Monday, June 29, 2009

What are the responsibilities of the State?

What are the duties of the government? Why government is elected? and how far in can influence the society? These are some questions which requires a concrete answer. According to me "Government is an elected body of representatives which have the power to create, maintain and remove laws, regulations etc across a state. "

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy In America (1835) define government as "[Administration] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom restrained from acting, such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd".

Government is formed or its primary duty should only be as "A regulatory board- which honestly regulates trade, providing security for the people, disaster management, enforce equality in society and as a board which will make it sure that equal oppertunity is available for all the sections of the society for education and other government services".

That means its functions only include:

1. As a regulatory boardy[should function in honest manner] in trade - and have to make sure that stake holders are not cheated.

2.A body which must make it sure that people [Humans, forest, birds and animals] are protected in the times of and internal or external aggression and at the time of natural/man made disasters.

3.It have to ensure equality in society, equality only means that all people [irrespective of caste, ethnicity, religion, wealth] should have same access to government services and education nothing else.

4. And its last responsibility is to ensure that everyone have equal access to education, why I am particularly pointing out education is that no one should be depived of education due to the shortage of money.

If it assumed or givn anymore responsibilities it should violates the rights of people in some way or other.

Ludwig Von Mises states that "Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics". In most of the cases economic disasters are either due to the government's fiscal policies or due to the failures it did as a watchdog of the economic trade

I dont know why governments have made such huge public sector units. Actually what happened is that when a public sector unit is created to manufacture say computers, its violates the rights for equality of other citizen's to create another unit to manufactue computers because the PSU[public Sector Undertaking] is backed with government money [again citizen's money]and whatever loses happened it will be taken care by government itself thus it creates unequal playground. But the private firm doesnt have that advantage. This thing is valid for all public sector companies.

Its is true that these public sector companies employes a lot of people, but at the same time government provide an unequal play ground for its citizen's [who wants to run their own company]. Its appropriate for us to have large organisations which employees a large number of people but the market conditions must be equal.

Garry Wills Said that " Government is accepted as, at best a necessary evil, one we must put up with while resenting the necessessity. We want as little as possible since anything beyond that necessary minimum instantly cancels one or other liberty".

But at the same time it should not be loose in its role as a regulator. Regulator doesnt means a body which controls each and every aspects of a trade, it simply means - a body which works in such a way to make sure that no stake holders are cheated. According to Adam Smith "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all".

Ronald Regan states that "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem". It controls all the things it can and in the end nothing will move on, its not government's job to run the show; but its job is that of a spectater as well as critic and judge[Only in the time when some problem arises ] too .

James madison States that "The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect".

Dont think that government is the solution for all your problem, because its not. You have to find your own answers for your problems.

Sajeev

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