What’s The Point of Government?
To waste money, amiright? (ba-dum tssh.)
Actually, I am right. But it’s more complicated than that.
Wikipedia defines “government” as “a means by which state policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining the policy.” It adds that governments “normally consists of legislature, administration, and judiciary.” There are, obviously, a lot of forms of government, from extremely centralized ones in which a single person has all the decision-making power (despotism, monarchy, dictatorships, etc) to moderately decentralized ones where “everyone has a say, if by ‘everyone’ we mean ‘only the people who are actually important’ ”(timocracy, oligarchy, etc) to extremely decentralized ones where they try to make the idea of “everybody has a say” actually true (republics, democracy, communism, etc).
But in practice, most of us interact with the government in one very specific way: it limits what we can do.
“It’s a free country,” many of us have groused after getting pulled over by a policeman for speeding. “Why can’t I do as I want?” And then there’s the stories of endless waste and corruption, like airplane programs that will cost $1 trillion and produce a warplane that can’t even fire its weapons because the onboard computer is too buggy. And then there’s taxes: “Who’s FICA? Why’s he getting all my money?” to quote Rachel Green of Friends. Yes, it seems like the whole point of the government is to take our money and use it on… what? Nothing, apparently. Nothing tangible, certainly.
So let’s talk capitalism.
Capitalism is driven by the profit motive. It’s driven by greed. Capitalism is a system that wants to turn a profit from everything. It’s a system that works, by and large, because humans are greedy. (It’s generally helpful to incentivize a human vice, because humans are, in general, more likely to express vices than virtues.)
Capitalism and government can work together, strengthening each other; but they can also end up at cross-purposes. Ultimately, this depends on the policies which said government chooses to enact. A government that favors free-market laissez-faire capitalism will get along with a capitalist economy a lot better than a social-democrat government, say, which believes in redistribution of wealth along lines that support social justice. (Of course, a lot of capitalists resist wealth redistribution for various reasons.)
For good or ill, American democracy favors capitalism. It’s not hard to see why; America’s industrial might is part of what helped us strike decisive victories in World War I and II, and the strength of our military today is not just in how well-equipped and well-trained it is, but also how mobile; Trump could send the nation’s entire armed forces to the other side of the planet today and have quite a lot of it arrive within 24 hours. All of this is possible because America Does Shit Fast… and America does shit fast because capitalism incentivizes whatever makes more money. Which, typically, involves doing the job fast and well. And, by weird coincidence for an economy that emphasizes profit, not cheaply.
There’s also the fact that America values profit more than human rights, and always has. This does not make us distinct among governments— frankly, basically every political entity in history has prioritized this way — but it does cause some interesting conflicts with that whole “certain inalienable Rights” thing that we keep parroting about.
It also explains why our government seems to have so much trouble doing the one of the most important things a government can do, which is look out for its citizens.
In capitalism, the role of the average citizen is as a source of labor. Human labor is the cheapest commodity there is — “There’s a sucker born every minute,” Hugh Jackman supposedly said in a line that was cut from the film The Greatest Showman — and capitalism exploits it unabashedly. (Capitalism is not unique from other economies in doing this, but that’s a different article, so we’ll leave off for now.) How many pithy Facebook pictures have we seen, pointing out that the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation? That’s capitalism at work. “Get more, pay less” is capitalism’s motto… not only in terms of what price it presents to the consumer, but in what paycheck it presents to its labor. After all, the less you pay to those dirty, useless workers, the more profits you get to keep for yourself.
In government, the role of the average citizen is something other than labor. Governments have a responsibility towards their citizens: those citizens need to be provided with food and shelter, or at least a means of acquiring food and shelter. Most governments would probably like to abstain from that responsibility — who wouldn’t want to? — but if they do, the citizens revolt and overthrow said government. Governments form a social contract with their citizens: the citizens trade away some of their freedoms (the freedom to indiscriminately murder) in exchange for certain privileges (the privilege of not being indiscriminately murdered) (at least in theory). If those privileges aren’t delivered upon, the citizens start getting restive. It’s been seen over and over again throughout history, with varying levels of drama and/or bloodshed involved.
