GOVERNMENT:
A One-Size-Fits-None Failure
Statists see Government as a panacea — a cure-all, which is suitable for all individual ailments and societal ills. However, the actions of government are at best a temporary salve. Eventually, the body (politic) must heal itself. As used today, government under most circumstances is a crutch. Far from encouraging better traits among persons and peoples, government enables bad behavior.
Successful cooperative effort requires mutualities of commitment, contribution, and benefit. Where those things exist, disparate parties with various talents and traits will come together VOLUNTARILY in order to advance their common interests, and government involvement is almost certainly superfluous and counterproductive. In the absence of those mutualities, however, no amount of government interference or involvement is likely to make the endeavor successful.
Rather than parties coming together in cooperation — with each contributing or sacrificing so as to advance a common good — government serves as a substitute for individual contribution and effort. Government forcibly (re)allocates effort, opportunities, and resources in ways that the parties would not do themselves. Government (re)distributes wealth by taking from those, who are deemed by self-serving politicians and would-be beneficiaries to be excessively privileged or inherently unworthy to have those things that “less privileged” and more favored parties actively covet. An electoral majority is empowered to take with impunity from disfavored minorities (e.g. the infamous “One Percent” and the nebulously defined “Rich”).
The results are a culture of victimhood and a pervasive sense of entitlement. Victim status relieves persons so identified or identifying not only from contributing to or for the benefit of others but also from contributing to themselves. They are to be relieved of both personal responsibility and of the consequences of their bad acts. When society places a premium upon being a victim, nearly everyone seeks to be one. At the point that most persons identify as victims of one “oppressor” or another, then battles erupt as to which person or class is the most oppressed and thus most deserving of government’s largess. The result is the reduction of everyone and everything to the lowest common denominator. The result is insatiable “need” with woefully insufficient contributions.
In the advance of “equality” (as opposed to equity), government forces parties to engage in interpersonal relationships and economic transactions, in which one or more reluctant or disproportionately burdened parties would not engage voluntarily. It is the lack of voluntariness, which causes government action to be called into question. Proponents see the coercive and compulsory powers of the state as having the capacity to “do good” (specifically for them). However, government’s power is equally capable of almost unspeakable evil, if that power is unfettered and not actively restrained.
It has been said, “A government that is capable of giving you everything, which you want, is also capable of taking everything that you have.” Whether government is viewed as saint or sinner depends entirely upon, which side of the transaction one sits. The political classes crave vicarious power, and they covet the position, prestige, and profit to be derived therefrom. As power trends toward absolute so does the certainty for corruption, and with corruption come abuse, oppression, and tyranny.
In the absence of voluntary participation, government action to compel contribution or to command behavior is tantamount to institutional theft and involuntary servitude. Proponents of government action seek to use the coercive and compulsory powers of the state to force others to contribute to more favored parties (i.e. themselves) and to support self-interested beneficiaries, who are unwilling or incapable of taking care of themselves (or of contributing productively to others).
Government interposes itself between would-be beneficiaries and the targets of the takings. The idea is to insulate the class of beneficiaries (e.g. electoral majority) from the impropriety of forced takings. However, an act, which is immoral if undertaken individually (e.g. theft) is not made more moral by collective action, and one cannot enjoy the absolution, which might be offered by even a host of coconspirators and accomplices. In fact, collective action often results in groupthink, and it magnifies or exacerbates the baser traits of our bestial species. An electoral majority routinely acts with a perverse moral certitude, which it mistakenly believes can be derived solely from its number.
Government influences behavior by placing its bulbous thumb on the scales. Government imposes upon the populous a “new math,” in which unbalanced transactions are deemed by force (of law) to be equal and equitable. In doing so, it strains both reason and reality. Government, by and through political minions and technocrats, imposes alternate facts and alternate truths, which are entirely incompatible with reason and inconsistent with our singular reality. With time, we become disassociated from reality. We lose appreciation for truth, and we become incapable of reason or rationality.
To the extent that noncontributing parties enjoy any incremental benefit, they are likely to deem any associated costs or resulting sacrifices, which must be borne by unrelated parties (i.e. “others”), as reasonable, necessary, or even morally compelled. This remains true no matter how disproportionate the cumulative costs or how inequitable the unilateral sacrifices. It is impossible to undertake a meaningful or effective cost-benefit analysis when the benefited parties are unrelated to or far removed from the “others,” who are burdened with the costs or who must bear the sacrifices. Under such a scenario, the scales of equity and justice are irreparably unbalanced.
In the end, the math does not work, and if the math does not work, the best of intentions do not matter. The demands of an increasingly dependent consumer class are unreasonable and insatiable, and a limited and shrinking producer class eventually refuses to produce or exhausts itself (and its resources). Thus, statism and socialism are forever and always destined to failure. In the words of Dame Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
