In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage “suspicion about government.” “The government’s us,” he responded. “These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.”
But if government were “us,” why would we have ever needed a Bill of Rights or defense attorneys?
In order for the government to be “us,” and for its elected officials to be our “representatives” in any meaningful sense, a number of prerequisites would have to be met.
For government to be us, the policies candidates campaigned on would have to be reliable indicators of the policies they would pursue once elected. Remember Obama the peace candidate in 2008, who ran against warrantless wiretapping and torture? Remember his promises of common sense reform of the worst excesses of marijuana laws and copyright law? The changeling who replaced Obama in early 2009 has gone full speed ahead on illegal wiretaps, refused to end extraordinary rendition, quietly turned Baghram AFB into a new Gitmo with even less oversight, pursued an ultra-hawkish line on “intellectual property” law, and actively pursues every means at his disposal to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries.
If government were us, the public positions taken by elected officials during major policy debates would bear at least some vague resemblance to the policies they were actually making behind the scenes. Remember Summer 2009, when Obama was publicly demanding healthcare reform legislation that included a public option, while quietly assuring the insurance industry that the public option was off the table? Remember when the Obama administration quietly capped the amount drug companies would be asked to reduce their enormous patent-bloated monopoly prices, and promised not to use the purchasing power of Medicare to negotiate lower prices?
If government were us, it wouldn’t treat us as an enemy to be propagandized and manipulated into voting the way the government wants us to. The Obama administration’s record of prosecuting and harassing whistle-blowers is even worse than the Bush administration’s abysmal record. Bradley Manning has been tortured in solitary confinement for almost three years for allegedly leaking documents that revealed actions of the U.S. national security establishment 180 degree opposite what government officials have told the American public. Manning is accused of “giving aid and comfort to the enemy” — which makes a lot more sense if you remember that the “enemy” is us. Lest you dismiss that as hyperbole, recall former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s statement in 2004: “We have too much at stake in Iraq to lose the American people.” The American people clearly are not “us” from the standpoint of the corporate state and its policy establishment.
If the government were us, the policy alternatives presented to the public for consideration and debate would represent the range of actual possibilities, rather than the options acceptable to the right and left wings of the corporate-state ruling class. The only policy alternatives presented to the American people are those consistent with the continued dominance of the existing political and economic political framework. Anything outside this permissible range is dismissed as “radical,” “extremist,” and utterly naive and unrealistic. Even when the American people take a wide range of positions, the policies considered by the ruling elite itself generally range from about L to O. Probably 80% of issues never even appear as such because the two parties are in total agreement on them. The only stuff presented to the American people for debate are second-order issues that don’t concern the fundamental system of power.
For government to be us, elected representatives and their publicly stated policy preferences — not an unelected “permanent government” of civil servants and corporate lobbyists that start coopting those elected officials the same day they enter office — would have to be the primary influence on what government does. How’s that workin’ out for ya?
For government to be us, it would have to actually matter what the law said — all those “constraints” Obama says he and other elected officials operate under. But if constitutional protections like the Fourth Amendment meant a damned thing, warrantless wiretapping would never have been an issue in the first place. And by his very threat to veto the proposed CISPA cyber-security bill, Obama made it clear it doesn’t really matter what the law is. The FBI has long privately assured Internet Service Providers that they’re protected from prosecution if they cooperate with “the authorities” in providing confidential customer information.
Next time Obama or anyone else of his ilk says “government is us,” give them a one-fingered salute.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, The government is “us?” Not last time I checked, Counterpunch, 05/10/13
- Kevin Carson, The government is “us?” Not last time I checked, Arab American News, 05/09/13
The government believes that it "owns" you (like property). This is why it can draft you to fight wars, why certain drugs are "outlawed" (so you can't harm the government's "property". Prescription laws in theory exist for much the same reason. That you are seen as "property" like a serf is the property of his "owner" is I think a truth that many will understand. The idea of 'self ownership" is of course against this, which is why governments don't like Libertarians very much because we demand a level of freedom the government doesn't want us to have!
Of far greater significance in exploding the ludicrous, self-serving "the Government is Us" lie parrotted by the political class, is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem from 1950.
Arrow's theorem furnished a formal proof of a conjecture by Condorcet in 1785; Condorcet noticed that 'majority preferences' derived from rank-ordered individual preferences can become intransitive. (Intransitivity in preferences is a huge obstacle to any discussion of welfare and/or utility).
