I see increasing criticism of “the government” and the politicians and bureaucrats that we employ to work in it.
The internet and social media have provided innumerable “places” to complain and criticize but that does not seem to result in much being done about any of these issues.
Most people seem to expect “the government” to solve these problems but what is “the government”.
The government is just people that were elected or hired to serve the rest of the people who pay for their wages and the things they decide to do.

These employees that we pay cannot and do not build and maintain infrastructure, teach our children, diagnose and treat our illnesses, maintain law and order, secure our borders or manage any enterprises that provide valued goods and services for willing buyers to purchase.

All of the necessary work is done by the common people whose cooperative productive efforts create the wealth of the nation and determine its future.

The people called “the government” can only do 2 things.
1. They can take some of what productive people have earned and spend it as they like to.
2. They can make and impose more restrictions on our lives and freedoms and force us to comply.

Our “social contract” with the people called “the government” gives them the legal right to use force to impose their decisions on the rest of the people and Democracy is intended to prevent this entitlement to use force from being abused.

When we ask these people called “the government” to help the citizens that employ them they will try to do it by spending more of other people’s money and creating more legislation to regulate and control our lives.

That is all they can or know how to do.

We common people need to be thinking about the consequences of expecting “the government” to be able to help solve our problems and take more notice of the evidence that those well intended efforts are actually making our problems worse.

Should we:
1. Keep allowing these people we employ to spend more of our earned incomes and force us to comply with more restrictive regulations (of our lives, freedoms, private property and ownership of our own bodies)

or

2. Tell them to get out of the way so we can get on with doing what needs to be done for ourselves and one another without so much interference?

The way in which the common people get to tell their employees in their government what they want or do not want them to do is called the political process or perhaps more accurately the GAME OF THRONES in which different TEAMS (called political parties) compete with one another for the prestige, authority and power of governing the nation and the rest of its people.

I will have more to say about that Game of Thrones in future posts.