Purpose of Government (esp overseas)

[DRZinn]

I need a little help here. I have a term paper to do, on which style (eg Parliamentary vs US-style) of government is more effective.

Of course, the first question to answer is "What is the purpose of government?" before I can decide what form best accomplishes that purpose.

Obviously to most of us here the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the citizens, or something along those lines. However, people in other countries see it differently.

What I'm asking for here is: (1) a good phrasing of my view of the purpose of government, and (2) especially from all you UK/Finland/wherever-else types, what is the prevailing view in your countries? Not your view, necessarily, but what do most people there think?

Thanks.

 

[armedcitizen]

I think the preamble to the Constitution says it best:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

[DRZinn]

Trust me, that's already in the paper!

 

[Leatherneck]

One would have to assume that a paper that begins with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution is predisposed to find that the form of government that flows from that document is favored from the outset.

I'd try to come up with a more generalized statement of the purpose, like:

• provide for common defense
• provide for effective commerce
• etc.

I'll think on it, but I bet others will beat me to it.

TC
TFL Survivor

 

[achadwick]

armedcitizen, I prefer the purpose stated in our Declaration of Indepedence, which is to secure the rights of the country's citizens. The purpose presented in our Constitution is vastly different, as Albert Jay Nock makes clear in his book "Our Enemy, the State".

Here is the link. to the book.

 

[DRZinn]

Actually (hate to admit this) I was using the Declaration of Independence and boneheadedly identified it as the Preamble. :banghead:

Here are the first few paragraphs:

In a discussion of which type of government is more effective, one must first decide for what purpose government exists, before determining which government best fulfills that purpose. In the United States, the Founding Fathers included in the Declaration of Independence the phrase “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,†“these rights†being the previously mentioned “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.†In other words, the proper purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people. While supported by many political philosophers, this outlook does not currently prevail in the world as a whole.

The cynical believe that government truly exists to preserve inequalities between rich and poor, between upper classes an lower. Socialists believe that the proper purpose of government should be to create equality and eliminate socio-economic classes. Other philosophical factions have various other ideas. Aside from what government ought to be, what government is could reasonably be defined as force. Or, more precisely, an allocation of force, according to rules set by society as a whole or by a ruling class, comprised of one person or many people.

For purposes of this paper, we will assume the proper and just purpose of government to be that which, in a given state, was the principle on which the state was founded. So, under British parliamentary government, we find that the same principle largely applied, as far as the people were concerned, since the American colonists, even those who supported the revolution, considered themselves to be Englishmen who had been deprived of their rights. George Mason said, “We claim Nothing but the Liberty & Privileges of Englishmen, in the same Degree, as if we had still continued among our Brethren in Great Britain: these Rights have not been forfeited by any Act of ours…†One of the preeminent supporters of the “natural right†school of thought of all time was an Englishman, John Locke. In fact, the English are unique in having preserved a formerly autocratic system while securing a democratic framework within it.

 

[HankB]

There are "three absolute rights [sic] the right of personal security, personal liberty and personal property," Sir William Blackstone.

"The protection of these faculties is the first object of government." -- Madison, Federalist 10.

Good enough for me.

 

[DRZinn]

Well, as you can see by my first paragraphs, I've decided that the English "purpose of government" is for all intents and purposes the same as ours. I avoided the question of what they think it is now by showing what they thought it was then. Now I can get on with showing why they don't accomplish it half as well as we do. Help is still welcome.

 

[Cosmoline]

The "US System" is a system based on the concepet of Federalism. In this sytem, each state remains a sovereign state, conceding only certain powers to a central government. This is very, very different from Parliamentary systems where the central government is "the boss" of all the administrative districts, cities, etc. The Congress cannot order a state to do anything. It can, however, bribe states. And does so all the time. A surprising amount of federal legislation is based on the threat of removed federal funding and nothing more.

 

[DRZinn]

[naivete] But they can't do that, can they? What about the Tenth Amendment? [/naivete]

 

[Art Eatman]

Take the Preamble, and amplify each point. "Translate" these points into modern usage.

I guess, really, the purpose of government is to protect rights, which we've already discussed here as existing outside of government: Government is to protect rights; it cannot grant what already exist.

The idea of the Bill of Rights, per its own Preamble, is so that we can protect ourselves against an abuse of power by that government. Restrain government from denying rights.

You'll have to decide for yourself if a valid reason for governmental power is to attempt to provide a level playing field for all those in the game.

Art

 

[Marko Kloos]

The only proper purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individual. The current governments of the western world are acting outside of that scope 99% of the time.

 

[psyopspec]

I had a conversation on this topic (and guns) with a Norwiegan foreign exchange student who's staying at my parent's house. Very intellectual individual (and cute! taking her shooting in a few weeks, but that's another thread...).

