EPTThis is a result of media focus on bad news. Little attention is paid when things work out the way they were supposed to. This too is understandable because bad news is more pertinent than good news – it alerts viewers to avoid incoming problems.
Some people begin to expect perfection in their lives, which is needless to say impossible. It is so easy to point out the faults around them and complain they are the responsbility of someone else, which is inevitably true. When their target becomes blurry, the blame falls on the world.
Yet there is a fallacy of attributing bad events to the state of the world. When something bad happens, if the causative agent is not visibly identifiable, we may simply attribute it to “the state of the world”. This allows us to avoid the important question of where the trouble stemmed from. In this sense, the world as a whole probably isn’t broken. It is just an agglomeration of localized elements throwing off the greater balance that is in need of repair. In fact, the world as a whole works (and still continues to work, for the time being) surprisingly well given its size and complexity.
I am sure we can all agree that some fixes are demanded. Solutions can come internally, through gradual, legal, change, or externally, through turbulent revolution (a la Code Geass: Suzaku vs Lelouch). Everyone has their own ideas, from small baby steps to radical extremist schemes. In light of the potential for an extreme global economic overhaul, the time to dream big is now. Only after the world has been torn asunder and the old ways have been reduced to ashes can the new orders be implemented.
One of my proposals is the massive reduction of government. My personal political views are quite anti-government. They should only have three basic roles: to manage public goods/resources, to make decisions affecting the entire community, and to manage externalities. All its other functions, including law enforcement, should be delegated to informal means. This also excludes social security and public health care. These can be addressed by private measures and charity as the citizens deem appropriate.
But the main push of my proposal is minimizing the size of the communities itself. An independent and self-sustaining community will lose from less free trade, but gain in the sense that its own matters are in its hands. They shall be separated by natural geographic boundaries and population density features. An average community could have, say, one million people. They would be subject to the jurisdiction of that “city” and no other higher government.
This model would minimize the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that seems to be one of the current governments’ major role. A city would grow rich or poor by its own merits. There would be less subsidization of unfeasible endeavours. Within the limited community, there would be a much lower wealth gap because the economic performance is more tightly tied to each individual and there is limited opportunity for the rich to exploit the poor. They would effectively be in the same boat.
There would be no obligation to assist the weak. It would be the personal option of citizens to help other struggling communities. This is also consistent with the notion that extraneous populations of no benefit to society are expendable.
I don’t like where this is going, so I’ll change direction back to something closer to my original point. People have become too out of tune with doing the right thing, instead shifting their blame onto a very obvious scapegoat: the government. This is also well justified, because most governments in their current form create serious problems in their quest to fix other ones. It is something that somewhat works, and we don’t really have much choice in the matter or a chance to change the workings of such impervious institutions. Ultimately, the push to make radical changes may result in chaos and anarchy. There must be a better model out there we can use. And that I suppose would be a topic for a whole other debate.
I’m tired of debating. Let’s just choose a supreme dictator we trust and respect and let them go at it. But where can we find this voice of reason? Things are more fun when it’s left to the extremists.
