Today’s Rant - 27/03/07

Today I am ranting at statists, and probably not for the last time either.

You know statists, they’re the ones who want the state to solve all their problems, be those problems social, economic, political or environmental.  It doesn’t really matter whether they call themselves conservatives, socialists, environmentalists, social democrats, progressives, the label does not really matter, because at the core of their belief system is the idea that people need to be led, they need to be governed, they need to be shown what is good for them and have those behaviours regulated and enforced.

Relgious conservatives see homosexuality as a destructive force in society, harming families, corrupting young people and generally promoting lifestyles that they don’t approve of.  In the past religious conservatives had the law behind them and homosexuals were gaoled for their sexuality (which is kind of ironic considering the cultural link between sodomy and prison - don’t drop the soap!).  Presently they are arguing against equality for homosexuals before the law with regards to marriage between consenting adults and all the legal privileges that married couples share.  So they want to ban homosexuals from getting married.

Other conservatives believe we are in a epic battle for civilisation itself with barbarians from foreign lands who are using our freedoms against us.  They have infiltrated our open societies and converted some of our own citizens into their agents and we our civilisation is being plotted against from within and without.  The solution, the conservatives claim, is security, and security requires sacrifice, sacrifice of our freedoms.  So these conservatives want to keep a close watch on our activities, we are monitored by CCTV (in places like London where I live, you might encounter 300 cameras in your daily routine), there are proposals for ID cards, our passports record our biometric data and our personal details are stored and traded by and between government departments.  The solution to terrorism it seems is to ban the very freedom the conservatives are trying to protect and has come down to the surreal and nonsensical, such as the banning of liquids on planes.

Socialists argue that people who employ other people to do work are selfish and will exploit workers at every juncture.  Because some people can’t be trusted, they argue that other people need protection from them, so we need regulations protecting the people that do the work from the people who provide the work to be done.  So the socialists argue for unfair dismissal legislation, minimum wage laws, sexual discrimination laws, equal opportunity regulation, compulsory unionism, all to be enforced by the state.  The solution to this battle between people is to ban some people from employing other people at a wage and conditions they both agree on.

Environmentalists feel that the actions of humans are harming the planet, so much so that not only is the environment in danger, but humans capability of surviving as well.  In the past we were merely wiping out vast numbers of species through loss of habitat, polution and introduced species, but today the emissions from industry, energy production and transport are heating up out planet so much that seas are going to rise dramatically, fertile land will become deserts and giant storms will batter our coasts.  The solution to these environmental disasters is always the same, banning and restrictions.  So we have bans on DDT, we have bans on incandescent light globes, we have proposals to tax us out of the sky and out of our cars, ban, ban, tax and regulate and ban some more.

Notice what all these different groups have in common?  Their first and foremost weapon is to ban and to tax and to regulate, and use the state to batter people into submission.  It doesn’t matter what ends they want to achieve, the methodology is the same, use the power of the state to force people to behave the way they want them to behave.

Now if like me you are skeptical of the state, wary of its bureaucracy, aware of its inefficiencies and incompetence, even if you believe in some or all of the ends to which some of the above groups I’ve described above believe in, then you must be suspicious about the ability of the state to bring about the social, political and economic changes you desire.  State regulation may change people’s behaviour, but they’ll do it begrudgingly, and many will ignore state regulation altogether and take their operations behind closed doors away from the prying eyes of the state, but when they are hidden from the state, they are also hidden from the influences of civil society.

So homosexuals in the past had to hide their sexual proclivities, and being homosexual left individuals open to blackmail.  Repressed sexuality may even have led to abuse of others, such as the scandals rocking the Catholic Church.

Religious zealots are alienated and the alienation drives their zealotry to ever more excesses.  Meanwhile, the rest of us have our freedoms curtailed and our lives complicated and inconvenienced.

Exploitative employers hire illegal immigrants, people without recourse to the law, and are paid even less than they might otherwise had been paid if there was no minimum wage in order to balance the risk of the employer being caught.  People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are prevented from working at the wage their limited skills are worth and gaining new skills and experience to drive their social economic status upwards, but instead lured onto welfare and lives of limited scope and imagination.

Poluters take their operations to foreign lands where environmental regulations are less stringent and governments more corrupt and end up doing more damage.  Meanwhile, workers back at home lose their jobs and pay more for environmentally friendly goods and services.

 I feel all ranted out, hopefully in future my posts won’t be so longwinded.  As this is a rant I shall a general disclaimer.

Disclaimer

This is a rant.  I do not feel the need to provide detailed back up evidence for any of the observations or opinions I have expressed here.  More detailed posts may address some of the issues I have addressed here in greater depth.

This is a private blog and as such any opinions I express are my own and do not represent those of my employer.