I don't get it. We think bigger is better except when it comes to what we do as a community.
We like big stores like China-Mart (a/k/a Wal-Mart) and Costco. We like big servings of food and giant gulps of drink. We like big armies and we collect many things. We like fat bank accounts, big breasts and big, you know, appendages. Huge ball players are great on our teams. Big insurance companies are better because they are safer. Wider and more roads, bigger and more cars, like Hummers, are great. Large hospitals have more resources to heal us. We admire big parks, big movies, big stars, big screens and big houses. We love the fat egos who are the closely followed subjects of tabloids, Huffington Post, and the evening news. We even like big businesses because we like the products they make.
But big government is bad. Like, big business isn't?
Government is how a society organizes and manages itself so it can provide what individuals acting alone or in small groups cannot. Like roads, currency, armies, free trade and corporations. Some societies provide its members with electricity, health care and a certain level of security in old age. But in the country without a name, the country that glorifies big as better in virtually everything, taxes are the work of the devil.
It is a matter of religious faith that businessmen work better than public servants. So instead of government by the people for the people, we want government by business. Like Ayn Rand exhorts, we place our trust in the selfish. We the people fear anything our government does. Somewhere along the way, we decided that our government is not really ours. It's the enemy. We want to privatize everything and make ourselves as little as possible. We become small in the face of those who are powerful without government.
We like big stores like China-Mart (a/k/a Wal-Mart) and Costco. We like big servings of food and giant gulps of drink. We like big armies and we collect many things. We like fat bank accounts, big breasts and big, you know, appendages. Huge ball players are great on our teams. Big insurance companies are better because they are safer. Wider and more roads, bigger and more cars, like Hummers, are great. Large hospitals have more resources to heal us. We admire big parks, big movies, big stars, big screens and big houses. We love the fat egos who are the closely followed subjects of tabloids, Huffington Post, and the evening news. We even like big businesses because we like the products they make.
But big government is bad. Like, big business isn't?
Government is how a society organizes and manages itself so it can provide what individuals acting alone or in small groups cannot. Like roads, currency, armies, free trade and corporations. Some societies provide its members with electricity, health care and a certain level of security in old age. But in the country without a name, the country that glorifies big as better in virtually everything, taxes are the work of the devil.
It is a matter of religious faith that businessmen work better than public servants. So instead of government by the people for the people, we want government by business. Like Ayn Rand exhorts, we place our trust in the selfish. We the people fear anything our government does. Somewhere along the way, we decided that our government is not really ours. It's the enemy. We want to privatize everything and make ourselves as little as possible. We become small in the face of those who are powerful without government.
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