To All Scotland's Left-Wingers – Government Is The Problem

As we know Scotland is a very left wing country ideologically and from these pro-independence leftist groups, bloggers, commenter’s, people who talk at me and the rest I hear a lot about fairness and how an independent Scotland would be fair if we just could get the right government in place to deal with Scotland's problems. What these well-intentioned folks fail to realise is that having a government in the first place is the problem and replacing a ruling elite with a new, bigger, tartan ruling elite won't make anything better in Scotland, it may even make it worse.

So if you've made it this far it's because you want to see where I'll take this madness next. Well let's start (as everything should and most things don't) from some philosophical principles. Most people accept that initiating violence against people for no reason is wrong. So far so good. Most people also accept that stealing is wrong. But when I take those principles to their logical conclusion then I lose most people for some reason.
 

Let's take taxation. If we want a bigger welfare state and more money poured into the NHS and childcare and whatever else is on your left-wing state shopping list it has to come from somewhere. A lot of these more radical leftist independence campaigners either don't mention higher taxation or think that the oil fairy will pay for everything. Well it will be higher taxes in Scotland and if we accepted the first two principles (that initiating violence and stealing are wrong) then taxation is inherently immoral. Why? Well because - just like the Mafia extorting a shopkeeper – money that I have earned is stolen from my wages by criminals calling themselves government. Now, what happens if you refuse to pay tax? Violence happens, first you are threatened violently then if you continue to resist men in costumes calling themselves police will kidnap you and lock you in a cage.

I hear you making the argument in the distance that tax pays for services. Look, every service that taxation pays for can be provided peacefully, voluntarily and without violence. Look at bin collections, my workplace (and many others) use private companies to remove their rubbish. If we had a free market without government then healthcare could be opened up and without regulations could provide varied coverage for all incomes. But what if the doctors were not very good? Well we have comparison websites right now I'm sure in a free healthcare market doctors would be rated so you could see which ones have the highest success rate in any area. Why do people get all teary-eyed about the NHS anyway? Have you been in an NHS hospital lately!? And what about all the scandals that have come out?
 

Providing services is like this, when one entity (government in our case) has a monopoly then there is no incentive to innovate or no competition to push standards up. People have to pay for it anyway so you can provide as poor of a service as you like. I have made the argument using a fictitious shoe company before and I'm sure you will understand that we enjoy immense choice in areas of our lives like shoes and cars and electronics, all of which companies are competing with each other to have the best product for the best price. If it's good enough for shoes then why is the free market not good enough for healthcare?
 

People are angry about wealth gaps also and I agree this is a big problem but it is also a problem that government has helped to create. Politicians are lobbied left, right and centre and it's government that gives perks to big corporations and introduces legislation to make it harder for smaller companies to compete with the bigger ones and they will do this all for massive donations from wealthy men. A 'corporation' as we understand it would not exist without government!

Now I know you're thinking about the poor and elderly and the ill. We have great charities all over the British isles that deal with these matters and others very well. People say to me “Who would take care of the poor.” and I say “I would, wouldn't you?” Then they agree and we wonder what we're arguing about! Without the burden of taxation I have no doubt that the people of Scotland would take care of each other, look at food-banks that are privately funded or even the SSPCA (which receives zero government money) or the National Trust (which is also privately funded). Look, if we can take care of cats, dogs and historic buildings with private donations I think that we could definitely take care of the poor, sick and elderly in our country. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about the generosity of the Scottish people to get things done and take care of each other without violence.

This is obviously a breeze through some anarcho-capitalist thought but let's quickly tackle one more issue – law and order. Government is not required for justice in fact often it's an obstacle to justice. If a stateless society were to run on contractual and voluntary relations among people with (as Stephan Molyneux envisions) Dispute Resolution Organizations (DRO's) to enforce contracts and deal with violent crime then you can see how easily it could work. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into depth as to how crime would be dealt with in a stateless society so if you're sceptical then please read the work of Murray Rothbard and others (available at http://www.mises.org) and listen to Stephan Molyneux at http://www.freedomainradio.com they will describe the minute details for you better than I ever could.
 

Albert Einstein got it right when he said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's all we're doing by changing the government, we're just moving the pieces on the chess board but we are still all stuck on the board. The solution to problems created by government is not to change the government but to get rid of it all together and give freedom a try as Murray Rothbard points out, the worst that could happen is that we end up with another state, but at least humanity would have had a holiday for a while.

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