THE FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT AND THE LIBERTARIAN SOLUTION
(copyright DJW 1997)
The prevailing wisdom in Chatham County says that government can solve all of our problems; poverty, morality, transportation, roads, entertainment, trash collection, water, art, education, you name it. The SCCLP is here to tell you that the prevailing wisdom is dead wrong.The proof is all around us, and in the news every day. Still, the prevailing wisdom ignores the evidence of its own eyes and calls for making government bigger and more "efficient" "ethical" "responsive" yadder yadder yadder.( to quote a recent "Seinfeld " episode.) And, of course it calls for MORE MONEY. "With more funding we can make this thing work....yadder yadder yadder," and "this time it'll be different." You've heard it all we're sure.
The SCCLP is here to say that if you believe any of THAT we have some real estate in the Arctic we'd like to sell you. The reality is that government was never designed to do any of the wonderful things you and I think it should, and it cannot be redesigned to do them, no matter what laws are passed. Therefor we all have to look for other ways of achieving our objective, a peaceful, richer more productive society with increased prosperity for everyone. The only thing government is designed to do is to protect the individual and its property from attack by others. The way it does this is by having the power of ultimate legal force. The trouble is, absolutely everything it does, from food stamps to road building, the environment to racial quotas, is accomplished by the threat of or use of actual violence against those who would resit it. This makes about as much sense as using an anti- aircraft missile to hunt mosquitoes. (remember the "Monty Python" sketch?) Absolutely everything the government does has a gun or many guns as its ultimate reason for our compliance. We are asking the problems of society to be "solved" by the threat of and use of evermore legal violence. Well the SCCLP is here to tell you that it doesn't and will never work, and the new laws /programs are just new attempts to rectify the failures of the previous laws and programs, which of course were attempts to rectify the failures of the previous laws and programs and so on and so on. One would think that people would be intelligent enough for the penny to have dropped by now - wishful thinking! There's a sucker born every minute.
The social divisions and warring everyone is so acutely aware of today, are a direct result of the escalation of our legal use of force in almost every area of our lives, to attempt to solve problems that ultimate force will never, ever solve. The only thing that this approach guarantees is more government and higher taxes to pay for it, along with a worsening of every problem we mistakenly believe can be solved by government. In fact it is obvious from our explanation for the growth of government, that there is absolutely no need to explain it through conspiracy theories; government grows BECAUSE it fails and because most people still have faith that one day, some how, it will work. Oh it works allright. Will America resemble the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany at that point?
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The only purpose of government is to protect an individual and his / her property through the police and a court system. Absolutely anything else the government gets involved in forces taxpayers to fund projects that government was never designed to run, which consequently allways lose money in the long run and actually have the opposite from their intended effect, so each person has progressively less money to spend on the things he/she wants, ultimately making the whole of Chatham County and the city of Savannah POORER. This is not in anybody's interest , and is contrary to the stated purpose of the Chatham County and city government officials. If it were otherwise , why don't we give our officials ALL of our money, as they obviously know better what to do with it than we do. According to their theory, we,d all become multi millionaires. Remember, More government = less freedom of choice and less money for everyone.
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We believe that outside the only function of government , (the police and courts,) people should be free to keep their money to spend as they wish, the more this principle is adhered to, the better off everyone will be, conversely , the more money the government takes out of our pockets, the worse off we all are, whatever the good intention may be. Until people realise this simple fact, and continue to vote for more government spending to rectify a problem that was made worse by government spending in the first place, the joke is on them and they deserve what they will get, a decreasing standard of living for rich and poor alike.
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Anyone who is crazy enough to believe that the people of Chatham County will be better off if everyone has less money to spend because of increases in taxation, (for WHATEVER reason) is a fool who deserves what they will get, a much lower standard of living, and even more economic staganation than we currently have. If people really wanted more roads and trade centers and the rest, because they thought it would personally benefit them, they would not have to force and be forced to pay for these things. The government would just have to ask for donations or arrange user fee transactions and the money would be freely paid . This is the principle that all successful industries follow. If you want to make money , you have to offer people something they freely value more than the money they give to acquire it , no-one has to be forced to buy the product. This never happens with government funded projects, where nobody gets what they want. This is why they allways lose money and fall apart, no matter how much money is forced to be spent on them. You might as well throw the money straight in the river.(We'd prefer that it was given back.)
