Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the reason government must be severely limited, is because it has the ability to change the rules while the game is in play. Let’s start from first principles, that the role of government is to provide for the common defense, a system to adjudicate grievances and an ordered society. To do those things government is granted special abilities no other player is. The ability to tax (extort money), a monopoly on violence and it writes the laws. The most powerful of these is the ability to make laws. Or in other words, change the rules while the game is on. It is the only player with that ability. While those concessions are supposed to be used for the benefit of everyone, as in Aristotle’s’ “right” forms, they are most often used to enrich, empower and entrench.
The government is supposed to be like a dungeon master in an old board game of Dungeons and Dragons. A neutral player who facilitated the game. Government functions best when it takes this role. History shows that is, sadly, not the role it normally takes. Typically, government uses its dungeon master powers to rig the game for itself, and a few favored players. In that scenario, government and those players always win, and everyone else always loses. When that is the case, citizens, (the other players) lose interest in the game and withdraw. They recognize their stake in the game is gone, no matter how hard they fight, and the largest part of humanity turns off. They lose hope. Government that has taken its own side, will be blind to the suffering it causes, being too self absorbed to notice.
Those few times and places, where government took its legitimate role, that of disinterested facilitator, stand out in human history as times of prosperity, liberty and fraternity. Perhaps only within the citizenry, but even that is of historical significance. Confucius’ “Sage Emperors” created such times, as did Solon to Athens in ancient Greece, and Numa to Rome. In every instance, the governments created were facilitators, not players. Imagine a place, where most people are drowning and a few are kept above water, by holding down the flailing people below. Would such a system utilize its human capital effectively? Obviously not. Only where everyone has access to the air of liberty can utilize its human capital effectively. Only when government is a facilitator, not a player, can everyone breathe.
One way to tell if government is a player not a facilitator, is if it changes the rules to help favored players, creates a sense of hopelessness, needs to be protected from its citizens and is corrupt. Every government on the planet today meets that criteria. They are all players and none of them facilitators. From Imperial Communist China to the USA, every government is a player, with a stake in the game, which drives out the stakes of its citizens. Were there a government that elevated itself above the common lot of scum, dross and flotsam, then survived the slings and arrows aimed at it, for being a good example, would rapidly become prosperous, healthy and learned. That government doesn’t exist today, and at the rate we are going, maybe never will again. It is a goal worth striving for nonetheless.
That goal will always be impossible to reach due to human nature. Specifically, the human nature of those in power when hidden from oversight. As we have seen, they have thrown off the shackles our Founding Fathers forged for them, and have taken a seat at the table. The old limits no longer apply. Yet we are not powerless. We have a voice. Instead of despairing, speak up, demand government be utterly transparent, an end to the propaganda of national security requiring secret government, and that it return to it’s place, as facilitator, not player. Only then can we stop drowning so many in desperation, drugs and unemployment. If government became a facilitator, we could get back to using our human capital effectively, to create a prosperous human hearted civilization, for centuries to come.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
