17A033 The Masquerade by Jim Davies, 9/26/2017    

Government is a gigantic masquerade, a massive pretense from top to bottom. Here are a few examples.

This summer one of my favorite T-shirts came to the end of its useful life; it still proclaimed true truth, but it had become ragged after several years. It was time to replace it, and here is shown the result. The message is eternal.

Government pretends to defend us, from foreign enemies. But it devotes its entire State Department to creating enemies in the first place; and forces us to pay $640 billion a year for the incredibly dangerous process; $2,000 per man, woman and child. That's not the biggest of the government waste dumpsters, but I list it first because if that goes pear-shaped, all other items won't matter.

It pretends to defend us from domestic criminals, but hardly ever defends anyone; its police sometimes clear up the mess after the attack is ended, and sometimes convicts and locks up the perp. But even with a 5-minute response time, they almost never arrive in time to prevent it. Meanwhile they kill children playing with plastic guns, and teens gathering for an open-air party, while working steadily to outlaw guns with which we might defend ourselves..

It pretends to educate our children, at the enormous cost of $633 billion a year, not counting the cost of college, which is often needed to "remedy" the multiple failures of the schools to graduate students able to read and do math. Even worse: government schools have the primary aim of teaching obedience and respect for (government) authority, and always have had; they teach kids what to think, not how to think. To that extent, they don't educate at all. They indoctrinate.

It pretends to help keep us healthy, by intricate systems of subsidy and mandated insurance - which some would like to be simplified into a "single payer" system like many other countries have. The cumulative effect of over 100 years of this interference has been to magnify the cost of health care to five or ten times what it would cost absent government, a massive $3.2 trillion a year. Proponents then expect credit for keeping the direct patient costs down to about 10% of the total. Everyone is, of course, forced to pay 100% of that total via taxation; government has no money of its own.

It pretends to pay everyone an old-age pension - and does so, at a cost of $1.6 trillion a year including disability and supplemental medical "insurance." As always, that money comes from taxes (not from a "trust fund", for there isn't one) so the alternative of a competitive market in genuine retirement insurance is prevented from operating. I'm reliably informed that such a market would provide two or three times the benefit, for the same premium level (comparing premiums to taxes, which isn't easy.) Thus, the pretense is to furnish pensions; the reality is that government has excluded at least half of what pensions would otherwise be.

It pretends to administer justice, but what takes place in courtrooms is normally a travesty of justice. The government monopoly fails to convict more than a fraction of the guilty, fails to avoid convicting any of the innocent, and fails to compensate any of the victims. It is not a justice system at all, for justice has to do with restoring lost or damaged rights; it is a vengeance system, in which the government's enemies are punished. Even when - against heavy odds - a person falsely convicted is able to win an appeal, the government prosecutor does all he can to prevent him being freed; and if freed he does all he can to prevent the payment of compensation.

It pretends to protect us from rapacious businesses, known in archist mythology as "robber barons." What it really does is to collude with the biggest firms in each industry to write regulations that they (being dominant) can afford to observe, while smaller competitors can ill afford compliance. Meanwhile the large companies, thereby protected from rivals, show their gratitude in the form of generous "contributions" to re-election campaigns. It's perhaps the biggest racket in history, and leads some mistakenly to suppose that big businesses run government. Actually, they form an evil synergy, each supporting the other's monopoly; but take government away (as is advocated here) and businesses would be powerless to do anything but compete and persuade. They form the tail of the dog.

Lastly in this short list, it pretends to submit to popular will in fair elections. Now, I'm no fan of democracy (it's just a way to fool everyone into supposing it's a good idea to be ruled) but arguably the quadrennial election circus is perhaps the most hypocritical of all government activity. Whatever else the recent election of Donald Trump has done, it did do this: it replaced the boring succession of candidates pre-approved by the Deep State (among whose platforms a micrometer gauge was needed to tell the difference) by a populist who ignored it and offered his own agenda with his own money; but having been elected, he has so far been largely prevented from carrying it out. All the resources of both big parties and their media friends have been furiously focused on frustrating the people's choice. Yet Trump is lucky; so far, they haven't killed him. The last time someone won the White House and carved out his own policy, he was assassinated.

So there are a few examples of the Government Masquerade, its horribly hypocrisy. Several of them cost an arm and a leg - but some, notice, do not. "Justice" for example doesn't take a large slice of the national product; but its disgraceful nature tears society apart. All of the above, in their different ways, should propel the reader to conclude that government is a luxury that peaceful people cannot afford.

Disposing of it is therefore essential, as well as just slightly difficult. The only credible way yet proposed is to persuade everyone not to work for it; for it will always depend on willing employees. Take those away, it will collapse like a punctured balloon. And how can that persuasion be done? - by bringing one friend a year to the Freedom Academy. Links on the right of this page will show the way.