Put another way, it is easy to draw up a simple 3-person, 3-choice example where each individual's preferences are transitive (A ≻ B and B ≻ C implies A ≻ C) that results in a system with 'cyclical' preferences (A ≻ B ≻ C ≻ A). (note: the '≻' symbol here means 'is preferred to', which is not the same as 'is greater than').
What that means, in turn, is that different voting (and vote-counting) mechanisms can produce different results, with each result claiming to be 'most preferred' (or, in the language used by dills like Rousseau, each result will 'reflect the general will'). And all of them will probably be wrong unless utility is cardinal and interpersonally-comparable – that is the only circumstance under which it is genuinely 'social-welfare neutral' to shift 1 util from an aged pensioner to Halliburton or some other crony (the usual direction of travel for utility under .gov).
So Arrow shows us that 'aggregating' rank-order preferences does not result in a 'valid' social preference function.
So there you have it:
even if political life was not dominated by megalomaniacal parasitic sociopaths who are attracted by the money and power and are pursuing their own agendas; and
even if the State's cadres wanted to "improve social welfare" or "reflect the general will" or "augment the general welfare"…
they can't, because it's not possible to know the 'general will' without cardinal, interpersonally-comparable measures of utility.
The State can't get 'past' Arrow. It can't validly claim to be the result of a selection process that properly aggregates social preferences.
And that's before we get to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem – that any non-dictatorial selection method must be either exclusionary or vulnerable to (corrupt) tactical voting.
Another nail in the 'elections reflect the will of the majority' trope.
That takes care of all 'preferential' voting systems: with 'one-shot' systems, it is abundantly clear that nobody ever gets anything remotely approaching 50% 1 of the eligible electorate: usually, abstention is the largest single 'voting' bloc (more people abstained, than voted for Obama, Bush, Blair, Clinton, Thatcher, and any other 'elected by the majority' parasites you could name… including Adolf Hitler, who got 38% of the eligible electorate in 1933 – more than Obama, Thatcher, Bush, Blair or Clinton, and more than the 'primary' votes of any of the last eight Australian Prime Ministers [the Oz system is 'preferential': 33% primary plus 25% of 'second preferences' gives you the magic claim of 50% 1 mandate]).
If all of the foregoing doesn't dissolve the 'government is us' trope, we can move on to Holmström's Theorem – that it is not possible to have a team of agents that pursue a Pareto-optimal Nash equilibrium, without breaching the budget constraint. So it is not possible to create a system where no person can be made off without making another person worse off, and where no agent has an incentive to change their course. (And this still requires cardinal interpersonally-comparable utility).
So again… .gov ≇ 'us'. (≇: "neither approximately nor actually equal to")
'Democracy reflects the will of the people' is dead in the water even before we get to
* adverse selection (power attracts psychopathic megalomaniacs);
* the principal-agent problem (the megalomaniacs have their own agenda);
* moral hazard;
* perverse incentives;
* bureaucratic capture (e.g., Penny Pritzker getting Commerce);
* X-inefficiency;
* corruption; and
* the absence of a cardinal, interpersonally-comparable utility measure (which precludes calculations of the social-welfare 'benefits' of policy).
Politics is exactly like religion: it is all based on an easily-disproved lie, and the people who benefit most from it know that it's a lie… but they get to live in palaces at the expense of people who can't read the instructions on a bottle of prescription medicine (more than 40% of the population, according to the latest Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey), 68% of whom believe in angels (according to a Pew Poll in 2007).
Good reply, but I just wanted to mention that a stateless society actually fulfills the Pareto condition. Voluntary trade makes the two parties better off without making anyone else worse off. This is why Rothbard chose the Pareto condition for his reconstruction of welfare economics.
"But if government were “us,” why would we have ever needed a Bill of Rights or defense attorneys?"
The Bill of Rights places ADDITIONAL limits on those "we" put into office to carry out the duties assigned to each branch.
The US Constitution and all laws/bills/amendments/etc in PURUSANCE THEREOF (following it) are the Supreme Law of this land.
But if we do not enforce it, as Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama enforce UNconstitutional (therefore not lawful) laws/bills/amendments/etc do, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Much like a child who, after being told not to, takes an ice cream out of the freezer and eats and pays no penalty – this is what has happened to those occupying places in the three branches of our government.
