If Everybody Would Just Do What I Say…

One of the greatest errors that a government or politician makes is believing that they can plan a civilization.

Perhaps we’ve all had the thought, “If I were in charge of this mess, surely I could fix it,” about one thing or another. But for some of us, I think we’ve conceived this as, “If everybody would just do what I say, then everything would work out.” Sadly, this is a fatally flawed idea, and I believe it is one that many politicians actually possess. The problem is that the people we are moving around are not inanimate objects, but rather beings of free will. If you remove that free will from them, nothing good happens. It doesn’t improve them as people. It’s sometimes necessary in brief emergency circumstances, like when somebody is on a drug-fueled rampage to kill your family. In that case, sure, take somebody’s free will away. But this whole civilization is not in that circumstance, and never has been. When you take away the free will and self-determinism of a sane individual, you degrade them. Yes, sometimes people make mistakes, but that doesn’t balance out the harm you can do to a person by severely restricting their self-determinism. Yes, there are circumstances in which it’s necessary, but in no way does that make for a sensible argument for why you (or any politician) should be in a position to plan the activities and pattern of an entire civilization.

You may think that I’m just talking about fascism, but I’m not. There is a gradient between total freedom and total control, and on both sides the civilization goes awry. Sadly, in current condition of Mankind, if you were to let everybody do anything they want all the time, many bad things would happen. Also, in order to have a civilization, there does have to be some structure in which people can make decisions and play the game of life. But many (perhaps most) governments of Earth today have taken this much too far. In an attempt to solve the evils they have seen when some people are given too much freedom, they have set up systems that punish or restrict the freedoms of every person.

One of the greatest errors made here is generalization. Some wealthy people are evil, so we want to punish all wealthy people. Some employers are unjust to their employees, so we punish all employers. Some websites have made mistakes about censorship, so we punish all websites. This has happened for so long that we believe this is the way that it must be. That, oh sorry, there’s evil in the world so we have to restrict the freedoms of everybody. But I will put forth a wild opinion–that the restrictions that are put in place almost always lead themselves to more evil in the world than they were designed to prevent.

The only thing that I believe a government can successfully do is provide freedom and safety for its citizens, plus some sort of structure in which they can operate. This may sound like some sort of wild anarchism or libertarianism or whatever you want to say as an -ism. And there are plenty of arguments against it, most of which start with pointing out what happens when you allow people to have freedom. Many of these arguments start with the story of some individual or group that was oppressive when provided that freedom. Often, we have been taught about these individuals or groups as though they were the whole civilization, but usually if you look deeply into it, it was not everybody who was doing the bad behavior, but rather a minority of people involved.

But I’m not forwarding any -ism. I’m saying that this is the only safe thing a government can do. At some point, you have to accept that you’re governing a flawed populace. You’re not going to “fix” people by passing laws. That’s for their religions, therapists, and friends to do. But you could provide a civilization in which their friends, therapists, and religions can operate safely, and in which everybody would be able to do the positive things that they want to do.