Dear Friends,
It seems to me, when government is the gatekeeper of all the goods in society, politics filters those goods. By gatekeeper, I mean that everything and every action by the individual and organizations, must be recognized and allowed by government. As we know intuitively, government is nothing but politics, so, when the gatekeeper is government, it is actually politics that decides what good can be rightfully visited on mankind. Under this scenario, only that which benefits those in charge or the politicians who run the show, is allowed. That which is contrary to the interests of politicians, will not be allowed, regardless if it is a great benefit to the people. This is the traditional paradigm that the human race has labored under for millenia, and is the font of all that is bad in society, economics, civilization and government, that rises from the sea of humanity.
The role of government as gatekeeper is long established as the Right of Kings. This was the way it was, and still is, everywhere government is overly powerful. The government is the sovereign not the people. When this is the case we always see that those in power get the goods of society distributed to them, and the people only get those goods which the politicians or kings, believe benefits the government… (themselves).
We see the most pernicious examples in third world countries. What is normally considered corruption is fed by this mode of thinking and acting. When people need a license to establish even the most basic business we find the licensing process to be rife with bribe taking, political interference, certain people “shut out” from the process, and the politically connected have the road cleared for them… crony capitalism. This has huge negative consequences for the economy, of the World in general, and for individual countries in particular.
The economic and governing problems we see in Europe and around the World are directly tied to this. In Greece and Europe the people are like teenagers, they want all the prerogatives of adults with none of the responsibilities. They want to live in their parents, or in this case big brother’s house, while they live it up. This is the way people think when government becomes the gatekeeper. Government must necessarily grow, spending grows, control grows while the economy and liberty shrivels, all to serve the interests of politicians. But, as long as the politicians who run the thing benefit, all is considered good.
Undoing this dominant way of thinking was one of the ingenious ideas of the American revolution. The idea that people could make their own decisions, without needing to go to a government official to get permission, was evolutionary. This opened up business to those not politically connected people who were and are virtuous. This in turn introduced a whole new level of competition and entrepreneurship to the marketplace. Anyone with a good idea could start a business, succeeding on the merits of his or her business plan, without political interference.
Today, around the World we see this concept attacked, for the retrenchment of the old ways of doing business. In many US cities it is illegal to feed the poor. That is the role government has carved out for itself just like in North Korea. Unimaginably self serving, this is barely even questioned, in an age where government is the gatekeeper of all that is good. Even religion is now coming under the purview of government oversight, as we see in the Catholic Church’s bristling, under Obama’s regulating what the church must pay for and do, to be in compliance with politician’s self interest.
The deeper government goes in regulating the people and the economy… the more politics inserts itself into the corpus society. This is one of the reasons politics is so nasty today, government is the arbiter of what can be done, and what cannot be done, in the economy and society… ala Bastiat’s Law. As this gets more and more common, it is questioned less and less, and oozes insidiously into the minds of the people, until it is taken as the unvarnished truth. The answer is to open our minds to the fact that government is nothing more than the operation of politics on society and civilization… therefore the people. Political tampering in the economy is justified as a necessary evil because people are “bad at heart” ie. Self interested. But I ask you… if people are bad at heart… why do we trust politicians, (unregulated self interested people), to be the gatekeepers? Isn’t that counter intuitive? Or do politicians say it’s okay?
Sincerely
John Pepin
