The Sage Forge

When I started thinking about this in an organized way some years ago it didn't take long to realize that "government", that process that drives the purposeful narrowing of our personal options, comes in three major forms.

The first of these forms is individual self-government. We all develop a set of values, starting in childhood, that guides our use of time and energy. When you see people at play, at church, involved in civic service, and interacting with family and friends you are witness to this purposeful narrowing of possibilities. Our personal image of this form of self government is drawn from family life, from community values, from churches, and from the cues left us by the larger society. These are sometimes frankly conflicting. Over a lifetime we choose which of these values, if we accept any at all, will guide our use of free time and how we will treat each other.

The second form of government is commerce. For the benefit of ourselves and the larger community and society we sacrifice a portion of our freedom, both of time and of choice, so that the needs of the community might be met. People are fed, clothed, housed, and provided transportation. Services are rendered and goods are shipped and sold. This process is done in a way that provides for the replenishment of those resources necessary to continue the provision of the services and goods people need. This process is heavily, even critically, dependent on individual self-government to run smoothly. Where that fails to constrain what people would do to satisfy personal greed and hedonism commercial service becomes grossly inefficient.

Hence it is we are finally delivered to what has become official government. Official government rises from the need society has to protect itself primarily from people unrestrained by individual self-government, but its roots are blatantly criminal. Bullies first developed government to tap the surplusses of tribes. That's how we got tribal chiefs.  Now think carefully on this point, because the first instinct of many is to point to the organizational functions of government. Government is "good".  Government is only good to the extent that the vast majority of a population submit themselves willingly to the inherent loss of freedom the government entails.  Failing that it has reverted to simple organized crime.

Were we all sufficiently self governed and open to our own foibles and weaknesses as well as the strengths of others society could naturally fall into an order. "Anarchy" would carry positive connotations. We would have no need to choose some set of leaders, or permit them to be imposed on us, for the organizing of functions people in commercial service are usually better suited to guiding anyway.

As a result of its bully heritage official government is inherently inefficient. In fact it encourages those who would insulate themselves from responsibility to the public they "serve". This is because it relies on the individual self-government of officials to enforce honesty as they look after our resources.

On top of the problems inherent in Government's criminal heritage, taxes, the source of those resources we give government, are divorced from the services they make possible. This means the provision of an unneeded service or the redundant and inefficient provision of a needed service can be continued without regard to the opportunity doing so costs society.  Ending waste would cause those providing the service hardship. Government officials feel closer to people efficiency compromises than they feel to those who must pay for inefficiency. Thus it is there are full-time employees operating automatic elevators in the nation's capitol.

We hear a lot after every election about "values voters". Look at the description above and it becomes clear why this is becoming more and more true. Official government, the former criminal enterprise, competes with individual self-government. An honorable society needs little government!  In recent years many of us have begun to feel instinctively that government is actively working to erode the self-government that diminishes the necessity of the inefficient and often quasi-criminal beast official government can become.

Government has attacked the family structures of the nation's poor. It has attacked expressions of religious symbolism. It has rewarded and encouraged the failure of self-government. It then attacked and trumpeted the resulting failures of commercial service as a means of increasing its own power. Values voters are just people who know that standing up for self-government is preferable to conceding our hope to the faithfulness and honor of what was once simple organized crime.

The people who want official government to do more and ever more must divorce themselves from at least one reality. They must believe the people in government are inherently better people than those in the rest of society. Nothing either in official government's history or in the way works today encourages such a faith. If we don't stand for the values by which we can govern ourselves we will fall to those who benefit from the loss of those values.

Sam Houston said , "That government governs best that governs least." Now you know why.