Why should government work?

May 31, 2003

Once upon a time I could say of both parties “they really want the best for people, they just have different ideas of how to do it.” And, generally speaking, I sided with the Democrats.

The new Republican breed—since Gingrich’s Contract on America—has had me doubting that position. And now, with a Republican Congress and a Republican President, we can see what’s really going on. Both Paul Krugman and Molly Ivins have come to the same conclusion.

Krugman and Ivins have both decided—K. from watching the US congress, I. from watching the Texas Lege—that the strategy of the conservative Right is to create a massive financial crisis which will leave governments bankrupt and unable to provide services to its citizens.

This has enormous implications. First of all, when a government can’t provide services, businesses no longer have to compete with the government for those services. If government can’t run prisons anymore, for example, businesses can step in and do it. And the behavior of these businesses is dictated by law, not by moral codes or Constitutions or pressure from the American public.

Secondly, a bankrupt government is in no position to enforce its laws. Rather than change the laws, you starve the policemen. The underfunding of the SEC and OSHA lead to non-enforcement of anti-fraud laws and work-condition requirements. Which means those corporations who provide essential services? They will answer to no one. And if you want those services, you will answer to them.

The tax cuts following tax cuts following tax cuts are nothing less than bloodless way to overthrow representative government with the willing and short-cited blessing of the very people who’s lives will be destroyed.

If you think that’s overstating the case, consider close Bush advisor and Republican Strategest Grover Norquist, who said “I don’t want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

If starved of money, our government will no longer be able to represent or support us. The people with the power will not be the people any more, it will be the corporations.

The only feature that distingushes government from corporations is corporations have to answer to government. They are both powerful forces that can control the lives of people. If government is taken away, corporations will fill that power vacuum. And we will have big government again, but our new big government will not answer to the people the way ours is supposed to. Just like all the non-representative despotisms and feudalisms and Stalinist communisims of the world before it, the new CEO government will answer to only to the personal greed of the most powerful.

Do not fool yourself that you will be on top when Representative government falls. Who will prevent people from taking your land when government is starved? If Rupert Murdoch wants to shut you up, who will tell him “no?” If the RIAA wants to search your home every second Tuesday for pirated CDs, who will you turn to for help defending your home and your privacy?

Do you really want this government to starve? The result will not be anarchy. Anarchy is only anarchy until someone finds a really big stick. There are lots of people who already have really big sticks right now, and when our Representative Government falls because Republicans have starved it to death, we’ll pass right by anarchy stage and straight into corporate feudalism. And you will no longer have a representative government. You will have a government of corporations. And you, my friend, will not be on the board of directors.

And you will have no senators to write. At least, none that can do anything.

And you will have no police to protect you, except the police you pay for.

And you will have no rights, except the rights you pay for.

Enjoy your tax cut.

Posted in Politics