I hate the government

Here in the United States we have citizen government. As much as it has become a tool of the wealthy to impose their priorities on the rest of us, it does reflect the values of Americans. United we stand, in squabbling disunity.

Ordinary citizens could take control if we could agree on common values and insist that they be promoted. Unfortunately, the majority values its freedom not to pay attention, and to dislike each other factionally more than it wants to overthrow the influence of concentrated wealth. The problem is not the government. It is us.

I hate the government. I hate how the need to keep an eye on it intrudes on my pleasures. I hate how it has evolved to be hostile to oversight as much as I hate having to be that oversight. I'm terrible at paying attention to what elected representatives and government agencies are doing. But we do have access -- for now -- to those who govern.

The yellow vest protests in France are presented as an example of what committed, bold citizen action can accomplish. True, they pressed the Macron government for concessions, but two questions arise. How did it get that bad in the first place? And will there be meaningful change after the two sides stand down and the news cycle needs to move on to other things?

We have representative government to free up the majority of citizens to do other necessary work. It also provides a filter between the whims of a sometimes volatile majority and the actual implementation of long-term policy. But representatives have power as well as responsibility, which makes them susceptible to corruption. Some are truly incorruptible. Others arrive pre-corrupted. Voters have to decide who is worth keeping. Detailed information can be hard to get. The information itself can be tainted by an underlying agenda.

I hate it. But it's human nature. Even government by a computer system would only be as good as its programmed parameters. And it might be very hard to overthrow. You can pull the plug, but only if you can get to the plug.

The show ponies who run for office are well suited to their roles in show biz. Some of them are as stupid as a box of rocks, but they've all managed to win the reality show contests we call elections. The best ideas in the world do no good if they can't find a champion who can actually get elected. The process is most visible at levels high enough to attract mass media coverage. But it's happening all the way down to little dinky towns scraping together a budget to keep a handful of roads paved, and send their kids to school. Down where most of us actually live, decisions are made at public meetings by people we know, if we happen to be able to take the time to attend.

Time. Citizen government demands your time. As an ordinary voter, you have to dig out the information you need to make what seems like a good choice. As an actual official, you have to perform the duties of your office. In some places, you're expected to do it for free, so you still have to grub for money in the outside world while paying proper attention to the people's business in your governmental capacity. In a country that glorifies wealth for its own sake, that means a constant battle against inflation, and against competitors who would be all too happy to sink you.

Many hands make light work. If a really solid majority of citizens wanted to get involved and take turns doing the mundane, tedious bullshit of governing, it would become a communal activity instead of turning "the government" into this alien overlord run by idiots and scoundrels. How likely is that? No one wants to be in the handful of suckers who get stuck having to sacrifice their time for an ungrateful populace that automatically assumes they're up to no good. And we're all either too busy working or too busy looking for work to devote our best attention to the needs of government. That's how you end up with independently wealthy people and energetic profiteers holding office. No one else can afford to. So back we come to oversight.

Take a short time as soon as possible to jot down a list of what you would like from your government. Brainstorm it. Write down everything that your ideal society would have. If the list is "no government," write down what you're going to have to get from other sources: roads, energy, health care, defense... Then figure out who is going to provide it and how you all are going to pay for it.

Deep inside all of us in the modern world lives a hunter gatherer wondering what the hell happened. What happened was evolution. As much as we still get the desire to roam as happy nomads across a relatively pristine environment, the only way to get back to that is to destroy all that came after it. And it was other parts of our own nature that made us evolve into our current condition, simultaneously pampered and stressed out. We can't go back. We can only go forward, trying to improve.