Government Works!

I don’t sign on to the “government doesn’t work” mantra. It works, or can work in the hands of competent governors. It’s just that it doesn’t usually work to accomplish what it is generally supposed to accomplish.

Take the debacle in Iraq, for instance. This adventure has worked magnificently if you consider it your goal to line the pockets of certain contractors. It hasn’t done anything for national security, but it was never intended by its designers to do so. It got GW Bush, a crook and a boob, re-elected as a “war president” by distracting the electorate and feeding mindless jingoism.

Look at the Katrina relief efforts of the US government. Sure, the area is still a complete disaster, but a lot of well connected contractors got a big payday.

The Great Pyramids probably couldn’t have been built without a government running the show. No private individual would have had the wherewithal to enslave enough people and divert manpower and resources to such a seemingly useless project. Now, millennia later, the pyramids bring in lots of tourists and their money. That Cheops was one forward looking governor. No private company could afford to wait thousands of years for a payoff.

Slavery on a mass scale could not have been carried off in the American colonies and the US without the support of government. You need a navy to patrol the seas and protect the supply chain, and you need government courts and law enforcement officers to enforce your rights in your slaves. Otherwise, they’d just run off. If you doubt what I’m saying, try keeping slaves now without government backing. It’s just not worth the effort.

Look at the War on Drugs. Of course, it hasn’t stopped the trade in drugs, and it has actually created a whole set of social problems, but it has permitted close surveillance and policing of poor people and has facilitated massive infusions of cash into the enforcement, incarceration, and prosecuting industries.

Government works. You just have to figure out what those who wield government are really trying to do.