Why Government?

If we ask ourselves, what is the purpose of Government? the ready answer is - to serve the people. But that isn't it. A government that serves the people would need to provide jobs for people, ensure they have adequate housing and wages and healthcare and education and toilet paper. But that isn't the function of government.

The Founders wrestled with these ideas and came up with a purpose for establishing a government. They wrote it into the Preamble of the Constitution. The purpose is - union justice tranquility defense welfare liberty. That is, a unified country, a just legal system, peace & harmony, safety & security, the well-being of citizens, and continuous personal freedom.

Nowhere did the Founders mention providing jobs, housing, wages, healthcare, or education. We can assume these things from "promote the general welfare" but we could assume that means anything we want it to. It could just as easily mean "see that river - catch fish, cook 'em & eat 'em, and you won't be hungry no more." So we can't just assume that the Founders meant for government to take care of people like a foster parent. Likely they didn't intend any of that.

Likely, they meant a unified country where people would take care of their own needs; while government would provide legal justice, law & order, and defense from foreign attack. As die-hard Republicans say "build roads, secure the borders, and leave us alone."

So which is it? A government that takes care of our needs; or just provides basic minimums so people can take care of themselves? Well, before ratifying the Constitution, the Founders had to come up with a Bill of Rights to clarify what government could & couldn't do. But mostly it aims limit to government overreach. Which tells us that government intervention should be minimal rather than inclusive.

So what changed? Obviously, in an elected government, vote seekers promise all sorts of new benefits if people vote for them. This is an obvious flaw of elected governance, but so it is. Hardly anyone is smart enough to turn down free stuff in the belief that it'll just make you lazy or dependent on gift-givers. But the more free stuff we get, the lazier and more dependent we become. And if we do that for any length of time, we convince ourselves that free stuff is actually a right that government owes us.

Hence any free stuff we got, quickly becomes "hey, you owed us that because it was our right to have it" followed by "now we want more, because that's also our right." So anything we don't have is considered something the stingy government is depriving us of because all they'd have to do is tax the rich and give stuff to everybody else - in short, the platform of Progressive politics.

So what would a happy medium be? Well, theoretically, there'd be no medium - we'd simply adhere to the minimalist governance of the Founders. But theory isn't practice. When the government asks its men and heads of families to fight & die in wars, or send their sons to do that - then people are going to want compensation for that. At the very least, they'll want free college education and subsidized loans to buy houses. Which is clearly a small price for government to pay for the soldiers who fought in global wars.

But the next round of demands is even steeper. Enlightened thinkers will insist that "we aren't going to risk our lives to fight in your wars, but we still want more and more benefits." And enlightened vote seekers will run on those issues, disguising them as "the people's rights." Otherwise known as the welfare state. Which benefits everyone in the short term, and no one in the long run.