People who hate government always seem to come back to two examples — the DMV and the Postal Service.
These two organizations are made to seem like the closest thing to Hell on Earth, things that would be so much better if we lived in a Libertarian paradise.
One of my favorite young comedians, Natasha Leggero, spoke of how it became possible to be tested for AIDS at the DMV. She said that the only thing worse than having to wait in line for service at the DMV was also finding out you have AIDS.
Here in Georgia, they don’t call it the DMV. It’s the Department of Driver Services, or DDS, which raises the possibility that in addition to waiting in line, someone might also be working on your teeth.
In reality, though, other things are far worse than the DMV, which after all is crowded because at one time or another, nearly everyone needs their services.
As for the Postal Service, I’m with Jon Stewart on this one. When someone attacked the Postal Service, he asked if they meant those people who would deliver a letter to his sister on the other side of the country within two or three days for less than half a dollar.
Awful, huh?
Anybody who thinks that’s awful obviously has never dealt with a cable company. You know, the folks who tell you they’ll be there on Thursday sometime between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. to install your cable TV.
Or even worse, how about dealing with an insurance company? My friend Mick is a proud anti-government type, but the worst horror stories I have ever heard from him have nothing to do with the government. Mick can do an extemporaneous hour on the horrors of medical insurance.
Private medical insurance.
At least at the DMV there’s no one whose job is to stop people from getting drivers’ licenses.
The fact is for the last 40 years, there has been a concerted campaign by folks on the far right to destroy people’s faith in government. Whether it has been eliminating programs that benefit the less fortunate, or flattening out the progressive income tax, or worst of all, the estate tax.
I’ve heard people say that one of the worst things about our country is that we have reached a point where people worry more about their rights than about their responsibilities.
On the most basic level, government exists for one of two reasons — either to protect the poor from being exploited by the rich or to protect the rich from having their possessions stolen or destroyed by the have-nots. In recent years we have swung from one side of the pendulum to the other.
Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke said that the purpose of governments was to protect people’s rights to life, liberty and property. Partly traditional, although the idea of liberty wasn’t all that widespread in a 17th century in which kings ruled by the divine right of God.
In the final quarter of the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson spoke of the basic rights of man as being “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It may not have been as big a difference as it seems now; owning property was a big part of happiness in 1776. But I’m not sure Jefferson and the other founders ever envisioned a society in which one man would be worth $200 billion.
After all, as Doctor Evil learned in the “Austin Powers” movies, some sums are too big even to imagine.
And while it may be difficult for today’s crop of Libertarians to imagine things worse than the DMV or the postal service, if you want the best present-day example of a Libertarian paradise, just head northeast along the African coast from Mombasa. It’s an 18-hour drive from there to Eden.
Mogadishu, Somalia.
No laws, no gun control.
No DMV, no post office.
Just do whatever you want.
Although you might have to measure your lifespan in weeks, not decades.
Not everything government does is bad.