re: I am going to look like a terrible person for saying this (regarding suffrage)

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There is a very common belief that the more suffrage and voting there is, the better everything is. I tend to disagree. Let me defend myself by saying that if law and government, in present times, were actually kept in their traditional confines of protecting natural rights to life, liberty, and property, then I would be fine with mass voting. The problem though, is that the primary function of government these days is monetary transfer from one group to another in the form of benefits (pork, programs, etc). Because this is the current, unfortunate primary function of the state, it means that the more people that vote, the more interests there are in the picture, trying to claw and fight for the scarce resources that the government transfers from peter to Paul.

Someone in a recent thread said that he thinks a balanced budget is impossible. And I agree, for the reason I listed above.

You can call me a terrible person all you want, but mass suffrage and voting, combined with a government whose primary function is not protection of rights, but transferring of wealth, gets you to Bastiat's spot on definition of government:

Government is that great fiction, where everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else

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