TGIF:
Government Is the Problem
by Sheldon Richman May 17, 2013
Barack Obama recently told the graduating class of the Ohio State University,
- Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn
of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s
at the root of all our problems.… They’ll warn that tyranny is always
lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because
what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in
self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.
I hope the students see that the daily newspapers refute the president’s claims. He said “this democracy is ours” and “the founders trusted us with this awesome authority.” But that’s not how things work. We didn’t intervene in Libya, setting the stage for the attack on the CIA post in Benghazi. We didn’t use a political double standard in ruling on tax-exemption requests from nonprofit organizations. We didn’t try to frighten government whistle-blowers by subpoenaing reporters’ phone records.
We did none these things. They did. Who are they? The wielders of power and the interests for whom they front.
But what about our democracy and our experiment in self-government? It’s time we’ve grown up. These are incantations, not references to real things. They are designed to sanitize ugly facts that the people are “better off” not knowing.
What facts? That, contrary to Obama, government is not “a system of … tools to do big things and important things together that we could not possibly do alone” -- that’s what markets are -- when they’re allowed to work, free of interference by presumptuous, meddling politicians and the well-connected who seek their favors. Government is not cooperation; it’s violence. “Government is a broker in pillage,” H. L. Mencken observed, “and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.” In light of this, I submit that “free election” is a contradiction in terms, since participation is always under duress.
But don’t we have self-government? Don’t we elect representatives to look after our interests? Not even a child should be told that fairy tale. One vote is insignificant, and it takes 50 percent plus one to prevail. (See my “The Crazy Arithmetic of Voting.”) For most people this adds up to zero incentive to invest the considerable time and effort required to be well-informed, even if that were otherwise possible. (Among other things, you’d need to understand economics.)
And representation? As I’ve written previously,
- Why [do] we even see these decision-makers as our representatives
rather than as our rulers. Think about this: The average congressional
district has a population of well over 600,000 people. In Montana, one
congressman allegedly represents the state’s entire population of
967,440. The populations of the states range from about half a million
(Wyoming) to 36.7 million (California).
- Honestly now, who really believes that anyone can actually represent such large and diverse groups of people?
- Honestly now, who really believes that anyone can actually represent such large and diverse groups of people?
In his essay “The Founding Fathers’ Problem: Representation,” the respected historian of America Edmund Morgan notes that ideology consists in “opinions to sustain [the people’s] consent”:
- The few who govern take care to nourish those opinions, and that is
no easy task, for the opinions needed to make the many submit to the few
are often at variance with observable fact. The success of government
thus requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension
of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor is clothed even
though we can see that he is not. [Emphasis added.]
- The sovereignty of the people was an instrument by which
representatives raised themselves to the maximum distance above the
particular set of people who chose them. In the name of the people they
became all-powerful in government, shedding as much as possible the
local, subject character that made them representatives.
Public Choice theory teaches that the people in government are not saints endowed with special insight into the common good. They’re just like the rest of us. But as Robert Higgs points out (PDF), this isn’t quite right. “Decent people, virtually by definition, do not seek to exercise political power over their fellows,” Higgs writes. “People who lack pugnacity do not succeed as prize fighters; people who lack a talent for lying, stealing and, if need be, abetting homicide do not succeed in modern politics.”
In other words, this is not about Obama or any individual power-seeker. It is about the system, its unique power to coerce, and, consequently, its uniquely perverse incentives.
At a recent news conference, Obama said, “I sure want to do some governing.” Let’s take him at his word and recall how Pierre-Joseph Proudhon defined “governing”:
- To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at,
controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures
who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be
governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted,
registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed,
licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed,
corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the
name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled,
fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed;
then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be
repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed,
disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported,
sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided,
outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is
its morality.
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