Note that no one goes to a government office to just hang around and enjoy some beers and suchlike; to "socialise." The government is not a social institution. Its function is something else.
What is the function of government?
To answer that, ask yourself the question: What will happen if we abolish The State? Most ordinary people will be horrified and think they will become prey to murderers, rapists, looters and dacoits who would run riot. This is the "excuse" why The State exists - in the mind of the common man.
Now, murderers, dacoits and the like are "anti-social" - and The State is supposed to act against them. That is its ONLY real role - act against anti-socials. But don't be anti-social yourself.
Something else happens under Socialism. Under the socialists and welfarists and their crony inflationists, The State takes on such a huge role and consumes so much of society's resources that it becomes "anti-social" itself. A long gravy train, a huge basket of spoils. All these resources are sucked out of the people - and that is surely extremely anti-social in a predominantly poor country.
The State-owned Industrial Sector - Air India, the Railways, Electricity Boards, steel plants and hotels - is our nation's "common loss." Though ministers and baboos gain.
Democratic Legislation is another big spoiler - for it outlaws innumerable exchanges, and sends the State Police to act against market society, and therefore be "anti-social" itself; predatory. Instead of going after the murderers and dacoits, they go against businessmen. Like ganja-charas farmers and dealers. Tyranny ensues.
Further, the vast maze of bureaucratic regulation established by "subordinate legislation" ends up in reality as "predatory" on all peaceful market activities.
According to their professors and intellectuals, it is The State that is Society - and parliament is the "social institution." Not The Market. It is all about the State, the vast Nation, the Party and their Leader. And their Central Planners. And all their 5-Year Plans.
This is not a picture of happy people peacefully creating wealth for themselves in free markets. Rather, this is a State that consumes huge amounts of the precious Capital of the people in order to achieve "social objectives." These objectives are decided within the black box of The State - education, rural employment generation, free rice and wheat. Tax parasites consume all this wealth via The State - and this is "anti-social." In Nehru's time, the social objective was "a socialistic pattern of society" - for which purpose our The State built steel plants!
And as far as pubs, bars, chai-shops and cafes are concerned - I am lucky to be in Goa, but in much of the territory these are discouraged by State diktat.
In the meantime, Justice has been forgotten. Indeed, "social justice" is anti-social as well.
Thus, the Science of Government indicates that this is a very dangerous institution if it ever exceeds its narrow limits. Then, The Market is stifled. And all-round predation results. Bastiat called it "universal plunder." To him, such a vast State was "a grand fiction by which everyone tries to live off everyone else." The only solution, he said, was NO PLUNDER. That requires Liberty and Private Property - and not socialism.
Sociaism is not about Society as it really exists, which is the Market Society. Socialism is the glorification of The State - and using State Force to create a New Society (like Nehru's "socialistic patterm"). Socialism is really Statism. It is deeply anti-market. Hence it is anti-social.
The idea of "government" (which is "local") is thus very different from the idea of The State (which also happens to be centralised).
But even here, I champion the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
To be pedantic, 'the market' is not an institution at all; it is a name for the unlimited variety of economic exchanges amongst people. There is no 'thing' called 'the market'; no formal structure at all. It is just a label for what people do when you don't prevent them.
ReplyDelete@ V. Fournier: Markets have emerged as "customs" - like weekly bazaars and the like: fairs, melas, haats, etc. It is in this sense - and certainly not in any "formal sense" - that we call The Market the "foremost social institution." It is an institution that has emerged from the spontaneous actions of various participants - just as money, language, and law have also emerged.
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