KentForLiberty pages

Sunday, August 01, 2021

Government wrong tool for society

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for June 30, 2021)




You are smart enough to know a hammer is the wrong tool for driving a screw. Yes, It can work in an emergency, but it isn't best and can cause future problems. Either use a screwdriver for the screw or find a nail for the hammer.

In the same way, government is the wrong tool for solving society's problems. It might appear to work, but you'd do better to find the right tool for the job. A social tool, not an antisocial tool.

Politics is antisocial. Someone only wins by making someone else lose. A social solution, though, is always win/win. At best, politics means you've fixed something by shuffling problems around. At worst, you solved nothing and created new, bigger problems in the process-- think of the examples of drug prohibition and anti-gun legislation.

Crime, homelessness, pandemics, etc. can all be addressed by finding voluntary solutions rather than non-consensual schemes. You also have to accept that some things can't be solved by any means; you just find ways to deal with them. Ways which don't make things worse by violating anyone's rights.

If you believe the only way to fix a problem is to steal, through taxation, the funds your project needs, and to threaten or attack people with legislation to make them cooperate with your plan, you've become as big a problem as the one you sought to solve. You solved nothing; you only replaced one problem with another problem you created. This isn't a net gain.

I have seen liberty work every time it is put to the test. Not "tried" in a weak, piecemeal sense, but fully embraced. The fears dreamed up as an excuse for violating liberty didn't come to pass. They never will.

Remember, liberty doesn't mean doing whatever you want, but doing whatever doesn't actually violate anyone else, regardless of how others may feel about what you're doing. Liberty is freedom tempered with responsibility, and your primary responsibility is to not violate the equal and identical rights of others. It's simple, but hard for people to grasp when they'd rather not understand.

Liberty, in every situation, provides the best possible tools. This is because it's not a single tool, but a complete tool set along with a machine for making new tools which never existed before; tools you didn't know you needed. No, it isn't perfect. Nothing is. It's still a far cry better than the alternative.

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Enemies? Or just problems to solve?


I try to keep in mind that my enemy isn't people so much as a way some people behave-- anyone can behave in that way under certain conditions. If you archate, it doesn't matter what you call yourself-- you are the enemy of liberty, society, and responsibility, which makes you an enemy of mine. 

But you can stop acting that way and you can be forgiven. 

Evil is an action, not a person. (Although, if a person consistently chooses evil behavior, labeling that person as evil is helpful shorthand.) 

Someone doesn't need to be evil to be subject to self-defense; they only need to be committing an act of archation-- acting in an evil way-- where the best choice at the moment seems to be using force to stop them. 

It's not personal, it's necessary. They aren't an enemy, they are just a problem. No need to imagine they are more than they are.

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