The government today holds a number of responsibilities, from looking after water ways and police services, to taking care of parks, roadways, and more. They charge the people up-front for these services and the customer can never be sure of the quality of service that they're going to get, and even if they're unhappy about it there isn't going to be much that can be done to change it.
If the government wants to take up the initiative to take on so many responsibilities, then you might hope that at the very least they'd do an adequate job of it. Most often though, you'll find that their influence has been less than satisfactory, often nonsensical, or even outright harmful.
And you might find yourself asking where all the money is going at some point, when you pause to reflect on the quality of service and goods that you're seeing in-exchange for that considerable contribution that's being made by so many.
If they are not going to meet their responsibilities in an acceptable manner, then why not give people the chance to opt-out and go elsewhere. Alas, we carry on marching forward, hoping that maybe next time around we'll get it right, we'll get that magic fix. But it never comes and the current state of things continually erodes.
The most basic of those responsibilities is taking care of roads. A feat which surely is too complex to be organized via voluntary exchanges, we're told, and it's an endeavor which can only be accomplished by using just the right amount of acceptable coercion.
If a property is owned by everyone, and no one at the same time, then we cannot be surprised when we see repeated instances of neglect and when that property falls into disarray. There's the slightest chance that the organization and ownership surrounding the responsibility, just might have been a contributing factor to the failure. It just might.
If you pay for a certain good or service, and you aren't happy with that good or service, or you don't receive the good or service that you were told you'd' be getting, then shouldn't you get your money back?
We are pressured into believing that this is the only way, that there's only one option for human organization available to us, that forceful organization is the only and best idea that our minds can conjure up at this time. Anything else would be chaos they fear.
But are we truly content in saying that this is the best we can do? That this is the most that can be achieved? Why have we set the bar so low for ourselves.
