Ten Dangers of Politics

Is this the future of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy? Only time will tell.

One of the things that worries me about politics in today's America, is the growing reliance on government as a solution to problems. Over the course of my lifetime, I've noted the growing trend of many Americans to consider government as the end itself, rather than as a means to an end. Within this broad trend, there are a number of dangers, which Americans by-and-large, tend to ignore. Here's my list of indicators that we, as Americans, have forgotten the purposes of government and are now running headlong into dangerous territory.

1) Placing faith in a single person to "fix" things is misguided and dangerous. Politicians who "fix" things, tend to be handed power in order to implement change. Of course, handing that much power to a politician is a dangerous thing, which nearly always leads to an abuse of power. The only person in recent history to be handed absolute power to govern, and then gave that power up, was George Washington. It's all been downhill since; just ask the people who placed such "fixers" into power as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao Zedong.

2) Government, any government, will always try to take more power until it has all power. Handing government power should never be done lightly, and only for specific reasons. That's why we have the system of government we have in the US, to spread the power out, over a large segment of the population.

3) Similarly, handing government money and property is a zero sum game. The loss of utility of our personal wealth is exactly balanced by the growing monster called government. This will continue until all wealth is eaten by the state.

4) Creating a bureaucracy can never, never, never make a system run more efficiently, and at less cost. The bureaucracy created under Obamacare only has potential to tie up money, time, and resources, not to alleviate the problems of the health insurance industry.

5) Anyone who thinks that government bureaucracies can and will "fix" problems should be examined by a competent medical practitioner. However, since the medical field is now too heavily regulated by past and present "fixes" to the system, there is no possible means of finding anyone who is competent.

6) Bureaucracies can become so large and unwieldy, that they cease to function. Just look at Congress. Now multiply that by the thousands, and tens of thousands, of bureaucrats who run all the little projects granted through public money.


7) Ideologues are dangerous. Any politician who bases his or her view of the world on a single ideology (for example, feminism, gay rights, abortion) should be shunned like a rabid animal.

8) Any politician who rises up by denigrating a certain group or class of people (i.e., the rich, racists, the religious right) should be shunned like a carrier of the plague.

9) Any politician who denigrates the principles of the free market and of limited government, has only two purposes in mind: to destroy the free market and to expand government.

10) Remember that party does not equal policy. Because a candidate belongs to one party or another, does not make that candidate evil. True evil only comes when a candidate abuses power in order to get personal gain or to expand power.