Personally I'm having an amusing time watching my socialist acquaintances
who voted for Tony Blair have fits because he's taking the British welfare
state apart; something the supposedly capitalist Tories always talked
about but were too scared to actually do. Frankly, anyone who still
believes that socialism stands a whelk's chance in hell should be looking
very closely at what the 'socialists' are doing in the UK.
>What I want to know is WHY
>governments at the end of the twentieth century have become bloated,
>inefficient, and counterproductive monsters that are resented by many
>of their citizens.
My personal opinion is that with the rise of industrialisation and the
concentration of power in large industrial corporations, big government
became a good way for them to maintain power. Add to that that people
used to believe in socialism (which like other pyramid schemes actually
did deliver to the first in line) and hence it wasn't as bad initially
as it turned out to be in the long-term; people who believed in the
system were much less likely to slack off and provide inefficient service
or exploit the system than those who grew up under socialism.
As people have got fed up with socialism and new technologies spread
power around, government is increasingly getting in the way and
proving unable to do anything worthwhile.
Mark