Ask Lemmy

In theory, the will of the people should be the common good/best practices. The reality though is there are a certain portion of any given population with entirely selfish or hateful wishes. Those type of people tend to seek power in whatever fashion they can get and use those positions to amplify their voices trying to convince others to support them.

Good for the country.

Most people are assholes. The government shouldn't enact racist policies just because the people want to.

The answer to both questions in your compound question is yes.

Now, good luck defining each of those.

That feels like a false dilemma to me. The country and government, ideally, are the people.

The role of the government is to thread the needle of identifying who has power (including your common labor) and creating a consensus among them that prevents a civil war. It however usually becomes captured and ossified and is unable to identify when certain power blocks have reached their red lines that will topple the whole damn thing until a new government forms. Mandate of heaven essentially. Paternalistic or will of the people are legitimacy building frames but the reality is always material.

According to the US, the role of government is to protect to the opulent minority from the will of the majority. That's what Madison argued for in the Federalist Papers. He then proceeded to explain how to achieve this with the design of the Senate. And then that is exactly how the Senate got designed in the Constitution.

The role of government, essentially forever regardless of system and country, is to manage power struggles between all the possible sources of power.

The role of a government is to collect taxes, then use those taxes to provide the most good to the greatest number of people.

In general, voters will have many ideas as to what that implementation should look like, which is why we elect representatives.

What's right for the people.

NOT the will of the people, because that's just mob rule.

My mother always did the former and despite pretty much ignoring the "will" was reelected for decades.

It depends on how that government is chartered.

In democracies, it's to enact the will of the people (within the bounds set by human rights, because any government that does not respect human rights is illegitimate).

In representational forms of government, the balance shifts towards the good of the people but is still informed by their will.

In completely non-democratic forms of government, it should be informed entirely by the good of the people but historically has been informed instead by the will and desires of the rulers, typically without even the necessary respect for human rights.

Comparing it to parenting is not a good analogy, because parents normally love their children and are better informed and wiser than them, whereas governments have little reason to love their citizens, and are only rarely better informed or wiser.

I don't trust democracy, but it's a good sight better than autocracy. Representative governments do something to curb the worst excesses of both, in my opinion.

Yeah, sometimes what the people want isn't what is best for them. But having the people in power decide what is best for other people can sometimes be dangerous. I've had people in power make decisions for me that they said was in my best interest and I don't think it was. There is no answer that fits every situation. It's a real big grey area deciding when it is and isn't okay for someone to have someone else make their decisions for them.

Anakin: we need a system where the politicians decide what's in the best interest of all the people and then do it

Padme: that's exactly what we do; the trouble is people don't always agree

Anakin: then they should be made to

Padme: sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship

One major problem is that people don't agree on what's right for the country. Some want a police state, and others want a nanny state. They both compromise freedom for security / safety. Meanwhile, if you're in the middle, you're seen as colluding with the "other" side.

All we can do is try our best to follow the middle path between the two. A dictator is bad but a benevolent dictator might guide us with a firm hand that benefits most while negatively affecting the least. Of course, based on human nature, all power eventually corrupts so who knows? I'm surprised we made it this far.

Government is the people. By that I mean people who are the government are a subset of people. They don't have any additional insight into the world than a voter, although they might have more information.

Also voters are not a monolith, everyone wants something different. Sometimes very opposite things.

The best that can be done is trying to find a good way to achieve what the majority of voters want while not completely screwing over those who disagree.

It is to extract wealth from its residents to provide a steady steam of transfer towards the rich.

In theory yes

But

The governments role is to lead the country

Could be through taxes which are then usednto make roads, schools etc

Could also be to control slaves that work for the few

Depends who you vote for

The role of the government is to be at the service of the people.

To serve the interests of the people, to protect the people's rights, to watch the back of the people so they're not taken advantage of. That's why we have elections, to vote people in because it is their sworn duty of oath to be at the service of the people in office, domestically and internationally.

The role of a government is to do what's best for the government. That usually involves keeping the people from getting too unhappy with them.

It's hard to argue for austerity in the American context, where the healthcare stipends being stripped away are less than 1% of the military's budget. It's not actually austerity, it's just the government taking your taxes and then refusing to do its job.

In a truely objective sense, the concept of "good for the people" and "good for the country" would be one and the same. The people are the country, and if treated as a population aggregate, are easy to monitor for overall well-being. Yes, individual people will always want selfish things, pork-barrel spending, local projects, etc.