Central planning in the context of military action is a very different beast than it is in a city. Each unit has an assigned task, a protocol for completing it and all units are working towards a specific goal, and central planning works. The residents of a any community have similar needs and goals, but how those needs are met and the specific goals are entirely subjective to each and every individual, which is antithetical to central planning.

I’m not sure about that…

Consider the general needs of a given community: water, housing, schooling, healthcare, fire and rescue, infrastructure for those and for commercial premises. Central planning enables that. Where specific individual needs are concerned each tax-funded unit has an assigned task, i.e. my doctor’s surgery (office) has the assigned task of meeting non-urgent medical needs and referring people for treatment at the hospital for further intervention as and when required, e.g. to get me seen by a Rheumatologist once a year to keep an eye on my arthritis. Even if you leave out healthcare, try running a town entirely on voluntaryism. Can I watch? It doesn’t scale. While individuals may have a range of needs and goals, they can be divided into scope of responsibility in which there is a fair amount of overlap and much of which is elective, e.g. career choices. I understand that your underlying argument is basically "I don’t want to pay for other people’s ." Okay, but whether you are willing to accept this or not other people are already paying for your "." Infrastructure, for one.

We have to remember that concentrated areas of poor and minority peoples was a feature of central planning through redlining. Economic opportunities have been chased away by regulations, permitting, land-use restrictions that came from lobbying the bureaucrats and councils by incumbent businesses fighting competition (like we see from ISP and cable companies), various NIMBY activists. These laws and regulations prevent people from creating their own prosperity and effectively dependent on government assistance.

Assume that’s true. Okay, we need to identify those regulations that specifically stop people from creating their own prosperity. Assume they’re now gone: what will people do? They can’t all run burger joints, etc. Businesses need customers. What is needed is an economic ecosystem in which businesses can thrive. In my part of the world is the East Lancs Railway. Basically, enthusiasts revitalised the old railway systems and rebuilt the old steam trains, then they got them back in service on small local lines that had been shut down following the Beeching Report 1963. The tourists who went on the old-fashioned steam train visited the villages along the line, revitalising the local economy between Bury and Rawtenstall. Result: dying mill towns brought back to life. Lesson learned: you can’t operate a business in a depressed area unless you’ve got some kind of draw to bring the punters in. I really do recommend going on the East Lancs Railway. Great fun!

I totally agree that adequate and comprehensive healthcare is necessary for communities to thrive. But one of the most significant drivers of healthcare costs and lack of available care is central planning mistake that created Medicaid and Medicare while maintaining artificial limitations on the number of licensed physicians practicing and students in medical school at the behest of the AMA (I’m not against Medicaid/Medicare). Another central planning idea that limits providers and facilities (to the degree that people die) are CON laws (Certificate of Need) that you might be interested in learning more about. I’m pointing out some of these things to demonstrate the negative outcomes of central planning. Honestly, when you picture a housing project, do you picture a safe, healthy, stable environment? What’s to make anyone think the government would get it right this time?

You’re pointing out flaws in the planning itself. Your government, from what you’re saying, is riddled with special interest group suck-ups who put party donors above public service. It seems to me that if they thought from a military point of view the problems might resolve. There are also ideological considerations: where political "ownership" of a particular district is in flux you will find orders and countermands. In such cases, the civil servants carrying out policy may find they are constantly dealing with the messes created by each administration based on what their principles are at the time. I’d like to see policy-making based on evidence, not ideology but I guess I’ll be waiting in vain.

I used to think that the government should "do something" or "fix" the problem, or "there ought a be a law!". But eventually it dawned on me that the government almost always either was the cause of a problem, or it made the problem worse. I know that isn’t always the intention, but if you go back and research the original "progressives", you’ll find the "welfare" they advocated had sinister ulterior motives. Just because the motivation of today’s progressives has changed doesn’t mean the outcome of the same welfare efforts has changed.

Ah, yes, the liberal progressives… the word we’re looking for here is "paternalism." People need to be enabled to meet their own needs as much as possible instead of having them met for them. Treating people like babies just makes them dependent.

Certainly I don’t think guns will fix broken communities, but I think the members of those communities should not be subject to lesser rights than anyone else. It would huge step forward for black communities to be able to exercise their 2A rights the same as white communities because disarming them has always been a means of control and limitation and representative of inequality.

Indeed, I remember reading somewhere that the emergence of the Black Panther movement was the catalyst for gun control laws. However, given a choice between improving their access to a decent education and lucrative careers and improving their access to guns we both know what I would choose.

Thanks for the debate! 🙂