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The people in government have no more understanding that the market creates wealth when it is left alone because people get to freely choose what they desire to buy, than you or I do about the workings of sub atomic particles. Thats why theyre in government. They either honestly believe that everyone will be better off if a majority(often a minority) forces a minority to spend money they would otherwise never freely dream of spending, or they just don't care. In actual fact, under their system, coercion, everyone ends up worse off, with fewer choices. That is the truth and beauty of the market, force and coercion never work, freedom of individual choice allways works. The most important question that the citizens of Chatham County must ask themselves is that given the evidence all around us, does it make any sense to continue ignoring the obvious and use ever more coercion to "solve" the problem, like a drunk beating his head against a wall, or are we going to finally admit to ourselves that it has never worked, and instead look at none coercive free exchange alternatives?
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The reality is that the more government is confined to its original intended function, protecting individuals and their lawful property and nothing else, the more prosperous and peaceful a society will be. On the other hand, the further a government strays outside its only intended function, no matter what the imagined good results, the less free and consequently poorer everyone becomes, as their freedom of choice disappears. Freedom breeds peace and prosperity, coercion causes economic decay.The goal of scclp is to get govmt out of absolutely everything outside of directly protecting individuals and their property, in order that individuals can live their lives freely and prosperously in any manner they choose, making their choices freely.
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American government is founded on the principle that the freer individuals are to peacefully pursue their own wants and happiness, the more prosperous and peaceful a society is. That principle goes on to say that the only true function of government is the protection of the individual and its property. Libertarians want more peace and prosperity for everyone, therefor we want government out of absolutely every area outside of this one function , so that everyone is able to peacefully get more of what they want. Government has demonstrated that it fails miserably at everything that it tries to do that it was never designed to do in the first place. Libertarians wish to return American govmt to its original principle and Americans to peace and prosperity.
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1. When two parties exchange goods its because each wants the other more than he wants what he allready has. Both benefit, both are happy.
2. When one side forces the other side to give up what he has and take what is offered, only one side benefits. One remains unhappy as he no longer has what he had before which had greater value. This is how government operates . Government has a legal monopoly on the coercion business. Consequently, the bigger government is, the more coercion, the less happy and poorer everyone gets.
3 The SCCLP wants to get rid of as much government as possible, replacing it with voluntary user fee based market systems.
4 The SCCLP ideally wants a Chatham County where only free exchange between individuals occurs, and all forced exchange is illegal. It would be governments only job to prevent these coerced exchanges from happening, not to be the largest participant in them, as it currently is.
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The truth about legal theft ;
If I club you in the head and steal your money etc. you lose I win .
Governments are created to stop this happening.
If I can legally club you in the head and steal your possessions, or get government to do it for me, again I win you lose.
Government was not created to make this possible.
Provided you live to survive my / the govmts attack, you will try to do the same thing to someone else, after all , if they can legally do it to you, then why shouldnt you do it to them?
Pretty soon, everyones doing it to everyone else and we are all fighting one another for a bigger piece of the government pie purely as a defensive measure.Its kill or be killed. This is not in the interest of society.
Now nobody is getting richer, except the govmt officials who hand out the favors and make the ever changing rules. Everyone else is poorer and too busy fighting to notice. (except us Libertarians!)
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The SCCLP wants to reduce or eliminate government involvement in every area except police and courts, thereby getting rid of most government personel and having huge tax cuts. With the money everybody then gets to keep they can pay for private run competing services in all areas of their lives formerly run by govmt. Because they are private competing businesses in a market to please consumers, the consumer will get more , better service provided at far cheaper cost than they will ever get through a govmt run service. This is true of everything from roads, sewer and drainage, to education, fire service, welfare and everything else government has stuck its nose into.
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The liberatrian position is simple, more government and taxes will bring more poverty for everyone. When people wake up and realise this they will be ready for the libertarian solution, getting government completely out of absolutely everything except the police and court system. Untill we do, we are all doomed to wallow in government failure heaped upon government failure and a lower standard of living than is otherwise possible. Otherwise , why dont we give the government all of our money, as according them , they can spend it more wisely than we can; and this will lead to greater riches for everyone?
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George Washington said " Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force." The SCCLP wants to remove all the force in everyone's life by removing government from every area except the police and the courts.
(copyright DJW 1997)