Dear Friends,
It seems to me, one way to tell if your government is extractive is by their rhetoric. Is every problem a “revenue” problem? If so, then you are being extracted from. Elites who run an extractive government are always looking to increase revenue. Equal governments limit themselves, their appetites, and their vision so they live within their means. Extractive governments do the opposite. They don’t limit themselves, their appetites, or their utopian vision. The result is extractive governments are perpetually in debt and constantly in need of revenue, to maintain their profligate spending, let alone fund their newest utopian idea. Extractive governments promise the Moon and stars but deliver debt and dysfunction. Not because the people running them are evil, but because extracting is a trap.
Equal government would be what Aristotle called “right government” in his Politics. Such a government serves the interests of everyone. What he called wrong government or what I am calling extractive government, serves the interest of politically favored factions. Clearly, most who are in one of the politically favored factions prefer extractive government. This is because they are the recipient of that extraction. Those who are extracted from are opposed to it, but have no power to stop it. We see this in Europe. The EU rides roughshod over the rights, demands, and property of the European natives, while it bans political parties and exploits the courts to chastise problematic people. This is an attribute of an extractive or wrong form of government.
Indeed, if you see your government exploiting law to keep itself in power, you can presume that it is a wrong form and is extracting. When there is a double standard… there cannot be equality. This is proof enough of a wrong form of government. Censorship is another tell of a wrong form or extractive government. If someone is silenced, they are not equal and so the government that practices censorship does not serve everyone equally. It serves some specially. At no time is this more true than when the censors are found to have censored truth to promote lies. A government that engages in sub human acts is not a right form. That would be a contradiction in terms. Such a government is clearly a wrong form that extracts. How do the extractors stay in power though?
Olson in his idea of the logic of collective action illustrated a quality of extractive or wrong forms of government. He said that if a government policy affects you a great deal you will put a great deal of effort into it, but if it has little visible effect on your life you will put little effort into it. This idea has the beauty of simplicity. It follows human nature like a river does a valley. People are at heart pragmatic. We seek the most efficient means to good. This means if a little effort results in a lot of effect then we will put that effort in. If, however, a great deal of effort leads to little reward, we put that effort elsewhere. It’s just pragmatism. So the extractors put maximal effort into extracting, while the extracted from put in little… until the balance is tilted.
Once it becomes efficient to put effort into stopping the extraction, because it has got so bad, the extractors need to use law, censorship, and sub-human actions. The extractors will have no choice. The further they go down that rabbit hole the more entrapped they get. The sunk cost fallacy only adds to the self-interest. Wrong forms of government, or extractive governments, become more despotic the more threatened they feel. If the spigot of opulence is touched, you can expect them to go apoplectic. The rhetoric of helping the downtrodden and denying the extraction becomes accusations and criminal charges of perjury. Such governments run perpetual deficits because they are extractive, not equal or right forms. So if you hear your government ever lamenting it needs more revenue it is extractive.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
