Those of you who know me know that while I am economically middle of the road (with a touch of redistributionist on the side) and socially liberal/libertarian. This in part has led me to believe that the Republican threat to shut down the Federal Government was insane and bad for our nation.

Recently, my thoughts have begun to change or at least morph a bit.  What if the shutdown of the Federal government leads to other actors stepping in and filling the gap? These other actors may be state and local governments, NGO’s, or even corporates. We are beginning to see evidence of this in a number of places on certain topics, one of them the sclerotic and largely ill informed immigration debate. (Click the link for story California Immigration ).

My point is, if there is a way to move decisions about our lives away from a group of people who’s interests are primarily in giving their donor’s what they want, so be it. If the group facilitates this action, all the better.

I’ll leave the selfish (from the US perspective) rational for a debt default to a later post.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of others.