Recently, in one of the forums that I frequent, the question was posed: "...the government and its actions surely have a big impact on all of our lives, so what role or responsibility do you feel the government should have?" Such a discussion can quickly devolve into partisan politics and very superficial viewpoints, while the underlying concepts are ignored. With that in mind, this was my response:
That is a tall order, and can get complex pretty rapidly.
Roughly -
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence sums up intent beautifully:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Couldn't have said it better myself...
Parsing, that means government has the obligation to provide, as much as possible, "life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all of those governed. All else flows from that.
"Life" means the government has to protect the lives of the governed through defense against outsiders and insiders. Outsiders is the easiest. A strong defense, and all that entails is a duty. Protection from insiders is more difficult. Ethnic group violence, like the Black Hand, and anarchists, and the neo-nazis and lynch mobs of the past were pretty simple to target. Subtler forms of depriving citizens of their lives start to impinge on perceived "freedoms". Did the Dukes (surname, not title) have the right to run coal mines in a way that killed thousands of miners working for them, even though safety could be implemented at low cost? Ultimately, it was decided that the lives of the employees trumped the rights of the employer to run roughshod.
The employer/employee relationship is a great example of the difficulties involved and the problems in attempting to run a class-less society and still maintain the perks that people of the upper crust demand. The prudent and practical method of intervention was to establish a bureau of mines and oversight of the mining practices. In a minimalist government, that would have been handled in a civil court. However, for that minimal government class-less society to work, the value of a human life would have to be determined and fixed at a single price by law. Joe Miner would have a value of $1,000,000 and Commodore Vanderbilt would have a value of $1,000,000. A mine accident where Joe was killed would be sufficiently damaging to the Dukes that stringent safety measures would be imposed by them voluntarily. However... the value of Joe Miner to society is clearly not as much as that of Commodore Vanderbilt, who promoted railroad and ship development that benefited all, instead of picking away at black rocks. A society that claims equal treatment under the law CANNOT say overtly that Joe is worth $1,000 and the Commodore is worth $1,000,000,000,000.
What government was then forced to do was balance two totally conflicting concepts - one of equal rights and one of value relative to the benefit to society, which can loosely be translated to a person's station in life.
Depending on personal beliefs, each individual will perceive government as too restrictive or too lenient. The key concept to understand is that NEITHER extreme works, and only a balance can form a least offensive governmental intervention in life. If you remove the cults of personality, this is the root source of 99% of the debate on government.
Hegel (German philosopher) and Jung (psychoanalyst) studied the master/slave employer/employee relationships and determined that for wholeness, the two extremes had to integrate, and that from that integration a greater consciousness would be formed. That is great in theory, but with our educational system being what it is, most people are not developed enough in their thought to get beyond "I'm paying you, your bases are mine" or "the Masta is workin' me too hard."
Pure communism or socialism is so insane that the countries attempting to practice it quickly devolved into dictatorships and a society with a very small group of upper crust demigods. Then those societies failed out of lack of innovation and the ossification of the structure of goods distribution and internal development.
Interestingly, the past few decades have presented a similar problem in the U.S., where the laws are ossifying, and stultifying innovation and growth, and the upper class is becoming more rarefied and the middle class being stripped of value.
I'd go on to discuss liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but the post is already too long.
__________________
Roughly -
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence sums up intent beautifully:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Couldn't have said it better myself...
Parsing, that means government has the obligation to provide, as much as possible, "life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all of those governed. All else flows from that.
"Life" means the government has to protect the lives of the governed through defense against outsiders and insiders. Outsiders is the easiest. A strong defense, and all that entails is a duty. Protection from insiders is more difficult. Ethnic group violence, like the Black Hand, and anarchists, and the neo-nazis and lynch mobs of the past were pretty simple to target. Subtler forms of depriving citizens of their lives start to impinge on perceived "freedoms". Did the Dukes (surname, not title) have the right to run coal mines in a way that killed thousands of miners working for them, even though safety could be implemented at low cost? Ultimately, it was decided that the lives of the employees trumped the rights of the employer to run roughshod.
The employer/employee relationship is a great example of the difficulties involved and the problems in attempting to run a class-less society and still maintain the perks that people of the upper crust demand. The prudent and practical method of intervention was to establish a bureau of mines and oversight of the mining practices. In a minimalist government, that would have been handled in a civil court. However, for that minimal government class-less society to work, the value of a human life would have to be determined and fixed at a single price by law. Joe Miner would have a value of $1,000,000 and Commodore Vanderbilt would have a value of $1,000,000. A mine accident where Joe was killed would be sufficiently damaging to the Dukes that stringent safety measures would be imposed by them voluntarily. However... the value of Joe Miner to society is clearly not as much as that of Commodore Vanderbilt, who promoted railroad and ship development that benefited all, instead of picking away at black rocks. A society that claims equal treatment under the law CANNOT say overtly that Joe is worth $1,000 and the Commodore is worth $1,000,000,000,000.
What government was then forced to do was balance two totally conflicting concepts - one of equal rights and one of value relative to the benefit to society, which can loosely be translated to a person's station in life.
Depending on personal beliefs, each individual will perceive government as too restrictive or too lenient. The key concept to understand is that NEITHER extreme works, and only a balance can form a least offensive governmental intervention in life. If you remove the cults of personality, this is the root source of 99% of the debate on government.
Hegel (German philosopher) and Jung (psychoanalyst) studied the master/slave employer/employee relationships and determined that for wholeness, the two extremes had to integrate, and that from that integration a greater consciousness would be formed. That is great in theory, but with our educational system being what it is, most people are not developed enough in their thought to get beyond "I'm paying you, your bases are mine" or "the Masta is workin' me too hard."
Pure communism or socialism is so insane that the countries attempting to practice it quickly devolved into dictatorships and a society with a very small group of upper crust demigods. Then those societies failed out of lack of innovation and the ossification of the structure of goods distribution and internal development.
Interestingly, the past few decades have presented a similar problem in the U.S., where the laws are ossifying, and stultifying innovation and growth, and the upper class is becoming more rarefied and the middle class being stripped of value.
I'd go on to discuss liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but the post is already too long.