"In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage “suspicion about government.” “The government’s us,” he responded. “These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.”"
When he said that he is actually correct. He, and they, are constrained by the system, but those we have in place as the "teeth" of our system (not including the constitutional restraints upon each other given to each branch) – Secret Service, who's first loyalty is a requirement to "Support and Defend the US Constitution" but do not; FBI – same; CIA has never truly been a USA agency though they take the LAWFULLY required oaths (as far as I have been able to find they have never followed them so must be disbanded and prosecuted), the states – have also not done their duty. The Sheriff's (elected by the people of each state – No Obama has no lawful power to stop them in any way) can call on the Militia of each state (EVERY able-bodied person over 18 years) to enforce the US Constitution and state constitutions but also do not.
Basically we have not done our duty as sovereigns and required it of those who are the "teeth", assisting them when it is necessary. As long as WE ignore our duties, and LET unlawful stuff happen it will continue.
"the policies candidates campaigned on would have to be reliable indicators of the policies they would pursue once elected. "
As long as we ignore what they do once placed into office, why would you expect them to pursue those policies?
(continued)
"it wouldn’t treat us as an enemy to be propagandized and manipulated into voting the way the government wants us to."
That is true, but the problem with that statement is that you are thinking it is OUR government that is doing this. It is not. It is those treasonous people put into place to destroy our country (however likeable they are) that are doing that. Election Fraud put pretty much most of them into office and keeps them there. Yet we are not PUSHING for ALL involved in election fraud at even the tiniest level to be prosecuted. When the courts unlawfully assigned Bush the presidency we did NOT remove those judges. How can we be taken seriously?
The 2008 Democratic Nominating Committee (DNC) document did not include language stating that Obama was qualified to be a candidate. The 2008 Republican Nominating Committee (RNC) document did, as is normal. This shows that the DNC knew that Obama was not qualified, or why change the form?
A jury in South Bend, Indiana found that fraud put President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election.
Romney was put into place as a presidential candidate through election fraud. Ron Paul won yet we allowed people other then who we wanted to be put into office.
They are teaching our children a totally different way of government and we are allowing it to happen.
We have the laws against the media being "conscripted" yet we do not enforce them.
Almost 100% of the mainstream media is owned by seven companies: Disney, NewsCorp, TimeWarner, CBS, Viacom, NBCUniversal, and Sony. They control everything: movies, television, all the major newspapers and news, and even music record labels.
When one company dominates an industry, it is a monopoly. When a handful of companies cooperatively dominate an industry, it is a “Cartel.” This is what we have with our mainstream media – an elite group that is cooperatively and covertly controlling everything that comes through our television, radio, newspaper, and theater.
Supreme Court, Red Lion v. FCC, 1969: “It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.”
It is NOT "lawful", it is just "allowed". (continued)
Basically the Constitution does not have "teeth", because WE do not use them. So of course they will do whatever they can get away with.
"WE the People" have ALLOWED our whistle blowers to be imprisoned. WE DID IT.
This gun control stuff – none of it is lawful from registration of to telling the people what weapons they can have. The US Constitution assigned congress duties, including:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water – That clause permits congress to authorize privately owned armed ships to make war on our enemies and has been sued many times in our history. These privateer ships were as heavily armed as the ships of our own navy because the framers had no problem with “We the People” being as heavily armed as our regular military/Nave/etc. Since the Militia were to be able to be called upon to defend our nation from invaders all arms those invaders used were to be available to the people – and they were to be TRAINED in the use of them.
(Congress) To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Notice that congress can also:
To make all Laws which shall be NECESSARY and proper for CARRYING INTO Execution the FOREGOING POWERS, AND ALL otherPOWERS VESTED BY THIS CONSTITUTION Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
NO other powers, just the ones assigned to that branch by the US Constitution.
The US Constitution grants authority to congress to require all able-bodied adult males citizens (they were the only ones allowed in military then. Now it is all able-bodied people) to get armed. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16: “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress…”. Pursuant to that clause in 1792 congress passed the Militia Act of 1792.
The second half of the federalist papers 46, James Madison, acknowledged father of the US Constitution: “The purpose of armed citizens is to fight the federal government if the need arises”. So there are NO “reasonable” restrictions and background checks that lawfully can be imposed by the federal government.