Basically she said that the purpose of the socialist government in place in Norway was to ensure fair distribution of resources. The premise is to make sure everyone gets their basic needs covered; food, shelter, medical care, good public transport. Don't know about Finland, but from talking to her and a couple Swedes it sounds like the systems work well for their purpose. I specifically asked about socialized medicine, since I've heard many criticisms of the Canadian counterpart. Our FES said that they're assigned a family practicioner and appointments can be had within a couple days of calling.

As something of a side note, the street cops in Norway don't carry guns or spray. The culture supports having a non-gun owning populace. Violent crime is extremely low, and even reported rapes are rare enough to make the national news when they occur. She's not anti-gun, in fact she's excited to get out to the range with me. I'll get some pics and post a thread when that goes down.

 

[achadwick]

A little OT, but I would suggest reading Nock's book to everyone interested in the purpose and different forms of govenrment. He makes a very pursuasive case that there are actually only two. The legitimate purpose is to protect the rights of citizens and nothing else. The illegitimate purpose is to redistribute wealth from the productive class to the ruling class, which he calls the "State." By his definition the vast majority of governments in the world today are "States" and therefore illegitimate.

I'm not really doing a just service to his work, but I hope I make sense. Anyway, his book is a great read.

 

[agricola]

DocZinn,

I've decided that the English "purpose of government" is for all intents and purposes the same as ours. I avoided the question of what they think it is now by showing what they thought it was then. Now I can get on with showing why they don't accomplish it half as well as we do. Help is still welcome.

In that case, you are onto a loser before you begin.

Great Britain in the period of the Rebellion was much less free than the colonies were - few men had the vote, and for those that did, there were a lot of corrupted boroughs where the major landowner controlled the seat, allowing him to nominate whoever to stand as MP. Indeed, it would not be until near to the start of the last century that all men over 18 would get the franchise, and not until after the Great War that this right would be extended to the rest of the population. Throughout that period, to use the Blackstone quote from above:

There are "three absolute rights [sic] the right of personal security, personal liberty and personal property," Sir William Blackstone.

This did not stop the British Government after 1781 repeatedly executing people for trifling offences, transporting them, using the army to shoot demonstrators, enacting legislation that banned associations and made criticism of the Government a capital offence.

That is something that is all too often ignored by non-UK commentators. The changes that occured in the US did so over a relatively short space of time and were brought in from the front during a military conflict by people, at least some of whom were from the upper echelons of society; the changes to the UK have taken place between a hundred and two hundred years and were brought in after political disturbances most of which were led by agricultural or industrial workers in response to actions by the state, or management that were inhuman. As a result, the UK system is going to have been more "socialized" because of this.

Thats not to even start along the changes in the 20th Century, and the different experiences that this country had; the most remarkable of which is that the victorious Winston Churchill (who of course is lionized today) at the election at the end of WW2 recieved what remains one of the biggest kickings ever from an electorate, who had seen what happened to their fathers following the end of the Great War and declined to have it happen to them, so they voted for Attlee and Labour (when that party actually stood for something).

 

[Kamicosmos]

I would suggest reading Nock's book

Got a title? Sounds interesting...

 

[achadwick]

Kami,

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread (post #5 above), the title is "Our Enemy, the State". A free online version is available here.

 

[DRZinn]

Great Britain in the period of the Rebellion was much less free than the colonies were - few men had the vote, and for those that did, there were a lot of corrupted boroughs where the major landowner controlled the seat, allowing him to nominate whoever to stand as MP. Indeed, it would not be until near to the start of the last century that all men over 18 would get the franchise, and not until after the Great War that this right would be extended to the rest of the population.

We weren't exactly true to our ideals either, at first. I'm speaking only in generalities about the principle, to get to the meat-and-potatoes.

 

[Wiley]

The purpose of government is control.

Democracy to Theocracy one group controls the rest of the population. The only difference among the types is the method of deciding what is to be done and who is to be controlled.

The difference between our Republic (in theory) and all the other governments in the world is that we were established as a ’bottom up’ form where as all others were established as ’top down’.

 

[beerslurpy]

The purpose of the government is to:

-manage imports and exports and regulate tariffs
-handle foreign diplomacy
-raise armies when foreign diplomacy doesnt work
-provide for a legal system and laws within which citizens are expected to operate and to address greivances
-stay out of everyone's way

The government doesnt need to be involved in tax collection because the money is better spent on business.

Everything else is the responsibillity of the citizens.

This means some significant changes:
-no more minimum wage, let the market decide
-no more mandatory insurance, let the market decide
-no more federal doorkickers, only local ones
-no more minimum age of employment
-no more mandatory education, certainly better than a multibillion dollar system that actually impedes literacy. If you want an education, you pay for one or you get one from your parents, like in the old days. My parents taught me how to read before I even entered school.
-no more handouts, this will put a stop to immigration in a hurry. Sorry Jose Fruitpicker, we pay the same 1 dollar an hour on this side of the border as on that side. And no free health care and no free education. See ya.

