the courts, or the military that creates and maintains such records?

 

[Tarquin]

I have a little confusion over types of government, or levels of government and governmental jurisdictions that you are addressing. Not all jurisdictions even within a single nation such as the U.S. have the same requirements for coroners, some jurisdictions requiring the coroner be a physician, others that he be a forensic pathologist; there are other large, significant differences between jurisdictions. A coroner’s qualifications and duties are set by the local laws of a given jurisdiction.

A similar problem exists for “animal control.” The qualifications and duties of an animal control officer differ from one jurisdiction to the next.

Your original question seemed to be about the functions of a government beyond the police, military and courts, whose functions you seemed to accept as protecting our lives, property, and contracts from criminals, foreign invaders, and disputes.

My former post intended to express my view that the common modern western breakdown of government (national and state) into Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, is sufficient to handle all functions of government, including protecting our lives, property, and contracts from criminals, foreign invaders, and disputes, as well as managing patents and passports, albeit in terms of Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary rather than police, military and courts (an insufficient trio). We can imagine functions that might be better managed in yet other branches, but establishing other branches would be a matter of personal preference rather than of necessity or definition.

You gave as examples of governmental functions that exist outside the police, military and courts, patent searches and emergency passports obtained at embassies. I explained that all passports are the responsibility of the Executive Branch – which is the “police branch”, and that patents and trademarks, including searches into them, fall under the purview of Congress, as a type of “court branch”.

Now you are describing a case of a dead child with involvement by coroner, animal control or both. Perhaps the thing I failed to note earlier was the following condition:

“We are imagining an institutional framework that includes police, courts, and the military, and no other governmental institutions.”

If all that exists in the way of government institutions are police, courts, and the military, and no other governmental institutions, I suspect that nation will have a very short life. But then you bring up coroner and animal control, without explaining how or where they fit in among police, courts, and the military. If there are only police, courts and military, then coroner and animal control must each fall into one of those three categories, or they do not exist. If they do exist, then the institutional framework you are imagining does include “other governmental institutions.”

In such a Spartan system, does it matter who does what? I think perhaps not. If it were my child that died under such a desolate, barren government, I have thought about this and am pretty certain that whether it were the police, the courts, or the military that deduced the cause of death and addressed any criminalities associated with that child’s death, it would not matter to me at all. It would matter to me as little as it would matter to me now in the real world, whether it were a coroner, a physician, a forensic pathologist, a justice of the peace, or even animal control, who signed my child’s death certificate.

 

[PseuTonym]

My former post intended to express my view that the common modern western breakdown of government (national and state) into Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, is sufficient to handle all functions of government, including protecting our lives, property, and contracts from criminals, foreign invaders, and disputes, as well as managing patents and passports, albeit in terms of Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary rather than police, military and courts (an insufficient trio).

I suspect that you are correct: police, military, and courts are an insufficient trio. However, it is not my claim that they are sufficient. Somebody else made the claim, and I have been attempting to test the merits of the claim.

But then you bring up coroner and animal control, without explaining how or where they fit in among police, courts, and the military. If there are only police, courts and military, then coroner and animal control must each fall into one of those three categories, or they do not exist.

I agree with you. However, because the claim that the trio is sufficient is not my claim, I have no way of knowing whether the response will be to deny that a given item (coroner or animal control) can be part of a proper government, or to squeeze the item into one of the three categories (police, courts, or military). Perhaps somebody will invent some entirely different way to handle the problem, with no need for either a coroner or animal control.

However, I have observed that ideologues in general (and not merely those who insist that a proper government is restricted to police, courts, and the military) focus on very specific things that they want to eliminate, and they actually do not have very many ideas, and they want everybody to accept all of the status quo except for those parts of the status quo that they explicitly oppose. Although they cherish their status as people outside mainstream thinking, they are hardliners when it comes to those parts of mainstream thinking that they themselves never questioned, even when those parts of mainstream thinking are not actually consistent with their own stated principles.

If it were my child that died under such a desolate, barren government, I have thought about this and am pretty certain that whether it were the police, the courts, or the military that deduced the cause of death and addressed any criminalities associated with that child’s death, it would not matter to me at all. It would matter to me as little as it would matter to me now in the real world, whether it were a coroner, a physician, a forensic pathologist, a justice of the peace, or even animal control, who signed my child’s death certificate.

You are making my point for me. In fact, you are making the point in stronger terms than I would be comfortable making it, because I am simply identifying potential flaws in a particular ideology, and not myself trying to make any claim that stands alone.

If you want a debate, then you should pick up where I left off around posts 69 and 70 of the thread “A question for Catholic libertarians”
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=960596

In fact, I would appreciate it if you would start by reading post 69 and trace back the discussion by clicking on the links to what is quoted. It is easier to trace the discussion backwards than to go forwards because you don’t need to wade through the other stuff in the thread. It is difficult for me to see any way to respond to post 70. Perhaps you will find a way.