A couple of months ago, Tom Armstrong wrote a very interesting FSB piece on government and whether we still need it. As Armstrong says, it's a question which is rarely asked.
A rarely asked question perhaps, but not that rare. It has probably crossed the minds of many people concerned about the strikingly ineffectual yet repressive nature of recent UK governments. During the covid debacle for example.
Do We Need Government?
For most of human history, political power was a matter of geography. The Crown or Parliament in Westminster was, to all intents and purposes, remote to the majority of the people. Decisions handed down from London might take weeks to arrive in Yorkshire, Cornwall, or the Highlands, and still longer to make their effects felt. Government was not simply remote in spirit, but remote in fact.
So is it not strange that in an age when a message can travel the globe in less than a second, we still cling to a centuries-old model of centralised power? Why, in an era of instant communication, decentralised finance, instant communication and artificial intelligence, do we persist in allowing a handful of ministers - career politicians – and an army of arrogant mandarins in Whitehall to run the lives of seventy million people, often in ways the vast majority of those millions disapprove of?
So here I ask a question hardly never asked: Do we still need “government” as we know it? Is the centralised State, with democracy heavily qualified by the inaccurate word ‘representative’, its archaic practices, bloated bureaucracy and self-perpetuating ‘elite’ anything more than an anachronism, a hangover from horse-and-carriage times? And could we, the people, using modern technology, do a better job without it?
For most of human history, political power was a matter of geography. The Crown or Parliament in Westminster was, to all intents and purposes, remote to the majority of the people. Decisions handed down from London might take weeks to arrive in Yorkshire, Cornwall, or the Highlands, and still longer to make their effects felt. Government was not simply remote in spirit, but remote in fact.
So is it not strange that in an age when a message can travel the globe in less than a second, we still cling to a centuries-old model of centralised power? Why, in an era of instant communication, decentralised finance, instant communication and artificial intelligence, do we persist in allowing a handful of ministers - career politicians – and an army of arrogant mandarins in Whitehall to run the lives of seventy million people, often in ways the vast majority of those millions disapprove of?
So here I ask a question hardly never asked: Do we still need “government” as we know it? Is the centralised State, with democracy heavily qualified by the inaccurate word ‘representative’, its archaic practices, bloated bureaucracy and self-perpetuating ‘elite’ anything more than an anachronism, a hangover from horse-and-carriage times? And could we, the people, using modern technology, do a better job without it?
The whole piece is well worth reading, not because anything is likely to be done in this direction, but because the question is fascinatingly useful as a way to skirt well-worn paths. An idea to drop into conversations at Christmas perhaps.
So, do we still need government? Not in the form we inherited from the days when a journey from London to York consumed a week. Not in the form that treats free citizens as subjects, and a handful of politicians as monarchs in all but name. We need rules, yes. We need order, yes. But we do not need rulers. We do not need a permanent, parasitic class of officials to run our lives. The tools of liberty are already in our hands: digital platforms, decentralised systems, AI safeguards. The only missing ingredient is courage. Courage to say: the age of government is over. The age of citizen rule has begun.
6 comments:
For much of our history an honest man could go through life with almost no contact with Government. He might be required to serve on a jury. He was obliged to register hatches, matches, and dispatches. But he wasn't tied down by a maze of ill-considered regulations. Indirectly he paid duties on imports or grog, but that was indirect: nobody took chunks out of his wages.
In other words smaller government: much, much smaller.
dearieme - and an honest man was likely to see unwanted contact with Government as an impertinence by people who should have better things to do. I tend to blame the Labour Party and its malignant ideology, but there must be other factors too.
Perhaps other factors include the double edged sword of technology? Delivery of technology requires infrastructure and infrastructure has needed community wide control to achieve. Take one of the most beneficial technological innovations - sanitation.
Once you start delivering 'bulk water' whether by aqueduct or pipes then you needed some sort of centralised control to make it happen. Same with removal of 'bulk waste'.
Same with all the railway companies - originally delivered by separate companies, but eventually centralised as the rail network became interconnected. All of these centralisations were because individuals, even wealthy individuals, could not step up to the scale required.
Same with coinage.
The downside of course is that once you establish centralised rules there are only too many people interested in extending those rules into unnecessary areas (such as the apocryphal shape of bananas).
And now from 95% of people living on the land to 80% of people living in urban areas we are dependant on 'bulk' technology to keep the lights on and food in the shops. As a consequence we cannot throw government away. But we could certainly exist with less red tape and fewer QUANGOs.
"such as the apocryphal shape of bananas": 'twas true: there really were EU rules on the shape of bananas. I realised they must exist when Toni Blair said they didn't so I looked 'em up.
DJ - I agree, one of the other factors include the double edged sword of technology which once it is up and running seems accumulate opportunities for people to attach themselves to it as supervisors rather than just using it.
An issue with AI is likely to be central supervision just as the internet is attracting more and more central supervision which necessarily involves restrictions, otherwise supervisors would have no product.
Those who can contribute to technical progress do so, but those who can't find their opportunities elsewhere such as supervising and restricting it.
dearieme - I think Stephen Fry said the rules didn't exist too, so I looked them up even though I was pretty confident that they did exist if Fry denied it.
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