First one must know the US Constitution and what duties were specifically assigned to the three branches and that those are the ONLY LAWFUL powers the three branches have. That is the only way to recognize when they have overstepped their lawful bounds. Then enforce it.
The lawfully required Oath is their accountability to us, "We the People". They are REQUIRED to take and keep it to meet the lawful requirements of the posiiton they are occupying. When they do not keep it they can be immediately removed from that office or position and replaced.
5 U.S.C. 3331, provides the text of the actual oath of office members of Congress are required to take before assuming office.
5 U.S.C. 3333 requires members of Congress sign an affidavit that they have taken the oath of office required by 5 U.S.C. 3331 and have not or will not violate that oath of office during their tenure of office as defined by the third part of the law,
5 U.S.C. 7311 which explicitly makes it a federal criminal offense for anyone employed in the United States Government to “advocate the overthrow of our constitutional form of government”.
18 U.S.C. 1918 provides penalties for violation of oath of office described in 5 U.S.C. 7311 which include: (1) removal from office and; (2) confinement or a fine.
18 USC § 241 – Conspiracy against rights: If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
The problem with that is that you do not realize that America is not a Democracy, nor has she ever been one.
America is a Constitutional Republic. *The document is our federal government – it defines the duties and powers of the federal. (As is shown by all the lawfuly required Oaths – the FIRST duty of all is to support and defend the US Constitution, NOT an individual leader, ruler, office, or entity. Presidents are held to a higher requirement: Preserve, Protect and Defend the US Constitution) A Constitutional Republic has a Constitution that limits the powers of the government. It also spells out how the government is structured, creating checks on its power and balancing power between the different branches. People are put into place to carry out the assinged duties of the US Constitution – and are given the powers needed to do so.
More then that we are not a single government. Each state has (and was guaranteed to keep) their own REPUBLICAN form of government. States are not provinces set up to take orders from a central authority in Washington DC and execute these orders regionally. The fed gov was set up to deal mostly with foreign affairs and to make sure that the states traded equally with each other . States have sovereign powers of their own.
James Madison: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which ARE TO REMAIN IN THE STATE GOVERNMENTS are numerous and indefinite.” (With "remain" being the key word here).
Understanding that shows why your equations are flawed.
The problem is that "We the people" have allowed this corruption to go on. We allowed the changes in the school that no longer teach that the USA is a Constitutional republic and what each citizens duty is: hold accountable our representatives – not ignore their corrupt behavior no matter how likeab le they are. All able-bodied are to train with weapons ( military grade) to be able to defend their families, communtities, states and the USA if needed. Etc.
*“God provided that in this land of liberty, OUR POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE SHALL NOT RUN TO INDIVIDUALS, that is, to government officials, no matter how great or how small they may be. Under His plan our allegiance and THE ONLY ALLEGIANCE WE OWE as citizens or denizens of the United States, RUNS TO to OUR inspired CONSTITUTION which God himself set up. So RUNS THE OATH OF OFFICE of those who participate in government. A certain loyalty we do owe to the office which a man holds, but even here we owe just by reason of our citizenship, no loyalty to the man himself. In other countries it is to the individual that allegiance runs. THIS PRINCIPLE OF ALLEGIANCE OT THE CONSTITUTION IS BASIC TO OUR FREEDOM. It is one of the great principles that distinguishes this “land of liberty” from other countries”. J. Reuben Clark
Jefferson: "The several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."
Black’s Law Dictionary, 1st edition, defines de facto: In fact, in deed, actually. This phrase is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs which exists actually and must be accepted for all practical purposes, but which is illegal or illegitimate.
Black’s Law Dictionary, 1st edition, defines usurper: One who assumes the right of government by force, contrary to and in violation of the constitution of the country.
Understand now? Those put into office are basically high-priced arrogant temporary workers who have overstepped the boundaries placed upon them, and we have not held them accountable.
It's impossible to say that a stateless society would be Pareto-optimal – I am a HUGE fan of Rothbard, but his welfare theory was pretty awful (not surprising – how many people get a thing right in their PhD dissertation?).
The worst bit of it is the 'demonstrated preference' nonsense, which is in significant (insuperable) conflict with other important parts of Rothbard's economics (e.g., his monetary theory).
