Being Afraid of the Government

In modern society, the government is, more often than not, seen as a Good Thing. Sure, it could be run a bit better - a little more efficiently, - but a modern liberal democracy is perceived to be a million miles away from the nightmare dystopias of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. So when a Libertarian mentions being afraid of the government, a lot of people simply roll their eyes and wonder what you have done with your tinfoil hat.

For what it is worth, I don’t think there is an imminent danger that the UK will slip into an aggressive, murderous dictatorship. Sure, there are some very concerning developments – like ID cards and the attempts to get 42 days detention onto the statute books – but I think that Gordon Brown is so cack-handed and incompetent that he would struggle to create a dictatorship even if he had absolute power.

But that is rather the point. It isn’t the intentions of government that I fear, but rather the incompetence of government. It is the stupid things they do while trying to do the right thing that really worries me. 42 days detention is a good example – the government desperately wants to stop terrorism. However, it doesn’t understand that 42 days detention doesn’t actually stop terrorism, and also has all sorts of potentially dangerous side effects. You can see the same thing happening with the economy. The Labour government swooped in to save the banking sector, like Superman with a fat wallet stuffed with someone else’s cash. As a result of their panicked, knee-jerk and ultimately pointless attempts to head off the recession, the country is nearly bankrupt and the coming recovery is being jeopardised. The government is currently paving our road to hell. With good intentions. Oh, and our money as well.

Then there is the commitment of the modern politician to trite political expediency. We can see this in Gordon Brown’s claim to be securing British jobs for British workers. Fuck knows whether he actually thought what he was saying was actually morally acceptable, but his determination to win the BNP vote led the British Prime Minister to plunge headfirst into the politics of ignorance. Political expediency – or political cowardice, as I’d rather call it – led to Brown jumping on the racist bandwagon. Sure, it is a minor point, relatively speaking, and Brown doesn’t speak for me on this issue or on any other. But it does beg the question of where this political cowardice could lead this ruling elite. I’ve heard some whispers that one of the reasons why we went to war in Iraq was because Blair was afraid of the Tories painting him as weak on security. I don’t know whether this is the truth, but I find the fact that I can consider it as a possible reason for that conflict speaks volumes. I think the desire to win votes now exceeds almost everything else for our politicians. I’m not afraid of them selling their own grandmother for a vote, I’m more afraid of them selling our grandmothers, grandfathers and then us out for an extra couple of votes.

And then we have the problem of the massive bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with “liberal” “democracy” in this country. Of course, with a government this size and with this scope, a large bureaucracy is an inevitability. But the problem with any bureaucracy is that it is fundamentally inhuman and amoral. It does not recognise the human. That is how innocent people can end up with their DNA on a criminal database in perpetuity, and how people can end up dying from cancer despite the drugs that could be used in their treatment being on the market. The bureaucracy, the rules and regulations, further remove people from each other, and do not take into account that basic human compassion that is seen so often when individuals interact with individuals. Most people, if they could help someone with cancer, would do so – however, when it comes to a vast, heavily regulated monolith like say, the NHS, the individuals who make the rules and therefore make the choice are so far detached from the dying person that it becomes a case of “bureaucracy says no”.

Ultimately, I believe humans are capable of great things. They are also capable of being small-minded, self-serving incompetents. I’m in far more danger of being killed by a bad driver than I am by a serial killer; just as I am far more likely to be adversely affected by an incompetent government than I am by a proactively malign one.

Which is why government needs to be – why it must be – limited as much as possible in its scope. It means well, but its actions end up being anything other than positive. And the unintended but still devastating impact of government can only really be minimised by returning as much power and as much responsibility as possible to the people.