It occurs to me that part of the political issue today between liberals and conservatives, or however people wish to categorize themselves, is that there is a fundemental undercurrent of misunderstanding about the purpose of government in the first place.
Bootie Cosgrove-Mather in an article titled The Purpose Of Government for CBS said:
"Call me old-fashioned, but I still hold with the ancient Greeks who said government has only one purpose, to improve the lives of citizens."
USHistory.org's article
The Purposes of Government says:
"Why do governments exist? One major reason is that they create rules. But what rules are necessary or desirable?"
Originally governments were started to protect the people. Once that is established and effective, government's purpose expands as a natural course of evolution. After having solidified its ability to protect it turns internal, taking on the actions of making the citizenry work more fluidly, enhancing and further protecting the citizens. Making the citizens more productive and enhancing the quality of their lives as a natural and necessary evolution of the purpose of government.
At some point part of the purpose of government is to maintain and protect, the government itself. Then comes a need for balance between the citizens and the government being protected. For the government to protect itself under the mistaken belief that it is more important than the citizens because IT appears to be the citizens, is a confused point of view that has led to entities such as the Soviet Union with it's leadership abuses, Communist China, North Korea, and so on.
It is not unlike the need in a company or corporation, for balance between security and business. Perfect security denies all business. Perfect business eliminates security. Too much of one destroys the other, just as too little of one can destroy the other.
It is a balance. Just as our Founding Fathers understood and so built into the United States of America, appropriate checks and balances. In protecting the people from the government and the government branches from one another the society as a whole is protected from and within itself.
When the initial elements of protecting the citizens and the government have been accomplished, and the basic elements involved in enhancing citizen's productivity and quality of life are in place, it is only natural that the government, as strong as it should be by this point, would continue to strive to find more and better ways to enhancement society. Without getting in the way of the citizens needs and desires and to continue to find new ways to be more productive for the citizens in its attempt always to be considering enhancements to its purpose as time marches on.
That means that government needs to protect the citizens, the individual units from large collectives such as citizen groups and businesses and corporations. It means that rather than allowing itself to be propped up by big money, it recognizes that and takes steps to fix itself, continuing to protect its citizenry.
From time to time any entity needs to reflect, to reevaluate its original purpose, to review if that is truly what it is still doing. By that concept, people should not be working more hours for less, but less hours for more. They should be paying less for more and better healthcare.
If at some point the care by the government reaches the pinnacle of no one needing to work, because they have finally been freed up to do what they wish, it is not for others who think work is the only way to live, to judge and apply their beliefs onto others. If and when the government should be able to support that.
If the government is on that path and at some point it changes direction, someone needs to look to see why that is happening, who or what caused it, and how to get back on track.
When people have reached a point that they no longer have to work, or even more so, no longer have to work in jobs they find despicable, it doesn't mean people will no longer need to work but that our orientation as a nation has morphed into allowing people to find what they enjoy doing and pursue that. Be it in the arts, sciences, labor force, or what have you.
My personal belief is that work enhances people's lives. If one is doing the right work for who they are.
Not however the kind of work many of us are currently being forced to do now a days. Not the stress and numbers of hours required per week for a family to be able to support themselves. Not the need of some families who have to have two jobs, three, four or five jobs when there was once a time when only one person needed to have a job to support their family. When they didn't have to work unreasonable days each week if not all, and too many hours per day.
We should not be working more than eight hours a day, more than five days a week and yet, many of us are. We have been hearing how we are slackers, lazy if we don't work twelve hour days five, days a week.
Yet we should be striving hard toward working less days and hours per week. We should be striving toward four day work weeks, six hour days. We should be working half days at full pay so two people could do the work of what one person is doing now. Those are directions, goals, we should be considering, working toward.
People may scoff at that contention. But they scoff because of how things are, not because of how things could be. The reason things cannot be that way now is because of how big money has brainwashed us all to think it's not possible. All while corporations and the very wealthy syphon off all the money so there is so very little left for the masses.
We have to decide first, just what do we want the purpose of our government to be?
Then we can make that happen.
