Two Views of Government

It seems to be taken for granted that everyone knows the objective of government: it exists for the good of the country. However it’s not obvious what the “good of the country” means, and that ambiguity leaves plenty of room for confusion. There are two models.

Model number one is more or less derived from the family. The good of the family is the well-being of its members. Government exits for the well-being of the population. Reasonable enough.

Model number two is a business. The goal of a business is returns to its investors. The employees are a cost center, and every dollar earned by the workforce is a dollar lost to investors. The population is at best a necessary evil, with fewer and fewer really required for business operations and with available slave substitutes (who can’t quit or change jobs) as Musk’s beloved H1B’s.

We are currently seeing model two in full operation. Everything has to be sacrificed to the 4.5 trillion dollar tax cut for rich people and businesses. Despite all the rhetoric about a golden era, all the money from the cuts and firings ends there. It’s golden for the people with the gold.

And that’s not the end of the story. As even Adam Smith understood perfectly, the private sector is actually not good at providing for its own success. Left to its own devices it rutherlessly sacrifices everything to immediate profit, which leads to longer-term collapse. Think about the cuts to education, research, and climate change. So as far as the two models of government are concerned, we’re running headlong into a worst of both worlds — sacrificing both the population and the economy.

Originally published at http://ontheoutside.blog on March 9, 2025.