The Three P’s of Government
by Ray Smyth
In this late stage of Australia 's election campaign, one
is hard pressed to find meaningful debate anywhere about the role of
government. Despite a 24/7 news cycle and
endless political commentary on talk radio; most Australians have not once in
their lives heard the question posed, “What is the purpose of
Certainly, we hear that “the government should
do this” or “the government should not do that” in regard to particular issues,
but nowhere will you hear a meaningful discussion about the underlying mission
of government. Indeed, answering this
question might not be all that beneficial to our
chattering classes, because once it is answered; there is little need for hours
and hours
of more talk.
Clarifying the role of government makes the
answers to most political questions rather simple and unambiguous. It is hard
not to suspect that many of our politicians avoid this subject intentionally.
If Australia
is truly “a free country,” then there can be only one answer to this question.
The purpose of government is to defend its constituents against aggression..
Since “liberty” and
“the non-aggression principle” are one and the
same, it is impossible for government to have any other purpose, or any
additional role. As Government is by
definition the societal use of
force, any action of government other than
defence against aggression is coercion. When coercion is practiced by
government, it is called tyranny.
Freedom is the ability to exercise one's will in
the absence of coercion. Therefore, freedom is impossible once government is
allowed to perform any function other than defence. If freedom is
exercising ones will in the absence of coercion,
one cannot be free while being coerced. Two plus two cannot equal five.
This leaves a multitude of actions that
government must be prohibited from engaging in. They generally fall into three
categories, which I like to call “the Three P's.” The three P's are to prevent,
to promote, and to provide. There is no way for
government to engage in any of these three
activities without destroying the liberty that it supposedly exists to defend.
Yet, this is 99 percent of what government in modern Australia does.
Most Australians look to government to prevent
crime. Once a particular heinous crime is reported in the media, there are
universal outcries about the failure of government to prevent it.
Almost no one stops to think about what it
really means for government to “prevent crime.”
By definition, to prevent something is to act
before it happens.
Since all government action represents the use
of force, government can only prevent crime by initiating force against people
who have committed no crime. Force must always be initiated by someone. The
initiating party is the aggressor.
There is no other possibility. This is not
merely a theoretical or academic argument. Think for a moment about the results
of government’s
various “crime prevention” efforts. Gun control
disarms the victims of crimes while empowering violent criminals who don't care
about gun control laws.
Economic regulations which attempt to prevent
fraud insulate protected corporations from competition, emboldening them to
commit more fraud. Worst of all, the War on Terror, the ultimate
government crime prevention program, has
harassed thousands of Australian citizens while allowing terrorists to walk
onto planes with explosives in their shoes, underwear (and who knows what
else), and has laid waste to an entire nation in order to determine that the
“weapons of mass destruction” it supposedly possessed
did not in fact exist.
In addition to preventing crime (including
terrorism), that war also claims to undertake another of the Three P's: to
“promote.” Once it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction
in
Iraq, a new rationalization was needed for our
brutal invasion of that country. That new reason turned out to be our
missionary desire to “promote emocracy.”
Without getting into the erroneous perception
that “democracy” and “freedom” are synonymous, it should be quite clear after
several years of uninterrupted martial law in Iraq that our government has failed
to achieve either democracy or freedom.
Only government can be capable of missing the
irony of ordering people at gunpoint to be free. While it might play for some
good laughs in a Peter Sellers or Monty Python movie, it is really quite
horrifying when one considers that our
government takes this position in all seriousness.
It is not only in foreign policy that government
reaps disastrous results when trying to “promote.” Consider its attempts to
promote “clean energy.” One need look no further than the ethanol fiasco or
“Climategate” to see the results government
gets in promoting respect for the environment.
The same underlying reason accounts for the
similarity of results when government tries to “promote” or to “prevent.” In
both cases, force is initiated against individuals who have committed
no aggression themselves. In order for
government to “promote” anything, it must act. When government acts in the
absence of aggression, it commits aggression. By committing aggression
against and therefore overriding the decision of
thousands of individuals, government causes innumerable unintended
consequences. All of them can be traced to the initiation of force.
The third of the Three P's is by far the most
destructive when undertaken by government: to provide. The illusion that
government can “provide” anything springs from a loss of recognition of what
government is. Government is the use of force, not by an individual, but by all
of society. As it is a
destructive force, rather than a creative force,
it can produce nothing. Therefore, it can only provide something to one citizen
that it has forcefully seized from another. This holds true whether it is
attempting to provide healthcare, education, housing, or any other form of
property.
The fact that human beings spend the majority of
their time on earth labouring to fulfil their wants or needs makes this the
most costly of the Three P's. While warfare represents violent aggression
against millions of people, government's usurpation of
human labour initiates violence against
everyone.
While the cost of warfare in human lives cannot
be expressed in dollars and cents, there is at least a limit to the amount of
lives it can affect and the length of time it will go on (despite government's
best efforts to make it universal and indefinite). However, once government has
claimed a right to the labour of its constituents, no one is spared and the
subjugation never ends.
While the active wars in Iraq and Afghanistan amount to less than
$200 billion per year (as if those amounts were not staggering themselves), the
government spends millions of dollars each year
attempting to provide its citizens with healthcare,
retirement benefits, education, housing and other necessities.
Government's results in all of these areas are
the same: disastrous.
The healthcare, education, and housing provided
by government are more expensive, of lower quality, and in shorter supply than
would be the case if government did not attempt to provide them.
Aggression cannot create prosperity any more
than it can create freedom.
Thomas Paine wrote that “government is at best a
necessary evil.”
He understood clearly what government is: an
institution of violence. As individuals, we understand that the need may arise
to commit violence against another human being, but only justifiably for one
reason: to defend our lives against aggression.
Should we be faced with that unfortunate choice,
we may be justified in resorting to violence but afterwards regret that the
need to do so arose. Most importantly, no sane person claims a right to
initiate
violence under any other circumstances. As we do
not possess this power as individuals, we cannot delegate this power to
government. Any legitimate power possessed by government must derive from the
individuals who constitute it.
To put it most succinctly, government must
always be limited to a negative power. It is the societal extension of the individual
right of self defence. As individuals cannot use force to prevent, promote, or
provide, government cannot either. Individuals have
no right to force one another to do anything,
even if they believe that it is in their victim's best interest.
So, whenever the question arises of whether
government should involve itself in some new
aspect of its citizens' lives, remember the
Three P's. If the new program represents any of them, it is time for each
individual to exercise his most basic right in respect to his government: the
Fourth 'P,' which is to PROHIBIT.
2Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
Leonce Kealy
Honorable Member of The
Electors' Parliaments of Australia
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