Will some services be reduced to ineffectiveness or eliminated? Or will services (and related regulations and fees) be restructured to encourage community based innovations, AKA business ventures?
What possibilities are considered will depend in part on one’s vision of government’s purpose. I often hear that it’s “to do for people what they can’t do for themselves.” But that lures people to find ever more things they can’t do. Government must supply those more things, and it can only pay for them by taking the wealth that other people produce (taxation). This discourages productive activities. Government that will “do for people” must necessarily “do to people.”
An unintended consequence of this vision is increasing dependency, disability and impoverishment. It leads to the war of all against all as everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
If government’s purpose is that written in the Declaration of Independence and Washington State’s constitution, “to secure the liberties of the individual citizens,” the incentive is to reduce government’s “doings” and to encourage people to create voluntary and mutually beneficial ways to provide the most needed goods and services. It’s a social arrangement commonly known as trade. It enables people “to do for each other” and preserves the dignity of each person. It leads to independence, development of new abilities and creation of wealth.
The solution to the budget crisis will come from one of these two visions. Before we get lost in the details, we should take a few minutes to clarify our vision of government’s purpose.
Meldon Acheson
Freeland
