Is Your Government a Headless Chicken: Part 1

By Kieron Mcfadden

Here is an interesting observation: what is the PRODUCT of that group we refer to as “the government?”

So far as I am aware, it has never been stated or agreed upon and appears at any rate to be unknown by those in government and those on whose behalf government is supposed to be acting (“the people”).

Society comprises many thousands of groups.

Each group engages in some activity or other towards some end result, some product which is valuable in greater or lesser degree to the other members of society.

That product can be some physical thing or some service provided.

To be valuable and viable that product must in some way be wanted by and enhance the survival or well-being of the recipient.

This applies to virtually any group and by way of example (and you can correct the wording if it does not quite work) I suggest the following:

A house-painting company produces painted houses that look smart and are protected from the elements.

The product of a school is children possessed of the knowledge and skills that enable them to be an asset to and to flourish and prosper in the society.

The product of a police officer might be stated as an area free of crime.

The product of a food manufacturer might be stated as safe, healthy and nutritious food.

The product of a shoe shop might be well-fitted and comfortable shoes on the feet of satisfied customers.

The product of a taxi driver could be defined perhaps as customers delivered in safety and comfort to their destination.

Okay, so these may not be entirely adequate statements of the products of various groups and others, particularly those involved in producing the product, might be able to work out a wording that defines it more aptly.

The point however is that everyone engaged in some form of production, in some activity for which they receive an exchange from others, is delivering a product.

If one cannot define what one’s product is, or cannot work it out or does not think that there is one, then the chances are one is engaged in an activity that has no worthwhile purpose so far as everybody else in concerned.

If one cannot define one’s product, one does not know then what one is supposed to be doing and has no end result for one’s activity. Without a product we wind up with a lot of activity for activity’s sake.

Some food manufacturers are an example of companies that do not know what their product is. Not knowing they are supposed to produce safe, healthy and nutritious food and thinking that their product is “sales” or “profits for shareholders” or something, they produce unsafe, unhealthy, non-nutritious food. In so doing they product an un-viable, non-survival product that harms the consumer contributing to obesity and other physical and mental ill-health.

Some government education departments do not know what the products of their schools should be. The British Labour government was a case in point. I had some vague notion that their product was “exam passes” or something. As a result, while exam passes rose, actual educational standards in Britain – already low – fell through the floor.

Government is also a group of people that performs a function in the society but without a clear definition of its product, one has no yardstick by which the government itself nor anyone else can measure whether it is succeeding or failing.

A ball bearing factory has the product of perfectly round ball bearings or some such. Perfectly round ball bearings are needed and wanted by others and thus have a survival value (they enable other machines to be built that assist people in the business of survival.)

But what if the ball bearing factory did not know that it was supposed to produce perfectly round ball bearings? What if it had only the hazy idea it was supposed to produce small metal objects of some kind? When flat or square ball bearings start coming off the assembly line, and being some kind of small metal object, they are not picked up as flawed or undesirable products and are then passed on to the consumer.

But flat or square ball bearings have no value to the consumer. They are of no use in enhancing survival. So nobody will buy them and the factory will fail and go bust as its “products” are unwanted by anyone.

But what if the ball bearing factory were in a position to FORCE others to accept and buy whatever it churned out, even though the “product” was useless or even detrimental to the survival of the purchaser?

In essence that is the position of most governments. A government is a group of people. It engages in some activity or other. Its product is not clearly defined and agreed upon. It is in the unique position of being able to FORCE the consumer to pay for whatever it happens to churn out, even when what it turns out is detrimental to the survival of the consumer.

With no clearly defined product, no agreement as to what it is SUPPOSED to produce, we wind up with a lot of activity but no-one within government or on the receiving end has any reliable, consistent way to measure government’s success or failure.

Governments are just sort of “there.” They flounder around like a headless chicken, they stagger from one crisis to the next, raise taxes, churn out laws in endless profusion, declare wars in which everybody loses, promise one thing while doing another, lie, intimidate, mess people about – and often to the extent where citizens have to form groups to protect themselves from their own government, throwing government into the status of an enemy rather than an ally – and so forth.

Very often governments wind up administrating in the service of one or another vested interest such as banking or drug companies. They get the idea they are supposed to keep populations “under control.” They work on some notion that they are supposed to just “keep themselves going.” They conceive of themselves as a group distinct from or even imposed upon the society of which they are a part and think it is perfectly reasonable to muck their fellow citizens about, educate the young into advanced illiteracy or preside over a decline in the standard of living of some of the richest and most productive nations in the history of the planet.

And the governed, none the wiser as to what their government’s product is, tend to go on rather bemusedly supporting it, buying its justifications and excuses as its conduct degenerates, it renders their world less and less safe and it drives civilization into chaos and ruin.

So what IS government’s product? Or rather, what SHOULD it be? What is a desirable product for as government?

We could agree that the product of government is prosperous multi-national corporations, or a population that does as it is told or rich politicians or safeguarded banking interests and this might work for the CEOs of multi national corporations, banking cartels and so forth but it does not work too well for millions of the rest of us.

What we need then is to agree on a product that enhances and promotes the optimum degree of survival for all of us.

Suppose we decide that the product of our government is:

A safe environment in which all honest people are able to flourish and prosper free of inhibition to their survival efforts.

This is a viable and desirable product for government to work for and deliver so far as both we and government are concerned.

There is not much point in our having a government that does anything else is there? A government that actually inhibits our survival does not have much value so far as we are concerned.

We can measure government’s performance and gauge its competence or incompetence, its sincerity or lack thereof once we know the product we want from it.

By their PRODUCTS ye shall know them.

Look around. Is the environment safer or less safe? Are we more able to flourish and prosper or less?

Is YOUR government currently producing flat ball bearings?

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