Thursday, January 22, 2015

What Big Government Has to Offer

Column for week of January 12, 2015

     This column is the final installment of a 13-part series. 
Last time we considered that in freedom we must serve others
to gain satisfaction for ourselves.  The better an individual
serves others, the more those others will give in return for the
service.

     Today we will consider the alternative to freedom --
coercion.  When individuals aren't free to act peaceably in
whatever manner they choose, they are subject to the force,
violence and threats of others.  Those who resort to force,
violence and threats can gain satisfaction from others without
giving satisfaction to others.  Thus, the only options we have
are freedom and exploitation.

     Whether we live in an environment of freedom or one
of exploitation, all individuals have the same goal -- increase
their satisfaction.  The two environments provide entirely
different motivations about how to seek satisfaction.

     A person with the power to take and exploit can seek
satisfaction by threatening and intimidating others.  The others
are compelled to give up their satisfaction and serve the
exploiter.  Outright slavery is an example of exploitation.  Such
slavery is far from being the only way to exploit.  If the
exploitation of slavery is destructive and evil, How can diluted
forms of exploitation be good and beneficial?

     The only institution we have that is legally authorized to
use force, violence and threats to gain advantage over others is
government.  Government has one big advantage.  It writes and
enforces the rules.  Government often uses its force, violence
and threats on behalf of private special interests.  In return
politicians receive votes and expand their power to use force,
violence and threats.

     Only those in government and those empowered by
government can lawfully pursue their satisfaction at the
expense of others, rather than by better serving others.  Those
in government are as motivated as anyone else to seek their
own satisfaction.  They seek to gain, not to serve.  Unlike free
people they can gain without serving their victims.

     Even those in government must serve those who keep
them in power.  Thus, government will always serve the
powerful special interests at the expense of everyone else.   To
call those in the one and only branch of society that can legally
exploit for their own satisfaction "public servants" is a travesty.

     Government can, and to some extent does, provide a
valuable service in attempting to limit the private use of
aggressive force, violence and threats.  Once government steps
beyond this limited role, it becomes the exploiter.  It becomes
the problem, not the solution.

     A government with the power to protect will have the
power to exploit.  People being what they are, it is inevitable
that some in government will turn to the use of force, violence
and threats to increase their own satisfaction.

     If the exploiters prosper, many more will seek to join
them.  Government will grow to be one vast exploitive
enterprise.  Government exploitation by so called "public
servants" has been prospering and growing since long before
any of us were born.  It is our way of life.  Unfortunately most
people have failed to recognize and oppose the destructive
exploitation by government.

     Now we face national bankruptcy and destruction of our
productive economy, all as a result of allowing legions of
"public servants" to take rather than serve.  As freedom totters
on its dying legs, we face the loss of everything.  I don't know
if it is too late to save freedom.  If we don't at least try, all we
have to look forward to it strife, destruction, misery and death.

     If we fail to contain and roll back government we can
only look forward to returning to the Hobbesian world where
the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright 2014
Albert D. McCallum

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