mrstickball said:
You are correct. Heck, most government exists because people are idiotic and self-asorbed. I'd venture to say 70% of government exists because the general populace is evil, greedy, dirty, or any sort of other negative adjective. |
One could say, "well the government makes it so". But in a Democratic state, that elects representatives who end up trying to address the wishes of their constituents, the society will get the type of government reflective of who they are. If say America were invaded by aliens who implemented a police state and then forcefully brainwashed everyone, then there would a strong argument for saying that EVERYTHING wrong in society is due to government. But in society now, people do take responsibility and do get ahead and so on. People also fail. It isn't all the government and merely removing government will somehow magically make problems go away. There is nothing magically about freedom and lack of government that makes society a utopia. What a society does with the freedom is what makes the difference. This being said, the relationship between a society and its government can produce a nasty feedback loop where the system goes into a spiral and things get worse. Only if people manage to work to break out of this, and depower government, will it ever change. But the change has to start on the bottom. And the citizens have to go to work to eliminate problems. A society, for example, that says it is generous because it pays for welfare collectively (aka Scrooge's statement), isn't going to be counted as generous.
Other factors, given the excesses of society, can also lead to things going off track. I had, for example, just finished this book below. It goes into how markets can end up making people immature also:
http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Markets-Children-Infantilize-Citizens/dp/0393049612
