Solutions, Part 1: Why standing government must be replaced by coalescent government

I’ve been getting requests to present my ideas for the solution to “all this.” And since doing so would give me a break from having to write about Greece, I’m happy to oblige. 🙂 So I’ll dust off my old writings and present them one concept at a time. Hopefully, they can be of some use to you.

Behold the chains that bind you…
iamthelaw
…The “rule of law” is the “rule of those who write the laws.”

With every passing day, the government makes more and more laws and regulations, so with every passing day, the government grows bigger and stronger while you become smaller and weaker. If we were to pile all the books of federal, state and local laws, regulations, court cases and legal precedents in a single stack, one wonders how close to the Moon it would reach. The weight of these books crushes the spirit of humankind.

Standing Government versus Coalescent Government

Throughout history, many cultures have understood the perils of maintaining a standing army (an army that remains in place even in times of peace). Such armies consume resources that are better used on other things, and since they have little to do in times of peace, they can be quite mischievous. They can pick unnecessary fights with neighboring nations, and they can use the power of their arms to subjugate their own people. An organized, powerful group with nothing to do can become quite the nightmare. “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” it is said.

As we are increasingly seeing in the events unfolding in today’s world, the same problems exist with standing government. The primary problem with permanent government is that it constantly exerts power over our lives, and this can become quite cumbersome and oppressive. Once they have completed their rightful work, they are still there, so they tend to create make-work to keep themselves busy.

The make-work governments create can take the forms of ever more laws and regulations, ever more paperwork to process, and ever more intrusion into more and more details of our lives. With each passing day, governments continue moving further and further past the point of diminishing returns they crossed long, long ago. Thus, they usurp ever more power and resources from those below them, and as they do so, those below them become weaker and more in need of the government’s help. It becomes a vicious downward spiral for the whole society.

In a properly functioning world, the tasks governments perform should be quite few. To understand why, let’s consider the model of a world that works correctly. In a sane world…

Individuals have total freedom, as long as they don’t cause real, unjustified harm to others. They also have total power over, and responsibility for, themselves. They take action to provide for their own needs and desires, they create their own opportunities, and they solve their own problems. Since people are indeed made in the image of Source Consciousness, each person has total power, total freedom, and total responsibility over his or her own life.

ONLY in situations where an individual cannot, despite “his” best efforts to do so, provide for a particular need, he should turn to his family, friends, neighbors, and sympathetic strangers for help. Such private, voluntary cooperation can handle most basic needs, wants and desires, and meeting those needs in this way allows everyone to do so of their own free will. Since every one of us will need such help at certain times in our lives, we must devote ourselves to helping others in this way (and to creating the community networks for cooperative effort along these lines). If you do not give, you cannot expect to receive. Do unto others…

ONLY in situations where individuals and private cooperation cannot efficiently and effectively provide for an individual or public need, local coordinating bodies (local governments) should be convened and tasked with doing what is needed. Difficult and time-consuming work, such as laying water mains and building local streets, cannot be reliably done by volunteers. Local coordinating bodies can organize such tasks as well as the monetary compensation for doing them.

ONLY in situations where individuals, private cooperation, and local coordinating bodies cannot efficiently and effectively provide for an individual or public need, regional coordinating bodies (regional governments) should be convened and tasked with doing what is needed. Regional tasks might include such things as building levees, constructing roads linking area cities and farms, creating regional water distributions systems, etc.

ONLY in situations where individuals, private cooperation, and local & regional coordinating bodies cannot efficiently and effectively provide for a public need, continental coordinating bodies (continental governments) should be convened and tasked with doing what is needed. This might include building expressways and railways, creating a continental aqueduct system, etc.

ONLY in situations where individuals, private cooperation, and local, regional & continental coordinating bodies cannot efficiently and effectively provide for a public need, a global coordinating body (global government) should be convened and tasked with doing what is needed. This might include managing ocean fisheries, building global communications systems, etc.

In such a sanely configured system of government, governmental bodies are not standing organizations; they are called together only at specific times for specific purposes. Under such a system, higher bodies do only those things the lower bodies cannot do for themselves, and higher bodies have no power to do anything the bodies below them do not specifically request. This way, government coalesces only when it is needed, and power and responsibility is concentrated towards the grassroots, citizen level. As we all know, this is not the way government is currently done (because it is currently run by an interlocking syndicate of criminal families and interests).

So this is the first concept I offer: Government (for lack of a better word) must be called into existence only as needed, then allowed to dissipate when the specific task at hand is completed. Later on, we’ll explore the best way to provide services that are needed on a continuous basis (and are typically performed by governments under the current system), We’ll also explore the simple mechanisms that will allow a coalescent system to work (and to displace the current system).

On a related note, many programmed minds have difficulty embracing simple solutions to problems, but simple solutions are the only ones that reliably work in the real world. The more complex any system becomes, the more potential points of failure it develops (in other words, the more parts an engine has, the more parts there are to break down). For a government of the people, by the people, and for the people to actually work, it must be simple enough for the average person to understand. It must also be based on the natural ways people interact with each other. When you try to apply complex, abstract systems to government, you are setting yourself up for endless dysfunction, as you can observe all around you.  ‘Nuff said (for now).

Much love…