Government Necessarily Leaves Citizens Clueless
By Michael S. Rozeff
Big government is anything beyond a small town of, say, 10,000 people or less, and even that size is already too large.
Most government activity is “big”, so that it does little violence to the facts to refer simply to government and omit the adjective “big”. Therefore, it’s quite accurate to say that government necessarily leaves citizens clueless, even though it’s more accurate to say that it’s big government that does this.
Even if a government didn’t intentionally obscure, hide, mislead and lie about its activities, bigness of government insures that nearly all citizens will most of the time on most issues and government activities be largely uninformed and in the dark.
Most citizens of a city don’t know what the city is up to, still less what the state is up to and a vanishingly small amount of what the federal government is up to. It is impossible to know the many machinations and laws of a big government, now or over time. It is also not in anyone’s interest to be well-informed about more than a tiny fraction of its activities. At best, citizens become aware, often dimly aware, of some government law, activity or dysfunction only when it hits home to them in such a way that they can put 2 and 2 together, that is, connect government as cause with their misery as effect.
This necessary ignorance has the main consequence that big government, which accounts for nearly all government nowadays, is unresponsive and unaccountable to citizens. The system of elections and voting also sees to it that governments maintain their independence of action. There is no social contract for big governments, i.e. nearly all governments. The theory of democracy, which is the theory that an informed public monitors its government, controls its government and makes it act in the public interest, fails altogether. This theory is a pipe dream.
If this theory doesn’t hold, then what actually is government? This question has been answered by a number of bright, observative, thoughtful and inquisitive thinkers. Lysander Spooner’s answer is one of the best. The government is organized for plunder and thievery. It is a highwayman.
The above originally appeared at LewRockwell.com.
"At best, citizens become aware, often dimly aware, of some government law, activity or dysfunction only when it hits home to them in such a way that they can put 2 and 2 together, that is, connect government as cause with their misery as effect."
ReplyDeleteThis statement is completely spot on, I'll also add that many of these types of people only care about the abuse when it affects them, they'll cheer it on when it happens to their neighbor.
I made this comment before here, but I'll mention it again. When my state started going after raw milk buying clubs a few years ago as raw milk can only be purchased on farm in my state (for what reason I don't know), I told my mother in law how ridiculous the state was in wasting money and going after people who just wanted to buy some milk for their families.
DeleteShe answered that she didn't care about that because she doesn't like to drink milk so it didn't affect her in any way... Very sad a lot of people think this way.