These two goals are at odds with each other. Capitalism seeks to exploit the common man, while government seeks to protect it. This is why a government falling under the influence of capitalism — say, through a swamp of big money, a swamp that someone might need to drain — starts abandoning its responsibilities towards its people.
To capitalism, the point of any institution is to turn a profit. If you can’t make money off of it, capitalism has no use for it. And that’s why capitalism has no use for government. The point of government is to be a charity — to hand out money, to alleviate social injustice, to take money from those who have it and give it to those who do not. The reason we have government is to prioritize human dignity over profit.
What is the point of a government? To waste money? Yes, to a capitalist mindset. But to someone who is actually grounded in reality, to someone who is not blinded by greed, a government has a different purpose: to convert money into quality-of-life.
What has the government done for us? What has it wasted all this money on? Well, to start off, the roads. The roads that every capitalist’s workforce drives to work on. Without the government, commerce as we know it would be impossible — especially here in the Silicon Valley, where people often live too far from their offices to walk to in an hour. (And sometimes in a day, if you work here but live in Tracy or Manteca.) Education, there’s another good one: the government has taken it upon itself to make sure that everyone, by the age of 18, at least knows how to add 2 + 2 — and, occasionally, more complicated concepts beyond that. Capitalists don’t need to teach their employees how to read, because of the government. Healthcare? There is always Medicare and Medicaid to fall back on if you’re sick. If someone tries to murder you, that’s illegal, and they (the person trying to murder you) can get in trouble with the government for it. Likewise, if someone is trying to murder you, you can call for police officers, who — due to taxpayer dollars paying their salaries — will throw themselves into the line of fire to protect you. (Unless you’re black. But that’s another matter.) The same is true of firefighters, who will rush into a burning building; and elementary-school teachers, who will throw themselves into the line of fire to protect your children. (Because that’s obviously the best use of a teacher’s education and training.)
The role of a government is to convert money into quality-of-life improvements that are not tangible — things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But those things cannot be monetized by a capitalism. Consequently, capitalism disdains them. Capitalism does not care about anything it cannot make money from, no matter what that thing is or how necessary it is to the continued existence of the human species. Capitalism does not care about “air quality” or “global warming” or “potable water” or “education.” It does care about whether you can buy food… but only because it can make a profit off of the fact that people need to eat. The moment they figure out how to monetize air, you can bet that suddenly capitalism will give an awful lot of [bleep]s about breathability.
Today, though, we’re not there. And consequently our government becomes more and more poorly funded. The United States Postal Service, one of the key foundations of the First Amendment and its right to free speech, is disintegrating. Teachers are underpaid for what they’re supposed to do, much less the above-and-beyond of getting shot at by a disgruntled teen. The roads are crumbling, there isn’t enough housing, salaries aren’t keeping up with inflation, and entire industries are being closed without any thought spared to what its former employees — who still need jobs, so that they can do things like “buy food”— are going to do now. My own industry might be next on the chopping block, once somebody figures out how to program a computer to do it. And keep in mind that I don’t work in a coal mine; I work at one of the most successful video-game companies in history. But that won’t save me.
Capitalism is the only economic system that works, at least so far. It’s also the most dangerous one. It has to be counterbalanced by a government that does the opposite of capitalism: cares about the little guy. If the role of capitalism is to make money, then the role of government is — must be — to waste money, by converting it into the things that capitalism doesn’t and can’t provide.
