Libertarians and others who seek to be left alone to run their
own lives habitually ask themselves the above question regarding their
government.
So, what’s the answer? Are they out to get you? Well,
unfortunately, the answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no.” In fact, it’s
“yes” and “no.”
The secret to understanding a government’s intentions is that
there’s no unified overall objective, sentiment, or approach to dealing with
the private sector. Quite the opposite. With any government, it couldn’t be more fragmented or
dysfunctional.
At the very lowest level of any government is the civil service,
which is, in any country, a catch-all for all those people who are so lacking
in ability and imagination that they’d be unlikely to hold down a job in the
private sector. Moreover, their level of motivation is likely to be so low that
their dysfunction tends to coincide with extreme inefficiency.
To test this out, one only has to visit the local Department of
Motor Vehicles, or a similar agency that does little except charge fees and
waste time in order to provide you with a permit, which, were it not required, you could
happily do without.
Most anyone, in observing the individual behind the counter,
would observe the glassy stare and recognize that, even though this person
spends each working day behind this counter and may have been doing so for
years, he or she takes virtually no interest in your personal concerns and, if
you have questions, tends to find them a nuisance and an interruption in the
endless drudgery of issuing paperwork.
Hence the image above. Here we have a pilot in Canada who, when
being presented with a computer-driven list of tail letters that were
authorized for him to choose from, immediately laughed when he saw the above
letters on the list. He then went up to the counter, having circled the ones he
chose, and the clerk processed the application brainlessly, without it even
registering in his head what the letters suggested.
Later, when the pilot had had the letters emblazoned on his
fuselage, it might not have been unlikely that an airport supervisor, seeing
them 10 inches high on the side of the plane, raised an objection, at which
time the pilot proudly produced his paperwork.
As most anyone in the private sector can attest, as soon as
paperwork is presented, the civil servant in question simply says, “Oh,” then
nods and lets you go on your way.
But, looking at this more deeply, what we’re witnessing is that
that percentage of the population who are (once again) lacking in ability and
imagination are easy to programme by the government to become automatons—that
even if something strikes them as being somehow incorrect, as long as it has
the State stamp of approval, it’s just fine.
And, so, at the lower level of government, we have those who are
not “out to get us”; they are merely borderline useless and have ended up with
jobs in which that deficiency will not get them fired. They are, therefore,
merely “in the way.”
As we go up the chain, however, where those in government are
somewhat more ambitious, we find a greater desire to control. The closer we get
to the higher echelons, the more they truly are “out to get you.”
Why should this be? And why should it be that those the higher-ups
tend to hate the most are those who are self-motivated, responsible,
self-reliant, and imaginative?
Well, unfortunately, the answer is simple. It’s because those
are the character traits that they lack. I’m sorry to have to say that in my
many years of working directly with politicians and heads of governments,
virtually all of them were highly evolved civil-servant types. They had more
drive, more guile, and larger egos than the lower-level bureaucrats but were
just as parasitical and just as lacking in character traits that would make
them productive people.
With these individuals, yes, they are out to get
you. First, if they recognize that you possess the traits that would make you
productive, they will be highly jealous and suspicious of you. Second, they
will understand that since you are productive and they are not, they must find
a means by which they can use you as a cash cow, to be milked as much as
possible and as often as possible.
Their purpose, therefore, is to regulate, control, and tax you
in every way possible, and in this they are, quite simply, predators. They may
be Tory or Labour, Republican or Democrat, but they are predators nonetheless
and, as such, are a genuine threat to both your freedom and your well-being.
Of course, all politicians play the game of party politics,
doing all in their power to convince the electorate that they and their party
are dramatically different from the opposing party, presenting their own party
as “the good guys,” and the opposing party as “the bad guys.”
However, they are, as Judge Andrew Napolitano has repeatedly
stated, merely “two wings of the same bird of prey.”
Significantly, as both the bottom level and top level are
separated by many other layers of bureaucracy, and as their common character traits
are inability, dysfunction, etc., there
is no
cohesive set of principles upon which a government operates. Its
purposes are control and usurpation, and they’re backed by an imbroglio of
confused and self-contradictory legislation and an increasingly large body of
enforcement agencies.
Although the individuals within these agencies tend to be
incompetent and dysfunctional, they do tend to remain loyal to the whole. They
may not get along with each other, or work toward a unified set of goals, or
even have the same beliefs. They do, however, tend to do as they’re told and
blindly support the State, above all else.
Once all the above is understood, the individual may do as this
pilot has done. He has grasped the dysfunction and parasitical nature of his government
and has used their own computer-generated registration code to express his
reaction to “authority.”
More to the point, he has used their laws, their bureaucracy to express it legally.
This is an important point. Each individual, essentially, has
three choices. He can either go along with those lesser beings who seek to
control his life, or he can rebel and possibly be incarcerated for his efforts,
or he can become creative and recognize that the laws and regulations of his
country are a confused mess, written by incompetent people, and do all he can
to assert his independence, legally.
He can and should do everything in his power to operate his life
as though he’s not owned by
the government of his home country, or any other government, for that matter.
Wherever a government tries to control the ownership of his real
estate through taxation, he might seek out a jurisdiction that has no property
tax. If they try to tax his income, he might seek out a country that has no
income tax. If they try to restrict his migration, he might seek a second
citizenship that does not restrict him.
Freedom is not merely a vague historical idea, or an excuse to
celebrate with firecrackers once a year; it’s a lifetime pursuit and should be
taken on as such. The pilot in question has made an initial stab at it.
Hopefully he, along with you, the reader, will make it a central facet of his
life’s work.
