Poll: Would you authorise your govt to commit acts you would not commit yourself?

This is very open-ended, philosophic question.

Would you authorise your government (whichever that may be) to commit acts that you would not commit yourself?


Presume that skill or equipment is not a factor - and that you have all the same resources and skills at your disposal that the government does.

Also presume that you can operate military equipment, fund stem cell research, tax the populace or whatever else without fear of insurrection.

I had to say conditionally. I'm a pacifist. I have to allow for some kind of defense because I personally wouldn't be able to shoot someone. I could do it to save my own life, but I couldn't volunteer to do it willfully. So, reluctantly, yeah. I'd prefer that leeway between what I would do and what I trust my government to do to be narrow, explicitly defined, and rarely if ever unilateral.

If it involved Rambo or B. A. Baracus, yes.

In science, we can never derive results from a single data point. Reality is built on the consensus of the majority. A certain wavelength is named red because people have agreed to name it red, etc.
Similarly, one man can never be trusted to always tell right from wrong, for a consensus from the majority is required to define what's real, what's right, what's wrong.
As civilization progressed, certain patterns emerged and were codified into laws for future reference, so people wouldn't have to . A vast number of people today dedicate their lives to the study, creation and enforcement of those laws, something that I don't. I wouldn't trust them to do my code for me, so they shouldn't expect me to be able to do their job either.
Specialization is a good thing... it's a very common pattern in the world. The universe has been doing it since the beginning of time, and in a glorious display of how fractal reality is, so do we.
The emergence of hierarchies is inevitable for any sufficiently large group of people. We are hardwired to organize ourselves into groups and specialties... and in modern society, the government is the appointed body to judiciously control and apply rewards and punishments, including, of course, dangerous things that no single individual should be empowered with, such as the death or permanent incarceration of a citizen.

That's a pretty broad question and I think it would depend on the act:

Dredging a sewer: yes
Donkey shows: no