The Government Doesn’t Care About You

Would you ever expect a gang of crooks to care about their victims? Do you think the neighborhood thief would ever look after you? Do you trust the mafia to keep you safe? If you answered no to these questions, then why would you ever expect the government to care about you? You are not the government’s customer, you are not a citizen they represent, nor are you a person they care to help. You are their victim, and they wish to extort you.

Before diving any further, it is important to note that the state receives its wealth through violent coercion. If you are the rightful owner of your body and the rightful owner of your goods acquired through original appropriation or voluntary means, then no man or woman has the right to dictate what you must do with your person or property. Therefore individuals that call themselves the government have no rightful authority over your person or property. We can rationally deduce that taxation is theft because these individuals have no right to threaten you with violence if you don’t give them your money.

If taxation is theft, then the state serves no meaningful purpose except to satiate the desires of the individuals who reap the benefits of this extortion. Politicians don’t serve you, they serve themselves. If they represented you in any meaningful way, they wouldn’t steal from you. They get away with this egregious crime by maintaining a monopoly over very important services, such as defense, courts, and roads. Since they are the sole provider of these services, they are able to easily maintain the illusion that they represent your best interest, when we can empirically discern that they instead represent themselves.

Recognizing this truth is imperative in understanding the context surrounding current events. In light of the most recent mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, there have been calls to enhance the powers of governments around the world so they may effectively combat violence and keep their citizenry protected. Immediately following the terror in Paris, French citizens had no problem letting their government institute martial law and go door-to-door without any warrants. Here in the US, calls for gun control intensified after the shooting in San Bernardino. However if history is an indicator of anything, giving governments greater power in an effort to keep us safe in actuality makes us less safe.

As we have concluded, government is inherently criminal, since it compels us to pay their salaries and abide by their whims under the constant threat of violence. The larger their power grows, the larger their crimes against us grow. It is an oxymoron and logically inconsistent to say that we are protected by an entity that threatens violence against us if we don’t pay them.

With this said, government does not protect you, nor do they have any incentive to do so. As economist, historian, and political theorist Tom Woods once said, “The government’s incentive is to fail, because the more it fails, the more money it gets.” Although the government has expansive surveillance programs and the most superior technology in the world, they still failed to stop these attacks, despite having prior knowledge that they would occur. If the government acted as a private entity and faced the risk of losing money if they were not accountable to their consumers, they would have a real incentive to protect you. But since the government obtains its wealth through coercion and always has a steady stream of revenue into their pockets regardless of their performance, they do not have any incentive to protect you. Their only incentive is to keep the stable flow of money and power coming into their hands.

The easiest way for governments to accomplish this is by failing, that way they have an excuse to grow their powers and their ability to tax you. They have a greater incentive to make sure you are as vulnerable as possible than they do to actually protect you, this way you come crawling to their feet demanding they grow their powers. For a historical analysis of this, I recommend reading the book Suicide Pact by Judge Andrew Napolitano, in which he details how the federal government has been able to vastly expand its powers every time it jumped into war.

In spite of this truth, Americans continue to ask the government to take away their individual rights under the false guise that they will be protected. Liberals want the government to take away our right to self-defense in hopes that this will somehow stop violent crime, despite the fact that gun control increases violent crime. And conservatives want the government to increase its efforts in the War on Terror (which will necessarily require tax hikes and violations of our right to due process) in hopes that this will somehow stop terrorism, despite the fact that the War on Terror has created more terrorism.

The government does not care about you. It cares about itself. When you demand they increase their powers in order to keep you secure, they win, you lose, and you are now neither free nor secure. If you wouldn’t ask the mafia to keep you safe, then for the very same reasons, you should not expect the government to keep you safe. You are their victims and their tax slaves. They care only that you continue to believe the illusion that their authority is necessary and just.

It is time to wake up and realize that there is no such thing as government, for there are only individuals. As basic economics shows us, men are naturally self-interested and will always seek to improve their living conditions in the most expedient way possible. The individuals that call themselves government are just as susceptible to this as the rest of us, and they operate on extortion in order to improve their wellbeing. For you and I, we must work hard, become skilled individuals, and have a fruitful number of voluntary interactions in order to improve our standards of living. For the individuals that call themselves the state, all they must do is grow their power. It is for this reason that they do not care about you and why you should not let yourself continue to fall prey to their masterful trickery.