In these modern days most governments still mostly function as either caregivers and/or enforcers of bounderies for/between people and businesses. In a true liberal world, governments would take their hands off of people and businesses and break all walls that they have put between people and businesses, and simply put, let grown ups play and make the rules between themselves (while governments as facilitators of this process need to act as the secretary for this process, instead of the chairperson).
Of course, as most citizens of our modern world are still behaving as Homo Sapiens Sapiens and haven’t evolved into the more conscious Homo Sapiens Modernus there’s still going to be moments where bullies want to cross the line and where some people only want to get and not give, to which now many governments still decide to create, enforce and punish people that go over the line, without taking the caregiver task, or more importantly even, the facilitator task of taking active measure(s) of working together with all the stakeholders in such circumstances, to all work together for such instances wouldn’t happen again. It may cost a little bit more, but in the long term we all save more.
There are people against big governments, because when governments decide that their main task and responsability is that of enforcers of common law, and citizen education stops at 18 or 25 and then only “bulletins or news clippings” suffice, not only do they loose sight of their actual main task and responsabilities they have for their country, that is being facilitators for the workings in their national bounderies, they also start becoming the main reason for lack of growth in their country, because governments start to act as gatekeepers instead of chaperones.
Everyone needs help every single moment in time with something (if they want to admit it, or not). It is the duty of matured, modern global societies to agree with each other that we’ll teach ourselves through knowledge sharing and open communication how to grow to become our best possible selves. Mistakes shouldn’t be punished, but encouraged to make them lesser and/or extinct in one. And how comes one to that point? With open communication and feedback.
To get there is no easy road, especially nowadays where people have grown long toes to be easily stepped on, and there seem to be more taboo subjects, not less. And you could have expected that the internet would have made less subjects taboo to discuss “in public” / in person, not more, so to me that signals how much fear there still is in people to open themselves on the internet, because of fear for the negative consequences that can happen, which nowadays mostly stems out of the enforcement of rules by the governments. Of course, fear of ridicule and/or retribution by others is also present, in a society where personal bounderies is more protected than collective bounderies, because all interactions in the collective get to be analyzed based on the personal bounderies affected in each event. Any other rule and/or enforcements governments make, should be to facilitate the flow of communication and/or actions of people and businesses. Hinderance measures should then only be made for events/actions negatively affecting the personal bounderies of others, without the other(s) being in control of creating a scenario where these negactive events/actions results in a positive outcome for both/all parties.
This all takes the decision to be made to change the current perspective of “compromises are good enough” to ‘win-win is the only acceptable path” to take in decision making. This may sound like a cliché, but patience is one of the most crucial skills and/or practices needed to change to the “win-win” perspective. You can decide to change at this exact moment to accepting and using this “win-win” perspective, so the patience is not in taking the decision, but to keep and hold to that decision, because you must always remember, you want “win-win” now, but most still work with “compromises are good enough - as long as I get most of what I want”. If you don’t have a long breath to explain the win-win argument, then it will take of you to give more (than expected) to being able to turn the tide around, but in the end, what is all that matters, because as long as it didn’t end, then nothing new can begin, sticking to the “win-win” perspective is going to make every party win.
To not make this article too long, lastly, I just want to say that, governments need to start taking this “win-win” perspective to start becoming the best facilitator possible for their countries. Ask the difficult questions even at taboo subjects, how can we get to the win-win situation with drug use? How can we get to the win-win situation with traffic congestions? How can we get to the win-win situation with abortus? Even in situations where there seems to be only a lose-lose situation possible, there are win-win situations imaginable, only with open communication we can achieve the best situation imaginable for all.
This is the same with new technologies now, like cryptocurrencies/blockchain. There’s a significant group of people that want to see this technology thrive because it can mean the end of centralized financial planning. Why take this win-lose perspective, when there’s also the perfectly reasonable and imaginable win-win situation, where both cryptocurrencies, in all forms, can co-exists with fiat currencies side-by side, because they can then act as decentralized arbitrators of each other, with no one having direct control on the other. If cryptocurrencies break our current global financial system, it will only create the opportunity for possible personal tyrannic growth. Breaking financial systems does not mean we also get rid of (immensely) wealthy individuals and/or families. Nor would we need to have the need to get rid of (immensely) wealthy individuals, because in a “win-win” oriented global society, the gap between what would be categorized as immensely wealthy and immensely poor would be very small, because what we now consider someone to be poor, would be non-existent in such global society, because everyone would have equal personal growth opportunities, even when having to start at totally different (wealth) stages.
So, even only having the freedom to go after that personal growth, creates the feeling of not being poor, because you are then only lacking objects, not (personal) freedom.
My opinion is thus, governments that have the monopoly on creating the bounderies for personal freedom, should act as farmers for personal growth, instead of butchers of personal freedom.
