Yeah, yeah, I understand the cant Hawk. I'm a paid up, card carrying, Libertarian and Act member. But being an engineer, I'm a science-based, causal effects, boundary conditions, first principles kind of guy, so I try to deal with what's real rather than my own desired beliefs, which might stem from personal bias, previous conditioning, ego and stuff.
Let's take a very simple example. Your life for example produced nothing, from a military point of view, according to you. You were merely a government functionary, producing nothing that people want. No value.
I on the other hand, led a life of great productivity and economic usefulness, being a diesel and petrol fuel merchant. One of our daughters works for a tobacco company, is well paid and is likewise much more useful and productive than you were, because she's in the freely interactive private enterprise corporate capitalist market of exchange for some form of compensation, usually monetary.
Some people think that my business was the rape of Gaia, pollution of her atmosphere, ruination of the climate, desecration of the fauna, erosion of the limestone buildings, acidification of beautiful lakes, suffocation of human lungs, poisoning of our childrens' brains, mutagenic and teratogenic confusion of our DNA foundations built over eons, not to mention gunk in your eye and muck in your shirt [as seen when living in London].
Well, there's some truth to that and it's a matter of what value people place on things. Different people have different values and majority rule and government edict and understanding are so fraught with difficulty that all we can really say is that we bumble along. It was only after I got to a particular job that I realized how much damage was done by lead in petrol, which should never have been allowed - certainly not in the proportions used anyway; maybe 0.1 grams per litre might have been reasonable, but even that I doubt.
I know how money flows and what makes the world go round. It's a very complex world.
Back to your role for example. You were willing to exchange the killing or threat of it in exchange for some form of compensation, usually monetary. Okay so far. I give money to the USA government because I want to buy those services without which I can't run my corporations, family, or even own a piece of dirt on which to grow some beans. It looks like free trade and production to me, if you take away the labels, cant and dogma.
The electorate can vote directly for the people who create the services or hire them. In the private sector, my vote is limited to my feet by refusing to buy the products, which is a good trick if the products are the only one which will do the job I want done. I'd have to own the company to vote on who runs the show. The customers don't get a vote - they are like me as a Kiwi, buying the services of the USA government. All I can do is vote with my feet.
Hawk, any Military Intelligence should understand something so simple as that long-winded explanation.
It's a complex world Hawk. Very complex and getting more so. Which is why that big lump over our eyebrows is there; though there's a chicken and egg argument over that.
Each government function is producing something of value to somebody. The market test of it is in the voting. It's a different market test from the quicker-acting buyer and seller situation of the corporate world where a sale is made or not made, but even there, contracts often run longer than a government's term in office. But if the seller of the service, being the government, doesn't persuade the buyer, being the electorate, that the contract should be renewed, then they are out. Same old market. I think soldiers think they are doing something of value. They are primary producers of the most basic goods and services = defeat of enemies and builder of the pale [as in 'beyond the pale'].
My argument for Libertarianz and Act is that governments are suppressors of freedom and very inefficient and stupid monopolists who also use force to get many of their "customers" and supplies. Many are not even subject to electorates. But I don't deny that people like you were economic producers as much, or more than, a tobacco company or an oil company. I'd rather buy a good military and police than a good cigar. I know which produces greater value.
Going right back to first principles, the government even produces the actual currency with which everyone trades [other than a few bartering clubs and stuff, not to mention voluntary work, personal exchange of value and so on].
Money is even more popular stuff than tobacco and oil. People stack it up, higher and higher until they die, they are so keen on it. He who has the biggest pile wins. The pursuit of money is more enthusiastic and manic than the pursuit of golf balls, and that's mad enough and again is also part of that private, corporate production which you say the government lives off, but some would say is a greater exercise in futility than cigars, wine, government committees or Formula 1 racing.
I hope to do away with government money by the creation of the Q, a cyberspace cash. But it's a tough sell. Too many people trust the government more than the corporates, which depend on the governments anyway for their very existence, as they are only legal entities as defined by governments.
If you did a good and ethical military job, then you should feel more useful and appreciated than my daughter in the tobacco company, making money from suckers. I think you DID produce something. Security. Thanks again.
Mqurice |
