The Purpose of Government
To serve, or to exploit?
Photo by Cristofer Maximilian on Unsplash
Like many people who grew up in America over the past 50 years or so, I learned that the purpose of government was generally to allow for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that the government existed to do the things behind the scenes (build roads, fund schools, provide security) to make those things possible.
As I grew older, I saw that things weren’t quite that simple, and that the government was sometimes inefficient, sometimes corrupt, but if they failed in serving the interests of a broad swath of Americans, they would be voted out of office.
We are now at a point in American history where most people don’t believe that government works for them, and they know that for the most part - they can’t do a damn thing about it.
About a decade ago (2014), Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years of data to answer the question: Does the government represent the people?
Here is their conclusion:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Their work aggregated information from 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. They compared what the public wanted to what they got. They found that the opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
What they found did matter was … money. They found that a law would get passed if economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists wanted such a law. The rest of us are just along for the ride.
We are modern day serfs. Just serfs with smart-phones and Netflix, you know … to distract us.
What the Big Beautiful Bill Did.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” that just passed through the US Senate and House and was signed by the president, is the culmination of 50 years of government using most of American citizens as consumers to keep the machine running and suckers to be exploited. When the smoke cleared from the frantic voting of the Senate and House last week, hoping no one would notice, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the net effect of the bill would be regressive. The poorest 30% would be the worst off, and the richest 10% would be the best off, with their income expected to increase about 2.3%. What’s a little more taken from the poor and given to the rich after 50 years of the same …
That is a great way to run a society … into the ground.
What is coming.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” -Abraham Lincoln.
Those who wish to further perpetuate modern day feudalism might want to consider that the right to revolt against tyranny is right there in one of our founding documents. I assume that at some point; after 50 years of regressive tax policy, of bleeding the poor to feed the rich, of the destruction of our environment, people might rise up. That hasn’t happened so far, but the elites in our society seem to be seeing how far they can push things. That never ends well.
The right to revolt is right there in the Declaration of Independence, which states; “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.”
And then there is this: “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
This story has been told many times before and that it often ends up badly for those trying to consolidate power. At some point, society has had enough, and the pitchforks or guillotines come out.
That’s where we are headed - as we were about 100 years ago. We avoided it then because the elites in America realized that the inequality of America was unsustainable. Are the elites of today at least as wise as their counterparts 100 years ago?
I have a feeling we will find out soon.
Thanks for this Oakie. Good stuff. Not that it's surprising.
I have come to believe (and I would argue that pre/historical evidence supports this view) that our governing institutions have arisen in order to protect a small minority of ‘elite’—and have been doing this for millennia; it is neither new nor unique to Modernity. Once our growing complex societies started having a surplus of resources and required organisational structures to allocate them, individuals/families/groups gained ‘power’ and tended to not only consolidate it but grew to maintain and expand it over time. This Conflict Theory (as opposed to the Integrationist Theory that argues disproportionate influence and power of our elite is the ‘natural’ remuneration for those that serve the interests of the masses) is heavily denigrated by the ‘elite’, preferring to push the Integrationist one.