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Why not spit the dummy? Let’s legislate a “Handbook for the Fools Who Elected Us”.
Sunday, January 22, 2012 10:46
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Paternalism has reached a peak in the West. Public servants (supposed to be our SERVANTS – not masters) – many of them barely in their early 20s, fresh out of university – have presumed to themselves the role of our masters (or, at least, our parents).
They, along with elected governments (which seem to be helpless against the onslaught of “evidence” cooked up by these paternalistic public servants) have a firm view that the people who vote governments to power are actually very stupid. These stupid people (namely, us) need to be at least educated by government at every step, if not restrained. Government intervention is crucially necessary, it is argued, in areas where government should have absolutely no business to enter.
Forgotten entirely is J.S. Mill’s admonition:
The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
We therefore have an endless series of what Adam Smith called “a hundred impertinent obstructions” originating from these self-proclaimed nannies.
[The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.”
In addition to regulatory obstructions there is an the endless amount of tax-payer funded advertising. These people may argue that they are not exercising “power”, but that's incorrect. By using taxpayers' funds, they are dipping into our pockets BY FORCE, just to tell us what is (presumably) good for us.
Educating the fool voters is big business.We are so stupid that we need to be repeatedly reminded (at great cost to ourselves!) that (a) cigarettes are harmful, (b) drinking and driving is harmful, (c) eating fatty food is harmful, (d) and so on and on.
The remedy to this farce, I suggest, is for governments to spit the dummy and let us openly and publicly know what they think of us. Why not legislate an Information for Fools (i.e. Voters) Act, and under that Act, consolidate all gratuitous advice into a single Handbook for the Fools Who Elected Us.
At least then we can find out at once place the wonderful things that our nanny state wants us to know, which we (being fools) can't learn on our own accord through the education system or media. And at least we'll be put in our “place”, for we, the voters, are presumably sufficiently smart to elect these “smart (alec)” representatives, but not smart enough to know what's in out best interest, for advice on which we need to pay these smarty pants a good pile of money through our nose.
Read more at Sanjeev Sabhlok’s Occasional Blog-Economics
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