Dear Friends,
It seems to me, government is the only place where the worse job you do, the more job security you have. Union bosses would be wise to rip a page from the political elite’s handbook. For screwing your employer even the much vaunted unions have nothing on bureaucrats and politicians. Government under their watch is the most inept facet of our civilization. We all know it. We all want better, but all we get is more laws, poorer results and more taxes. Unless we step in and solve the underlying problem… our society and indeed our civilization itself is doomed.
Politicians claim a minor problem is a crisis, they propose some legal “solution” for that “crisis,” the law makes matters far worse, making a new need for another law to rectify the problems created by the first. They pass another omnibus law and lo and behold the problem grows exponentially. Now it actually has become a crisis and lawmakers propose a new comprehensive law… From this simple example we can see that the poorer the results of their governance the more desire we have of their services.
Some might say that a carpenter always sees every problem as needing a hammer, a logger believes a chain saw is the perfect tool for building stuff and a plumber is of the opinion that every problem can be solved with pump pliers. In the case of politicians they see every problem as needing a legal solution. Each seeing problems and solutions through the eyes of his occupation. If the solution doesn’t fix the problem it is because the wrong tool is being used… is the logic. This would hold water better, if laws that don’t function were removed from the books, but once a law always a law. How much is the US government spending this year on the mohair subsidy? You know, the one to protect our vital access to World War One Army uniforms…
I think the problem is more pernicious even than that. If we believe that politicians are human beings, and that human beings are indeed rational in most cases, then we can conclude that politicians are rational. If they are rational then they must see that the worse they make society the more need there is of their services. Unless politicians are the dumbest people this must be true. Since they claim to be much smarter than you and I, with the knowledge that their laws generally make matters worse, then why would they continue to pass them? Self interest, or to be more precise, egoism.
If laws were the be all end all of civil tranquility, then why is society so much more roiled now, with our millions of pages of laws, regulations and ordinances, than it was at the turn of the Twentieth Century, when people self regulated? As the pernicious laws pile up and up, outcomes get worse, the politicians chime in with the old sophist song, “Government has a valid role to play in making people’s lives better.” Knowing in their hearts that every word of it is tripe. Clearly, it is not law that is the source of wealth, happiness or love, law only subtly protects property if it is right and seizes that property, if it is being used by an egoist. Human history shows unequivocally, that law is most often a source of oppression, theft and murder by those who wield it, against those who do not.
We have a system where the worse our leaders do the more we need them, the elite know this and use it against us, and we suffer in a myriad of ways because of it. The answer is not to give the elite more authority, to continue down the road to serfdom… it is to take back the workings of government. Do away with bad laws, that don’t have a function, make matters worse or unreasonably infringe on the Rights of the people. We must think and do for ourselves! To have eyes and not to see is a shame, to have ears and not to hear is a tragedy, but to have a mind and not use it is criminal.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
