the modern basis of government is simply this…
“it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the
measure of right and wrong.”
Jeremy Bentham…
this the liberal basis of government…not based on
authority or based on revelation or based on eternal matters…
but on the greatest happiness of the greatest number…
but the question becomes what is the “greatest happiness”?
and how can we achieve happiness in the midst of an
everchanging universe?
for what made me happy when I was young is different,
far different then what makes me happy today…
so we have to connect the different aspects of our human existence
together… we have a everchanging universe along
with everchanging matter and even we are ever changing…
so what can connect all that?
we have certain biological needs which we cannot ignore…
we must eat and we must mate and we must breath air
and we must expel excess or used matter…these biological necessities
must be followed if we are to continue our existence…
we organize ourselves into some sort of government which
allows us to coexists…and whatever government type we choose,
it will change and adapt every single day…as we change every single day…
amid this constant change, we must pick some point where we will
make our stand…and begin our journey…
we must first act upon our biological necessities…
we must have some means upon which to get the necessities
we need to exist… like necessities like food and clean water and clean air…
this is the bottom line basis of government…providing us access
to the basic necessities like food…
now we must create in some fashion the necessities of the basics…
we cannot just kill the deer and eat it… because soon, there will be no
more deer to eat and we starve…
so one role the government plays is umpire…we need an umpire
to makes sure we play well with each other and we don’t destroy
the resources we collectively need to survive… think Easter island…
they individually destroyed the trees they needed to survive collectively…
without the tree’s, their civilization went to hell… so another aspect of
our existence is the resources we need to exist… we cannot exist without certain
resources like tree’s and animals and air and water…however we can exist
and did for millions of years without computers and engines and oil and machines…
we can do without the trappings of the modern technology and we can survive…
so they are not essential to our surviving…
but in our modern world of technology and machines and tools, we
have numbers… we have billions of people and with each new person,
the complexity of existence becomes ever more complicated…
this is the next understanding… with every new object and every new life,
existence becomes more and more complicated…life is simple with one or two
tools to work with… we had spears and our hands to gain our basic necessities
for millions of years…today, shear numbers dictate that we cannot gain our
basic necessities with just spears and our hands… because there are over 7 billion
human beings… with each human being, human existence becomes more complicated…
change… we return to our idea of change… with every single human being,
existence becomes more complicate and with that complication, come the
increase in government because with every single new human being, comes
a greater and greater need for an umpire to keep our society moving…
with every single human being comes the need to increase our number of tools and
our need to increase our resources and the increase in the sheer amount of food and water to
allow our human beings to survive…it takes more food and water to supple 7 billion
people then it does to supple 1 billion people…and that includes the resources
to house and clothe and educate and move those 7 billion people become more
complicated…
so we have such things as the political and the economic and social
to help us understand how we deal with human beings… and how with
the growing number of human beings changing, we must change how we
handle the political and economic and social…
we cannot use the same political and economic and social tools to deal
with 1 billion people to deal with 7 billion people… it simple won’t work…
we must change our systems to deal with the changing numbers…
to allow an economic system to have resources to be in the hands of a small number
of people, as capitalism does, makes sense when there are not that many people,
as in 1 billion people, but, but when there are 7 billion people to deal with, to feed,
to house, to clothe, to educate, to move, allowing resources to collect in the hands
of a small number of people no longer makes any sense…
if we allow resources to collect in the hands of a small number of hands, then
we prevent the large number of people access those resources…
the resources we have are limited…that is the next basic fact we must understand…
we have limited resources… and to give a small number of people the greater percentage
of resources makes no sense…to feed a large group of people from a pie, we need to make
the pie pieces smaller to feed a greater number of people… the more people, the smaller
the pieces of pie everyone gets… if two people have 75% of the pie, then to allow everyone
else a piece of the pie means everyone else gets a ever smaller piece of the pie…
maybe an small sliver piece of pie…the only way to give everyone a piece of pie…
the only way is to increase the amount of pie everyone gets is by limiting the amount
of pie anyone can get…or you have to increase the amount of pie that is available…
but how do you increase the amount of pie that is available? that is the question
for us to answer…that is the practical question we have… how to get enough
pie for everyone to have a piece…that question is easier to answer when you
only have 10 people to dinner instead of 100 people… the number of people
you have changes the answer of how to feed those people…
now one may answer the question of how do we feed the people pie, with the
answer of, we don’t give people pie, which is based on?
we decide by some method of not giving people the pie because of?
we make moral choices of not giving them pie because they are of a
certain color or a certain race or a certain religion or a certain sex?
maybe they don’t work hard enough? but how do we decide this?
upon what criteria do we decide that we don’t give people a piece of pie?
we have a family dinner and there are 10 people…
how do we decide how much pie each person gets?
by how much work they do? what if they are old or disable
and they can’t work… how do we justify not giving them pie?
by saying no pie for you because you didn’t work… even if they
can’t work even if they wanted to work… they cannot work…
that is something out of their hands… something they have no control over…
but the real question becomes, WHO decides how much pie we each get and why?
when we go over to over to someones house, the host decides, but the planet earth
has no host, we are all here equally and so how do we decide when we all have
equal right to be here? do we have one person decide, dictatorship, or do
we have everyone vote on who get a piece of the pie or do we elect someone
to decide for us?..one might say, but life is more complicated then this…
deciding who gets the piece of a mythical pie? but the fact is, life
isn’t more complicated then this… just the number of people having pie
has changed, not the eating of the pie itself… resources is resources and the
amount of resources is limited but the number of people using those resources changes…
so how do we decide how much pie each person is going to have… out of limited
amount of pie!!! and because everything changes everyday, the amount of pie
changes as well as the number of people who are going to eat that pie changes every day…
so this is the question facing us…practical matters such as the use of resources
and how we use those resources…
Kropotkin