By David Brin
A Great SF writer

Donald Trump’s newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, posted “Do we really need government-funded research at all?” As the hate-all-government narrative grows histrionic, we may benefit from a perspective of 6000 years.

The hypnotic incantation that all-government-is-evil-all-the-time would have bemused and appalled our parents in the Greatest Generation – those who persevered to overcome the Depression and Hitler, then contained Stalinism, went to the moon, developed successful companies and built a mighty middle class, all with powerful unions and at high tax rates.

The mixed society that they built emphasized a wide stance, pragmatically stirring private enterprise with targeted collective actions, funded by a consensus negotiation process called politics. The resulting civilization has been more successful – by orders of magnitude – than any other. Than any combination of others.

So why do we hear an endlessly-repeated nostrum that this wide-stance, mixed approach is all wrong? That mantra is pushed so relentlessly by right-wing media — as well as some on the left — that it came as no surprise when a recent Pew Poll showed distrust of government among Americans at an all-time high.

This general loathing collapses when citizens are asked which specific parts of government they’d shut down. It turns out that most of them like specific things their taxes pay for.
In a sense, this isn’t new. For a century and a half, followers of Karl Marx demanded that we amputate society’s right arm of market-competitive enterprise and rely only on socialist guided-allocation for economic control.

Meanwhile, Ayn Rand’s ilk led a throng of those proclaiming we must lop off our left arm – forswearing any coordinated projects that look beyond the typical five year (nowadays more like one-year) commercial investment horizon.

Any sensible person would respond: “Hey I need both arms, so bugger off! Now let’s keep examining what each arm is good at, revising our knowledge of what each shouldn’t do.”

more at ….
evonomics.com/david-brin-ultimate-answer-government-useless/?um_source=twitter&utm_campaign=organic&fbclid=IwAR2IkERQuCsnn21nB-hDkC7UdbA_k7SDcGZD_dy3xIrp3NuafBuSlgbkYA0

Mulvaney's statement is consistent with the actions of this administration

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... -the-list/