So what does that have to do with Politics?
Well it’s simple really, we are the end users of the outcome of the political machine. We are the ones who operate the finished product and after an election it is the people who are the many parts of the machine, the nuts and bolts so to speak. It is this thinking that has got me to view government as a very much non existent entity, at least it does not exist in the way that many people wold like to think of it.
I believe we see government as a mechanism which works tirelessly for us 24 hours a day.
Now think about that statement and then consider the following. Let’s take for instance the idea that if we are out of work government should create jobs for us. We hear this all the time and mostly from politicians wanting to be elected. This does not really work for many reasons.
- We have moved increasingly quickly in the last fifteen years since the advent of the internet, from a country which manufactured things to a country driven by the service industry and into the digital age. and I believe that we are still in the middle of making and understanding that transition. If you ask many young people who are getting ready to leave school and consider their future, if the service industry is one for them, many will turn up their noses at the idea. However the service industry is one of the fastest growing in many once industrial driven countries. This is driven by the private sector and not the government.
- So lets say we go to the job centre and ask for a job. Many of the people working their do not want to be their in the first place and are also looking for the same job as you are, you know, that dream job. At the end of the day they leave and go home to their children, their bills, their house repairs and...well you get the picture they are people just like you and I. After they have taken all of your details they file them into a computer program which inappropriately matches you to a job which does not fit your needs, interests or skills.
- The person working at the job centre goes home at 5pm and does not take your file with them. They will not spend the evening pouring over job vacancies that will match perfectly to your needs and they will be faced with another several hundred ‘you’s’ the next day and so the cycle continues.
- The only real thing resembling a government is a set of buildings and a decree. In our case it’s the Magna Carta and for America it’s the Bill Of Rights and the Constitution. There is a ‘Bills Butchers’ I use that as an example because when an independent business person starts a small business, it rests on that person and when you go to the business and ask to speak to 'Bill', chances are that you get to. If you go down to the local government office and ask to speak to the government, besides looking at you quizzically, you might get to speak with the clerk or they will ask what part of government you wish to address and when that is decided you will be put on a waiting list and then passed over to an intern and...well you get the idea.
Let me explain at this point that I am not a negative person or down on the government, but I do marvel at people who say that we are owed something. Things like schools or medical coverage or housing or a job and so on. My question is to them, who owes us these things and if it is in fact the government then who within that government is responsible and in fact accountable to give it to us?
I will finish by asking this question: If we are ‘Owed’ things and we have the ‘Right’ to things and if two people are born at the same time, which one has the right and which one has the responsibility to give it to the other?
Live Passionately, Ask Why!