Of greater importance than the spurious claim of Pareto-optimality in entirely-voluntary systems, is the notion that any non-optimality that arises can be internalised once it rises to economic significance, so long as property rights exist and are enforceable.
For some reason Rothbard's first run at welfare economics wanted to completely discount the notion of externalities (on the basis they did not constitute a 'demonstrated preference' and so any disutility that fell on third parties was not counted) – but that's crazy talk.
Easy example: a man has an affair with another woman. All entirely voluntary – so in Rothbardian terms, social-welfare enhancing and 'Paretian'. However the pain inflicted on his wife when she finds out is unambiguously a reduction in her utility – which may be deep and persistent (in contrast with the fleeting pleasure enjoyed by the man and the 'other woman'). As such, the actions of the 'voluntary exchange' undertaken by the man and his paramour can not be said a fortiori to be Paretian. (Arguably the wife may not find out: the externality to the affair then becomes probabilistic, but the expected value of the cost to the wife never goes to zero).
But here's the thing: even if voluntary society would not be truly Pareto-optimal (and let's be frank: no society will ever be, since uninvolved third parties will be affected by others' voluntary interaction), it is the only system in which agents put their own resources at risk when they make economic decisions. This mitigates rent-seeking, corruption, the principal-agent problem, and all the other evils that politics brings into being. (And dynamically, those evils dwarf any putative market-failure-correcting things that .gov might claim it's about).
That touches on the second big lie of politics – that a cadre of bureaucrats and career parasites can somehow make the economy bigger than it would be in their absence, by forcing activity into a pattern that would not result from voluntary exchange. Or as I have written elsewhere – they claim that they can make a bath warmer and/or deeper by moving water around.
It can be said with some certainty that a non-Paretian quasi-equilibrium will exist under both .gov and statelessness. However the stateless situation must be preferred as it is the one in which the only disutility involved is ancillary to decision-making. In stark contrast, under the State the very beginning of economic decision-making by the State and its camp-followers – the budget-constraint decision – happens involuntarily and is a fortiori welfare-reducing.
Furthermore, all .gov activity is redistributive – reallocating activity rather than generating it – and this means that the .gov solution is indefensible even if the ".gov equilibrium" has higher overall utility (assuming it can be reliably measured), because there is no valid ethical basis upon which to deprive one segment of the community in order to augment another.
In a very broad sense, there was nothing wrong with welfare economics before Rothbard had a go at 'reformulating' it – except that at some point welfare economists called for the State to intervene to 'augment' social welfare. But Arrow, Gibbard-Satterthwaite and Holmström's theorems, taken together with the vast and growing evidence of State failure, show that no serious utilitarian worth the name (which in my taxonomy means you've got to be a consequentialist) would pretend that State intervention would augment social welfare at any length of run.
The consequences of bringing a State into being are (a) some possible amelioration of some public-goods problems; (b) war, corruption, debt, and other utility-skewing redistribution… all undertaken (at least notionally) on the basis that the State can know what constitutes the general welfare. but it can't, and 'we think we know to some approximation' is not a valid ethical basis for stealing half everyone's output.
None of this is relevant: it doesn't matter how you select the State's cadres – the CLAIM they make is that they, as government, do a bunch of things that taken together make society better than it otherwise would have been. And it's false – always is, always has been. The purpose of power is POWER.
Even the much-touted rich-white-landowners' "let us 'natural aristocrats' be in charge" bullshit-fest in the US Constitution claims that… it's right there in the poetic self-congratulatory nonsense in its Preamble: "promote the general Welfare".
Before the ink was even dry, they started to behave like tyrants: they sent an army to crush protests by former soldiers who had been ripped off (Shay's Rebellion) and four years later they were at it again, sending the military to crush a tax revolt (the Whiskey Rebellion). Several years after that, "Founding Father" Sam Adams went all Saddam Hussein, claiming that any man who dares to rebel against the laws of the republic ought to suffer death. And on and on, up to 1932 with 'heroes' Macarthur and Patton leading the charge – with cavalry and tanks, soldies with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas – against protesting former soldiers whose benefits had been reneged upon by the government, 15 years after WWI.
So put away any idea that modern politicians are a degenerate version of your fine upstanding slaveowners from the late 1700s – that's more childish that the silly Pledge of Allegiance (which from the outside makes the US look like a rich white version of North Korea).