Free to choose

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule" - H.L.Mencken

Kan is a close friend of mine. Kan, like JayCee, is another stretch on Thamizhian tolerance. He was named Shunmugakani at birth and that name was in use for a while in 1980. But, somewhere between the last quarter of 1980 and the first quarter of 1981, his folks back in Madurai, began to see this name as too much of drain on their time and energy. They switched to Kani, a shorter but not necessarily a sweeter, abstraction of Shunmugakani. But the records were never set right. Nevertheless, ‘Kani’ was serving its purpose extremely well, before getting into a cross phonetic crisis in the beginning of 2002. Kan took up a job that involves interaction with folks across Atlantic. Folks across Atlantic are brought up to pronounce ‘mary’, ‘merry’ and ‘marry’ alike and it was no wonder that some of them started pronouncing ‘Kani’ as ‘Honey’. Though Kan was thrilled and we were jealous in the beginning, we were up against the reality very soon. If his folks down south, become privy to the rumor that Kan is becoming ‘Honey’ to someone across Atlantic, they will come with their daggers drawn. So, Kan did a bit of soul searching, dropped the ‘i’ and became Kan. OK, enough of his naming folklore. Now, if you have followed up Barack Obama all through his presidential run-up and have developed some sort of respect for his calm, composed and serene way of doing stuff, you may like Kan’s company as well.

This post is about how such smart, serene and self respecting individuals like Kan are unconsciously developing romantic delusions about our government. He believes that, in a country like India, where most of us are not educated, the government can take decisions on our behalf. It is ominous for a free society when its law abiding and taxpaying citizens like Kan are not alarmed at the idea of government taking more and more control of our lives. In a country as diverse as ours, no political party can represent the interests of all Indians. Politicians, and consequently the governments they form, can only pander to the special interests of select groups. These influential groups usually consist of people who are either rich enough to spend money on politics or stupid enough to vote as a flock. Government spends its time and resources only on these special interest groups, but continually portrays itself as the guardian of everybody's interests. Worse still, the resources spent on these special interest groups are always sliced out of taxpayer’s money.

Consider a swimming pool and its pool boy. The pool boy, for his own amusement, draws water from one end of the pool, spills some of it on his way and pours rest of it in to the other end of the pool. Suppose you are noticing him only when he empties his bucket into the pool. You are most likely to conclude that he is filling the pool with water and you may not even pause to suspect that he might be drawing water from other end of the pool. His meaningless exercise of not adding any water to the pool may go unnoticed and he may even be unduly credited for his service. When government panders to special interests, it acts like a weird pool boy and manages to earn undue credit for wasting tax payers' money. Government takes money out of its citizens in the form of tax (drawing water), keeps something for it through corruption (spilling water) and gives the rest to a select few (emptying the bucket) who, presumably, will help the government to win the next elections. And clearly this redistribution of resources, from tax payers to special interest groups, is not of any value to the country or majority of its taxpayers. In all these government controlled redistribution processes, people, like kan, are only seeing government spending (emptying the bucket) and are not likely to realize that the resources are taken out of tax payer's money (drawing water) or that a portion of it has already been squandered away (spilling water) by corrupt officials.

So, there are two major issues here. First of all, the redistribution of resources is always done according to the whims of an elected few who do not represent the interests of all citizens. The beneficiaries of such redistribution processes are always a bunch of special interest groups and the victims are always the vast majority of tax payers. Second of all, governments’ redistribution process is always corruptive because there is no incentive to be honest. A pool boy, who is always praised for what he is not actually doing, will never bother to check the water dribbling out of his bucket. If the pool owners want to avoid water wastage, they should stop the pool boy from indulging in the meaningless exercise of drawing and emptying. In the same way, if the citizens want to reduce corruption they should reduce the role of government in their lives. The only legitimate responsibility of a democratic government should be guaranteeing security and justice to its citizens. Justice in this sense is protecting the life, liberty and property of its citizens from the infringement of others. What these citizens do with their own life, liberty and property is none of government’s business and any form of goverment intrusion in to this is nothing but waste of tax payer's money.

But, very often, governments tend to enforce arbitrary ideas of righteousness in the name of justice to satisfy special interest groups. These arbitrary ideas are always projected as beneficial to all. Government’s urge to rule its citizens at the expense of tax payers’ money is often concealed beneath the false facade of such benevolence. When government enforces such unsolicited controls on our lives, the resources, required for the formulation and enforcement of such controls, are always taken out of tax payers’ money and it triggers a government redistribution of resources from tax payers to government officials. One example for such arbitrary rule and consequent misuse of tax payer’s money is section 370. Though majority of Indians detest the indecency of intruding into other’s sexual affairs, government of India, lacking such decency, illegalizes homosexuality in order to keep the followers of some medieval myths in good humor. The cost of upholding such a pointless law is borne by all heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, celibates and transsexuals of this country. Prohibition of any such victimless crime is very expensive to enforce and the enforcement is mostly ineffective. Nevertheless, government forces us to pay for all such useless excesses with its power to collect taxes. If this sounds like a blatant day-light robbery, we must acknowldge that, unlike governments, day-light robbers do not insult our intelligence by claiming robbery is for our own welfare. People like kan are light years away from understanding this moral mischief. Salvation of this nation depends on how soon people like him understand the futility of government redistribution process.