Some may say: Jim, I admire your plan, but this leaves out some obvious things. Who will take care of:
-fighting crime? Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early 19th century that criminals had no government to be afraid of, only the citzens. Citizens will fight crmie and citizens will form juries and elect judges to try cases. We would still have a court system.
-keeping out illegal immigrants? The aforementioned armed citizenry can deal with this.
-making sure workers arent mistreated? The workers will make sure of this by voting with their feet to another company with better working conditions. It is to the benefit of employers to have employees that are happy and productive, most pay significantly more than minimum wage because it is the smart thing to do. Those companies that cant afford to pay minimum wage wont be forced out of business immediately (except by people not wanting to work for them anymore).
-protect us from drugs/guns/terrorists? You will protect yourself (or not, if you prefer). For national level threats like the chinese, germans (the old jack-booted ones, not the new peaceful ones), UN etc, we will have a government that can raise armies. But who the ???? would want to invade a wealthy country full of people with guns?
-keep our military in tip-top shape? Most of our military is dedicated to the purposes of projecting force to remote areas of the globe. If we didnt have nuclear weapons or aircraft carriers we might have problems with colonizing iraq, but would we be invaded?

 

[Database]

In response to (1) you might look at The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat gives a purpose for the law (i.e. government) which I think is in line with your thinking, as well as discussing what happens when that purpose is perverted.

The topic of the paper, as you've indicated, begs the question of the purpose of goverment, that is, effective at what. However, another direction you might go is to describe different forms of government and in what ways they might be effective. For example, it is well known that programming projects often florish under the direction of a benevolent dictator. Once, this ground is established, you could go on to evaluate the forms from your prefered perspective.

 

[DRZinn]

I ended up finding The Law on my own, and it is definitely a factor in the paper. As for changing the focus of the paper, I can't. The question is very specific, and must be answered as asked. I have only today to finish, so we'll see how well it goes...

 

[DRZinn]

I've hit writer's block. Here's what I have so far:

In a discussion of which type of government is more “effective,†one must first decide for what purpose government exists, before determining which government best fulfills that purpose. Is an “effective†government one which best controls its subjects? That which best solves its society’s problems? Or is an “effective†government one which is more responsive to the desires of its citizens? In the United States, the Founding Fathers included in the Declaration of Independence the phrase “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,†“these rights†being the previously mentioned “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.†In other words, the proper purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people. While supported by many political philosophers, this outlook does not currently prevail in the world as a whole.
The cynical believe that government truly exists to preserve inequalities between rich and poor, between upper classes an lower. Socialists believe that the proper purpose of government should be to create equality and eliminate socio-economic classes. Other philosophical factions have various other ideas. Aside from what government ought to be, what government is could reasonably be defined as force. Or, more precisely, an allocation of force, according to rules set by society as a whole or by a ruling class, comprised of one person or many people.
For purposes of this paper, we will assume the proper and just purpose of government to be that which, in a given state, was the principle on which the state was founded. So, under British parliamentary government, we find that the same principle largely applied, as far as the people were concerned, since the American colonists, even those who supported the revolution, considered themselves to be Englishmen who had been deprived of their rights. George Mason said, “We claim Nothing but the Liberty & Privileges of Englishmen, in the same Degree, as if we had still continued among our Brethren in Great Britain: these Rights have not been forfeited by any Act of ours…†One of the preeminent supporters of the “natural right†school of thought of all time was an Englishman, John Locke. In fact, the English are unique in having preserved a formerly autocratic system while securing a democratic framework within it. So the fundamental purpose of government, at least among the governed, was commonly seen to be the preservation of the rights of the people.
As for the ruling class, in the US the colonists, of course, became the ruling class. And in England as early as 1215, the monarchy began recognizing and promising not to violate the rights of the people, when King John signed the Magna Carta. This process was greatly advanced by the Glorious Revolution, under which the new rulers were installed only after promising to adhere to the Declaration of Right and a Bill of Rights#. From these developments are derived English common law and the current parliamentary system.
From the standpoint, then, of protecting individual rights, we can enumerate some of the reasons why government tends to restrict rights and which system deals more effectively with the need to limit those governmental impulses.
First, there is the natural human hunger for the exercise of power. In the United States, power is exercised by the executive branch; that is to say, by the President and all his subordinate secretaries and agencies. This power is vested in him by the Constitution, and the exercise of it can at any time be stripped from him either by impeachment, in the case of unlawful acts, or by election of an opponent by a displeased incumbency, or by his term limits. In the United Kingdom this mostly holds true, except that a disappointed populace cannot simply replace a Prime Minister. Tony Blair is responsible only to his party, and while wildly unpopular in his country as a whole, could conceivably stay in office if the members of parliament are each popular in their home districts. In a parliamentary system, the exercise of power rests in the hands of the same body that decides what powers are legitimately exercised - Parliament. This can be dangerous, if only because their own hunger for power can lead them to further advance their standing, especially in a system with no solid restriction on government power.
That lack of a written constitution is of itself the next problem with the “effectiveness†of British parliamentary government, measured in individual liberties. There is no document stating what the government simply may not do. This, of course, is not a feature of parliamentary government in general, only the British model. Judicial review helps the US system, but only since there is a list against which to compare the laws. Without it, the Supreme Court would ineffectual.
In the British system, a political party can expel a member who does not agree strongly enough with the party platform. In theory, this would encourage the formation and proliferation of third parties, as the John McCains and Zell Millers of Britain regroup in new ideological factions. In practice, it serves to stifle both the campaigning and the voting of political freethinkers, who, after all, can’t get anywhere without the backing of one major party or the other. In this respect the American system is not better, since third parties here have no chance whatsoever on the national level.
Another factor in a parliamentary system is the monarchy, which consumes huge amounts of resources, all paid for by the ordinary citizen, while performing duties which could adequately be discharged by ordinary government officials such as the Secretary of State.
Another feature common to both systems is that only plurality is required to win an election, rather than a majority. Thus, more people may oppose elected officials than support them. This serves to keep citizens dissatisfied with their government. and hopefully
By the liberty standard, a more efficient government is a more effective government, since it confiscates less from the people to conduct its business. Thus, the question of which governmental system is more effective can be closely tied to the question of what governmental system practices less income redistribution. Again, this is not a systemic characteristic of either system, but a question of who runs the system, and to what ends.

