Brian Blackwell
Senior Member
- Mar 10, 2018
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- #41
Again you still need programmable automatons to get the system you want. Our system, properly used, is the best balance between government power and individual rights. The problem is that currently it is NOT being used properly, and government power is being concentrated at the federal level, and most importantly in the federal bureaucracy, as far away from the people as possible. Add in a judiciary that has over-stepped its bounds on numerous occasions and you have the situation you have now.
As for your personal interaction issues with authority figures, again you will always have bad actors unless you can prevent them from happening, i.e. the equivalent of borg drones.
I appreciate your recognition of the broken state of government, but that recognition stops short of the mark. Government may be broken according to the people's intent for it, but that's not the relevant concern. The intent itself is the problem. For a moment we'll put aside whether government should be what people want it to be, and focus on whether it ever could be what people want it to be.
I submit to you that it is government, not a free society, that needs automatons to make it work (though of course a free society would also work better with automatons). After all, a free society is no system at all; it's just man in his natural state (though now with the benefit of advanced technology). If it can be said to be a system at all, it is the system designed by the creator, or nature, or whatever power guides the organization of the universe.
We want people of moral virtue to take positions of power and make all their decisions based upon what's best for the people. But think about any other industry and consider - why do people do what they do? Does the pretzel manufacturer make pretzels from a noble desire for the populace to have snacks? No, he does it to make as much money as possible; i.e. to serve himself. This works out fine, since to achieve his goal he must provide a pretzel that satisfies the masses, and so it's win-win. This is the same for the overwhelming majority of people who do what they do (with the rare exceptions of the Mother Theresas of the world).
With government, we put up a sign that says, "Help Wanted: people to make rules the rest of us must follow; the goal being the overall benefit of the people at large". But what is offered in return for this? A salary, yes, but particularly at higher levels of government, the people who vie for these positions make way more money in their private endeavors. So what is the real appeal of the job? The power. Who shows up to take these jobs? Those who want power. In order for the system to work as intended, it would require that the people who apply for the position want power, but ONLY for the benefit of others; as to desire power for themselves (to profit or dominate) is considered a misuse of that power. Unlike the pretzel man, working in government for your own benefit is not win-win.
There are hundreds of high-level positions, and we suppose that they will be filled with hundreds of Mother Theresas, when in all areas of life we see that people take jobs or open businesses primarily for their own benefit. And do politicians need to satisfy the masses to succeed? Of course not. No one I've ever spoken with has been satisfied with government. Politicians just need to be charismatic, and spin their failures to look like honest mistakes, or failed attempts due to opposing forces, or even just present themselves as the lesser of two evils. Imagine the pretzel man offering such nonsense: "We know you've paid for pretzels but are getting rat tails instead. We are working hard to resolve this issue, and with your continued support, we know we can overcome this hardship!" He'd be out of business immediately. No one would keep spending their money on rat tails with the hope that someday they will get pretzels.
History shows us deception, cronyism, and corruption in governments everywhere, at all times, and yet we suppose that hope yet remains for the next snowball to survive the fires of hell. There is no chance that government can ever be what we want it to be, as long as humans are in those positions. Humans simply don't work that way. This is one tiny sliver of what's wrong with government as a concept, never mind the immensely important philosophical and moral considerations about inequality of rights, the fallacious superstition of authority, and the power of people to delegate rights they don't have themselves.
You are still railing for the replacement of something that is working, even imperfectly, for something that has never been successfully implemented. As the old saying goes, if you want to replace the fence in the middle of the field, first tell me why it was there in the first place.
Government may be that fence that you no longer want in the field, but tell me why we put it there first so we can figure out what will happen when we take it down.
I’m actually arguing for the abolition of something, not the replacement of it, but I get your point. I thought I did a fair job of explaining why government is not “working” earlier in our exchange, and most recently described why the “solution” that government represents repeatedly fails to solve, and will always do so. But I will attempt to answer in terms of this newly offered context...
The fence is there to mitigate the fact that people sometimes use their free will inappropriately by infringing upon the self-evident, inalienable rights of others. It also serves other organizational purposes, but I am not calling for the abolition of these functions, because these are not functions inherent to government, as I will explain.
Government does not protect people’s rights, or contribute to a more moral society. In fact, It does precisely the opposite. To see this clearly, we must first recognize what government actually is. Government is the “right” to use coercive threats (backed up by violence) to gain compliance. That is all. Please refer to my most recent reply to Xelor above for a more thorough explanation.
Another way of saying this is that government is an institutionalized exemption from morality. It claims the right to do things that would be immoral if anyone else did them. All functions it performs that would be morally acceptable if anyone else did them are not inherent to government, and therefore do not require government.
Defending the innocent is not inherent to government; anyone has the right to do that. Organizing the building of roads, likewise, does not require governmental authority, as it is perfectly moral to cooperate toward that goal. However, demanding a portion of your labor via threat of violence (euphemized as “taxation”) does require governmental authority because it would be immoral if anyone else did it. Throwing you in a cage for possessing a certain plant (drug arrests), insisting you fly across the world with a gun to kill people (conscription), stopping you on the road and checking to see if you’ve been drinking alcohol (sobriety checkpoints), violently forbidding you to pass an arbitray and immaginary line (border control) etc., are functions inherent to government because they are immoral if performed by an individual not shielded by the fallacious concept of “authority”.
This demonstrates how government is inherently immoral, and so cannot lead to a more moral society. It also demonstrates how it encourages the usage of free will to infringe upon the rights of others (exacerbated by the democratic process whereby “citizens” vie for control of the governmental sword of power to exact their will on the private activities of others in matters such as personal health choices (drugs, abortion), association (the choice to not hire an elderly person), financial transactions (prostitution, gambling), freedom of movement (immigration), even the decision whether or not to add a handicap ramp outside your store).
The fence does not serve the purpose for which it was built, and is inherently antagonistic to the stated goal.