-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.22/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.22/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 22 </A> ----- Laissez Faire City Times May 31, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 22 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Presumed Innocent No Longer by Peter Topolewski Criticizing the government, particularly about taxes and wasteful spending, is an age-old pastime in western society. It is enjoyable, often justified, and can be practiced by all range of people, from simpletons to geniuses. More importantly, citizens should consider criticizing the government necessary for the preservation of both society and individual liberty. But until the people can admit their complicity in government wrongdoing, all criticism is nothing but gripe to pass the time. Until citizens admit that they have – through laziness, ignorance, complacency, bribery and et cetera – granted power to the government, they will not admit that they can take that power away, and they will not admit that the power to remedy what grieves them lies within their own hands. The obstacles hindering most of us from making such admissions are many. In these days when governments educate our children and provide them values, regulate speech and set wages, mandate hiring practices, tell us what food to eat, and employ millions, regular citizens find it difficult to recognize that they have given the government responsibility and authority to do all this, and much more. Add to this the fact that in the name of self-preservation the government does not want us to know that we have granted them their power. Everyday they encourage us to forget by exchanging goods from their horn of plenty for our lazy silence while they extend their domain. And as the government bestows more and more services upon its citizens, we are disinclined all the more to ever want that power – and responsibility – back. All of this I thought I more or less got off my chest over the last few issues of Laissez Faire Times. But only last week did I realize not only how fundamentally people have lost sight of their own responsibility for the condition and operation of their societies, but how negligent they have become in their relationship with their governments. I found the source of my realization in an editorial in the Vancouver Sun, supposedly the city’s right-wing newspaper. At issue was the fact that the federal government in Ottawa every year collects $5 billion in motor fuel taxes for the purpose of constructing and maintaining roads, and yet spends only $300 million (or 6 percent) of that on the national highway system. The rest they shove into general revenue to pay for all other manner of programs. This pathetic practice has gone on for years, and so it comes as no surprise that a 1997 Transport Association of Canada report estimates the national highway system requires $17.4 billion worth of work to make it more than a series of goat trails. In order to come up with the money required to upgrade the highways the federal Transportation Minister David Colinette is toying with the idea of imposing highway tolls. Now this whole scenario is ridiculous, and the government’s handling of these funds is in my opinion criminal. The more fundamental problem, however, lay in the editorial itself. The Vancouver Sun closed its critique of the government by blaming the wretched shape of the highway system and its source of funding on "Ottawa’s priorities". Exactly here, in the midst of educating the public of problems affecting every Canadian, the newspaper can blame only the ever-present and durable "Ottawa". When newspapers and the public can presume that Ottawa operates in complete isolation, and plucks its "priorities" out of thin air, we see how drastically disengaged from their sense of responsibility citizens have become. One way, one of the main ways, governments maintains or expands its power is by appeasing those who have granted it to them and who can therefore grasp it back from them. And so the reason Ottawa actually spends only 6 percent of the money it raises for roads on roads is because the public has a long list of things they want, and roads are one of the least glamorous items on the list. That is, the people – not Ottawa – have other priorities. The Complicity of the Governed The blame, then, belongs to both government and the governed. And blame is the right word, because although the fuel tax revenue is being spent in a way that in some form reflects the public’s priorities, no one is happy. People still complain about taxes that are way too high, and (although lost on many) the deteriorating highway system is undeniably a major cause of inefficiency and Canada’s falling productivity. And so the outrageous amount of fuel tax and its misuse again points to the problem underlying the view of government as the solution to all woes: the cost is too high. The cost is too high because by looking to bureaucracies and government agents for solutions to drug use, spousal and child abuse, intolerance, the health care crisis, and all our other problems, we can no longer find ourselves to blame. The cost is too high because for every problem we ask the government to solve, we must grant them more power and we must resign ourselves to their will and their solutions. And the cost is too high because – as the misuse of the fuel tax revenue illustrates – we literally cannot afford to have government provide all the answers. In Canada, however, that doesn’t seem to matter much. Many Canadians have gone a long way to forgetting that solutions to our problems lie within us. Too many have grown lazy and don’t want responsibility. People want universal health care, they want guaranteed jobs with union wages and plenty of statutory holidays. While they’re at work they want the government to care for their pre-schoolers and educate and baby-sit their children. They want the government teachers to tell their children about sex and love, and they want government tribunals to tell people what they can and can’t say to each other. When their businesses become inefficient, they want the government to pay them to keep those businesses operating, and when they stop operating they want the gover nment to give them new jobs. In exchange for all this and more people are willing to pay the government tax money for every good and service exchanged between them, tax money on every wage earned, and tax money on every person buried. The more people forget their former responsibilities the easier it is to give up those that remain. And so the end of this relationship shall draw nearer: 100 percent of citizens on the government payroll. 100 percent of wages paid in tax to the government. 100 percent of power in government hands. And 100 percent of personal responsibility renounced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter Topolewski was born in Canada in 1972. Against the odds that seem stacked against everyone at birth, he is just now beginning to learn that the society and system of authority one is born into is not the society and system of authority one must accept. He lives and works in Vancouver, where his corporate communications company is based. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 22, May 31, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. 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