-----------

In the end a reasonable, impartial observer can only conclude that effectiveness, measured in the preservation of the rights of the individual, cannot be claimed by a particular governmental system over another, but in the exercise of the power over which government has a monopoly.

 

[Derby FALs]

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!

 

[iapetus]

Another factor in a parliamentary system is the monarchy, which consumes huge amounts of resources, all paid for by the ordinary citizen, while performing duties which could adequately be discharged by ordinary government officials such as the Secretary of State.

A few points on the monarchy, what it does, and what people in the UK think of it.

I'm afraid I don't have proper statistics on this, but I have heard that the Monarchy costs around £100m per year. However, the monarch also owns a large amount of land (the "Crown Estates"), all revenue from which goes to the treasury. This is (I believe) larger than the cost (I think it comes to about £150m).

Supporters of the monarchy would argue that this means the monarchy is a source of revenue (not counting tourism).

On the other hand, anti-monarchists (especially the more socialist ones) insist that all that land was originally stolen from the people by the monarchy/aristocracy, and if the monarchy was abolished, it would be confiscated by the state, and so the revenue argument is irrelevent.


The queen is the "head" of various national institutions, including the armed forces and the Church of England. Some argue that it is unacceptable to have one person in all these roles, especially when that person is an unelected and unremovable hereditary monarch. Others argue that by having a virtually-powerless "figurehead" in these roles, it prevents them being taken over by power-hungry PM (or his cronies), who would have the power to control them.


The queen has very little real power, but there are a few "royal perogatives" that in theory, give the queen unchallengable power to declare wars (among other things). In practice though, the constitution (we do have one, sort of) transfers these powers to the PM.

Anti-monarchists say this is unacceptable, for obvious reasons.
I don't know what the official monarchist counter argument is.
I would say, though, that I don't see why the monarchy could not be maintained, but stripped of these powers. Or that the monarchy could be abolished, but the powers maintained by the PM.


Another issue with the monarchy is that the monarch is supposed to be the fighure-head and representative of the nation.

Anti-monarchists argue that an hereditary aristocrat, with large quantities of unerned (inherited or tax-funded) wealth cannot possibly be representative of the people, and is not a good thing to have as a representative of the nation or state.

Pro-monarchists argue that a non-elected figure-head is less devisive than an elected one. The proportion of Britons who hate the queen is much less than the proportion who hate Blair (or whoever else is PM at the time), or (I expect) the proportion of Americans who hate POTOS. This will be partly because lots of people will have not been worked up in a camagne to elect a different queen, but lost, and partly because the queen has little power and less policy-making role, and so cannot be held responsible for unpopular government policies. The same applies to international relations: the queen can (may) be seen as a representative of Britain and the British people, rather than as a representative of the government.


And that's probably far more than you need to know, because the queen really have very little to do with running the UK.

In terms of anacronisms / hard-to-justify features of UK politics, you might want to look at the House of Lords (which has recently been "modernised" - ie all the aristocratic, mostly Tory-supporting Heriditary Peers have been kicked out, only to be replaced by New-Labour-supporting government apointees).