First of all, thank you for the input! It is always nice to know how I can do things better.

My views come from many different places. I live in a very rural place, where your reputation may very well be your most valuable asset. People's actions have consequences beyond just the person helped/wronged. People pay attention and know who to trust and who not to. I will come back to this thought.

I have also worked for people who were just starting businesses and started my own business. I have seen first hand how much work it is to try to abide by, and fulfill all the government's rules and regulations. There was also the limiting factor of regulations. For example, I own a coffee shop. Many of my customers like my baking and would by fresh pies and baked goods, if I would offer them at my store. However, regulation says that I have to have a certified kitchen in order to sell baked goods. It would benefit my customers and myself, but the government says no. Put that thought on hold. We will return to it, also.

I serve on a local board here. Now, I have served on different boards and some meetings I just dreaded going to. People would fight tooth and nail for the way they wanted a vote to go and it could get downright ugly. Those boards were no fun to be on. However, the board I am on right now, decided that if we worked hard enough, we could take alright ideas and make them good enough we could all support them or we wouldn't do them. We don't accept anything less than a unanimous vote. That makes every vote count!

The thing that I find so interesting is that we do not fight. We spend no time worrying about who will win a vote. We just work on ideas and are creative. Rather than getting upset about ideas that we don't quite like, we point out what is desirable and what is not and make it into something we all love.

Taking that perspective of no idea is so great that it should pass without full support, I started looking at the fights that are put up for elections. I looked at the sheer ugliness of them, and I couldn't help but wonder if there was a better way.

Well, going back to the beginning, I started looking at all the government takes in the form of sales tax, income tax, social security, Medicare,...the list goes on and on. Then I tried to see how that benefited me and most of what I found were more regulations. It was like the government charged me to pay itself to also regulate me. However, people say that we need the government and it is there for our good.

The frustrating thing in politics, is that it is really hard to trace blame. Few are held accountable and when someone is held accountable one has to wonder if they were the scapegoat! Not like the reputation based system I grew up with.

Many people will point to public schools or roads, and give government credit for them. Well, the public schools, (in my opinion) do not accomplish education. So, that is nothing to be proud of. Home schooling or private schooling will get you a better education. As for roads, road construction crews can build roads. What private businesses cannot do, is forcefully take land that isn't theirs, and make a road there. I don't agree with eminent domain, so I guess I am fine with that inability.

At this point, I had a friend suggest that we don't need government at all. I disagreed, but the more I looked into it, the more the government looks like a racket and not something we needed at all.

Now, we have lots of people who rely on the government in one way or another, so we cannot just do away with it over night. So my vision would be to start building privatized organization to take over what government organizations do now.

One great example of this is private police type forces that have regained order where cops had given up. If I get a chance, I will link that article. Educating people to know that we can function without the burdensome government would be another step.

I'm sure if we all brainstorm a bit, we can come up with some great ideas that don't involve force.