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mk  ·  3834 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I make people feel stupid? Patronized?

I believe I do the same at times, but people that know me well enough seem to overlook it (at least I hope). That said, I'll answer the question you posed to your mother:

    How can you believe that the government is both worth supporting ideologically AND a bloated, mismanaged exploitable piece of garbage?

Not without exception, but I take the view that government efficiency can be a bad thing. At best, government can make most of the people happy, and trend towards making more people happy. However, no individual or group of individuals can understand the workings of government well enough that they can implement anything but partial and gradual changes without doing more harm than good. Central planning can be a terror for all of the realities it ignores. Just as important as the current state of government, is the direction in which it is evolving, and the speed of that evolution. Because of this, even the wisest despot is a fool.