And if we’re concerned about bureaucratic inefficiency now, and how much of our money is genuinely being wasted by a government that does nothing, the truth is that we need to double down and waste more of it. If the problem is that teachers aren’t being paid enough, then obviously they need to be paid more. If the problem is that the post office can’t get a package across the country in twenty-one shipping days, even after “John,” the eBay vendor I purchased from, paid extra for Priority 3-Day Shipping (not that I’ve experienced this or anything), then we need to pay them more. If the government is understaffed, we need to staff it. The mentality of “Get more, pay less” does not work past a certain threshold, when the employee simply cannot do any more than they already do. You cannot simply declare that your employees are superhuman, you have to either 1) spend more money, to pay them more, or 2) spend more money, to hire more of them. Or, if you’re a business owner, 3) declare bankruptcy, deploy your golden parachute, and pocket the millions, and walk away… but that’s never an option for a government, unless the destination of the “walking away” is “towards a guillotine.” So, unless we want to overthrown the government, the answer has to be to pay higher taxes, hire more people, thin out the workload.
(And yes, I am fully aware that certain people really, genuinely want to overthrow the government. Those people genuinely think that their semi-automatic firearms will protect them against drones, bombs and beyond-visual-range missiles. And that’s all we’ll say on that score.)
And hey! The current estimate is that the USPS employs 7.5 million people. If my recent experiences with their efficiency are any indication, they could easily stand to employ twice that number. (And smarter ones too. It didn’t just take 21 days to get across the country, it went back to Houston before someone finally noticed that it was going to California, not from it, and turned it around.) How about that — job creation! We could create 7.5 million jobs just like that!!!
But nobody could make money off those employees, so nobody wants to. Because making money is the only thing that matters.
It’s always interesting that the people you see most advocating for the shrinking of government, and thus the sparing of citizens from the burden of providing taxes to run it, are the ones who claim to be Christian. You know, the ones who believe that “Love of money is the root of all evil.” The ones who seem to prove 1 Timothy right by putting the love of money before every other priority, such as the health of their fellow citizens, or their drinking water. Heck, the budget director of the current administration recently claimed that depriving the elderly of federally-provided food is “one of the most compassionate things we can do”. See, it’s compassionate because, sure, old people may starve and die, but at least taxpayers aren’t wasting their money on something silly, like keeping them alive! The death of strangers is better than giving away something you don’t need and can’t use!
It’s always confused me, this love of money. The thing about money is that, in and of itself, it means nothing. Money is potential energy; its magic lies in the fact that it can be converted into things you need. In other words, there’s a maximum quantity of money that any given person needs to have. Once you can buy, or have bought, everything you need or even might need, then your money is just collecting dust, accomplishing nothing and helping no one. Once you have collecting-dust amounts of much money, keeping it to yourself is an act of supreme selfishness, the same as withholding medicine from a dying man. And yet there are so many rich people who want to do exactly that.
And before you argue that it’s difficult to achieve that level of wealth, I’d like to point out that, last year alone, billionaires made enough money to end extreme poverty seven times over. Billionaires amass enough collecting-dust money to alleviate extreme poverty every fifty-two days.
Can we be honest? Can we be thoroughly, uncomfortably honest? It is immoral to be unnecessarily wealthy. Having collecting-dust money, and then keeping it anyway, makes you a bad person. Having collecting-dust money and keeping any portion of it makes you a bad person. We should stop pretending otherwise. We should stop celebrating wealth as a measure of virtue. Of success, sure… but success is not necessarily a virtue in and of itself. Hitler was the most successful murderer in history, but the public at large does not admire that success. It shouldn’t. Nor should it admire success at wealth accumulation. Success, in itself, is neither good nor bad. It matters what game you were successful at. And the game of “Having the most money” is an immoral and evil one.
And that means we have to take a long, hard look at capitalism, which is built around the dream of being unnecessarily wealthy. We need to take a long look at capitalism, which rewards the flaw of greed with the flaw of wealth. And we have to take a long hard look at our government, whose role is — whose role must be — artificially limiting the amount of money any single person can have or gain.
Does that sound anti-capitalist? It should. Capitalism is, like any other thing, best in moderation. It needs to be diluted, by — what? Religion? Charity? Communism? I don’t know, but it needs to be regulated. And with America (led, of course, by that bloviating blob in the Oval Office) abandoning all pretense at regulating it, we had best be concerned about what happens next.
